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The Athletic's Steve Buckley (paywall) catches up with Shaun Clancy, whose desire to serve the public has outlasted Foley's.
What would you say if I told you that Shaun Clancy, the former owner of a much loved and dearly missed sports bar on West 33rd Street in New York City, is now working behind the deli counter at a Publix supermarket in Clearwater, Fla.?
The sports bar was Foley's NY Pub & Restaurant — Foley's for short — and it was the beating heart of baseball in New York. If Boston's make-believe Cheers bar was the place where everybody knew your name, Foley's was the place where Shaun Clancy knew your name and also your game — whether you were a Red Sox beat writer, a Dodgers scout or an umpire scheduled to work home plate for Jacob deGrom's start against the Phillies that night at Citi Field.
Foley's was neat but not fancy. Loud, but not cackling. Memorabilia? It was a Louvre of sports loot, some of it eye-catching and of value, such as a baseball autographed by Pope John Paul II. And some of it was kinda kitschy, such as an official clock radio the Yankees sent to beat writers as Christmas gifts in 1970.
Just as the late, legendary Toots Shor was a larger-than-life presence at the celebrity-strewn joints he ran in New York during the 1940s and '50s, Clancy was that guy at Foley's — except that Toots sought the limelight, whereas Clancy couldn't find it with a compass. Toots entertained TV stars (Jackie Gleason), sports stars (Joe DiMaggio), mobsters (Frank Costello), crooners (Bing Crosby) and crooners who cavorted with mobsters (Frank Sinatra).
While plenty of famous athletes stepped into Foley's — former Mets third baseman and seven-time All-Star David Wright was a regular — they were no more important than the ball writers, scouts and umpires who stopped by for noontime lunches and midnight pops.
The only true connection Foley's had with Toots Shor's was that Clancy's father, John Clancy, was a waiter at Shor's as a 20-something, freshly arrived from Ireland. He later returned to Ireland, and years later, came out of retirement to be a greeter at Foley's. When he wasn't greeting, he was holding court at a side table, regaling visitors with stories about growing up in the old country and waiting tables at Toots Shor's.
John Clancy is now 87 and enjoying his second retirement in the village of Butlers Bridge in County Cavan, Ireland — which is where Shaun Clancy, born in 1970, the year of the Yankees clock radio, grew up. The younger Clancy visited the States for about six months in 1991, mostly to see if New York was all it was cracked up to be, and a few years later, he returned for keeps. When he opened Foley's, the old man came back over to pitch in.
Foley's is where you'd find a Sid Hartman Burger, named after the late Minneapolis Star Tribune sports columnist who was 100 when he died in 2020. There was a Mrs. Met Burger — and if you're wondering why there was no Mr. Met Burger, this is why: There was a nice old lady who had the dual distinction of being a Foley's regular and devoted Mets fan. Whenever she was in Foley's, people would respectfully address her as Mrs. Met; the burger, then, is named for her and not for Mr. Met's better half.
So, yeah, that was Foley's.
And here we are: Shaun Clancy, this big, friendly, baseball-obsessed, storytelling 52-year-old who (as my County Kerry-born grandmother used to say) has the map of Ireland on his face, has gone from running an iconic bar in The City That Never Sleeps to placing chicken in the rotisserie at the Publix on McMullen Booth Road in Clearwater, across the street from an Exxon station.
Foley's was across the street from the damned Empire State Building.
Hell, the urinals at Foley's were brought over from the original Waldorf-Astoria hotel when it was torn down in 1929 to make way for the Empire State Building. You think Shaun Clancy has that kind of history in his hands when he's taking a leak at Publix?
The only problem with this riches-to-rags story is that it is nothing of the kind. Yes, the roar of the pandemic two years ago forced Clancy to close down Foley's — temporarily at first, and then for keeps. |
Though he's enjoying life in Florida, Shaun allows that if, say, Steve Cohen wanted to let him revive his restaurant at Citi Field, he'd be open to it.
https://theathletic.com/3216993/2022/04/01/from-foleys-to-a-publix-deli-counter-why-shaun-clancy-shuttered-new-yorks-iconic-baseball-bar-and-what-comes-next/
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