Phungo: Harry O'Neill (1917-1945)

Sunday, May 26, 2024

Harry O'Neill (1917-1945)

This Memorial Day Weekend we honor one of the two MLB players killed during WWII, Harry O'Neill. The other was Washington Senator Elmer Gedeon.

O'Nelll's baseball career lasted one game, on July 23 1939 he came in as a defense replacement at catcher for the Philadelphia Athletics. The A's were down 15-3 when O'Neill entered the game, the deficit would expand by an additional run during his single inning of Major League play.

O'Neill never batted in that game and his MLB career was over.

In September 1942 O'Neill enlisted in the US Marine Corps. On March 6 1945 Harry O'Neill was killed in Action as a 1st Lieutenant at the Battle of Iwo Jima. He is one of an estimated 7,184 USMC deaths that occurred during the 36 day Battle.

The brief baseball career of Harry O'Neill does not appear to have yielded any cards during his playing days.

As part of our #CupOfCoffee project honoring players with Short MLB Careers we created a cup for Harry O'Neill

Phungo Original: 1953 Topps Marines Harry O'Neill (2021)

We based our illustration off of one of the few photos we could find of Harry O'Neill. I turned around O'Neill's ball cap so that we can see the A's logo and added color to the B&W image. The stars and blue field are used as a background to give us a flag motif.

On the nameplate we also added the shortened version of the Marine Corp Motto Semper Fidelis which is Latin for Always Faithful.

Finally above and below the borders we have added #CupOfCoffee designation and the date of O'Neill's game 1939 July 23.

The design is borrowed from the minimalist 1953 Topps Fighting Marines Set which features simple thin line frames of red and blue borders. For more on the 1953T Marines issues check out Cardboard Connection.