04/23/2007

By Anthony Castrovince / MLB.com

When he came over to the United States from Dublin about 17 years ago, Shaun Clancy didn't know a thing about baseball. Bartending in New York City, where the game emanates incessantly from the lips of fans and the gleam of the tube, changed all that.

Other sports have their merits, Clancy admits. "But baseball," he told me in his thick Irish accent the other night, "is the only sport you can talk about 365 days a year."

Yes, between a 162-game schedule, the playoffs, Spring Training and the Hot Stove season, it is a year-round treat. And Clancy treats it as such at his baseball-themed pub, Foley's NY, on West 33rd Street, just across from the Empire State Building in Manhattan.

This is where umpires, writers, public relations people and even managers come to drink and dine after a day at the yard. Clancy celebrates this fact with an extensive collection of baseball memorabilia, including a display of more than 1,200 autographed baseballs that line the bar's walls.

Scanning the impressive arrangement, one can view the John Hancock of such baseball luminaries as Joe DiMaggio and Derek Jeter. And when Clancy showed me the location of a ball I autographed for him last fall and assured me that memento -- if you can even call it that -- is in his "Top 10," it was a wonderful example of "when Irish eyes are lying."