Eddie O’Brien, Who Played for Pirates With His Twin

Eddie O’Brien, left, and his brother Johnny, right, also starred for the Seattle University baseball team. They are pictured here with Pittsburgh Pirates Manager Fred Haney. Credit via David Eskenazi Collection

 Eddie O’Brien and his twin, Johnny, were basketball and baseball stars at St. Mary’s High School in South Amboy, N.J., but when they graduated in 1948, their athletic careers seemed to be over. They were only 5 feet 9 inches tall, and no college program wanted them.

But by the mid-1950s, the O’Brien twins had become familiar figures on the national sports scene.

When Eddie O’Brien died in the Seattle area on Feb. 21 at 83, he was remembered for teaming with Johnny to bring Seattle University to national basketball prominence, then joining him as a middle infielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Their potential as college athletes was recognized while they were playing in a national semipro baseball tournament in Wichita, Kan., in 1949. They faced a team that included a first baseman named Al Brightman, who happened to be the Seattle University baseball and basketball coach.

The game went into extra innings.

“In the 12th, I got on first and Brightman asks, ‘How are your grades?’ ” Eddie O’Brien once told The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “I told him: ‘I can’t talk to you now. I just got the steal sign,’ and I stole second. That was it. A week later, we got scholarship offers in a telegram.”