William (Bill) Shea, the attorney whose named became synonymous with New York sports, was once better known for his days on the Georgetown hardwood.

Born in New York, Shea attended NYU before coming to Georgetown in 1928, playing one season on the Hoyas' football team and three seasons on the basketball team. A three year starter, he finished runner up in scoring to Walter Morris in the 1930-31 season with a 5.0 points per game average.

He continued at Georgetown after undergraduate school and received a law degree, eventually returning to New York for a career in corporate law but still maintaining an interest in sports: he was a part owner of an NFL farm club known as the Long Island Indians (1940-52) and the later defunct NFL club known as the New York Yanks (1948-52).

In 1958, Shea was approached by New York Mayor Robert Wagner about leading an effort to persuade a Major League Baseball team to move to New York, after the loss of the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers the year before. Finding no takers, he lobbied for an expansion team which was awarded in 1962 as the New York Metropolitans, which soon became known as the Mets. In 1965, the team named its new ballpark in Flushing Meadows, NY in his honor: Shea Stadium.

"Shea's connections were legendary. He knew everyone from New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller to mob boss Frank Costello. And he used those friendships to produce results that no one else could," wrote American Lawyer magazine. "For Canadian billionaire Jack Kent Cooke, for instance, Shea pushed a private bill through Congress to make Cooke a citizen overnight, instead of having the future Washington Redskins owner wait the mandatory five years." Shea became a minority owner in the club.

In 1972 Shea again used his considerable lobbying skills to convince the National Hockey League to award an expansion team known as the New York Islanders.

"He is the city's most experienced power broker, its premier matchmaker," wrote New York magazine, "a man who has spent 40 years turning the orgies of politicians, bankers, realtors, union chiefs, underwriters, corporate heads, utility combines, cement barons, merchant princes and sports impresarios into profitable marriages." Shea, it was written, "labored quietly in a political twilight somewhere between the private interest and the public good."

Shea received an honorary degree from the University in 1971 and practiced law at the firm he co-founded, Shea and Gould, until his death in 1991 at the age of 84.

(Additional excerpts from www.johncarrollawards.com.)