Foley’s NY: The Best Baseball Bar In NYC

When Shaun Clancy was looking for a name for the midtown bar he was about to take over, he wanted something that captured his vision for the establishment: an Irish bar with a baseball attitude.

He invited 25 buddies over for brainstorming over some beverages. After a couple of hours produced a list of Irish-sounding names, a few frontrunners emerged, including McGreevy’s, an homage to the famed “Royal Rooters” of Boston more than a century ago. But none seemed to fit just right for Clancy, who rejected his own name because numerous other restaurants in New York had the moniker.

Then the answer literally walked through the door.

The Ireland-born Clancy, who literally made a beeline for Yankee Stadium on the day he arrived in the U.S. in 1991, had met Arthur “Red” Foley, longtime Daily News writer and official scorer at New York baseball games for decades, through some of his baseball friends like Gene Michael and Tommy John, and, enamored with the history of the game and Foley’s connection to it, had become close to the man who had spent many nights at Toots Shor’s, the legendary “in place” for sports heroes in years past.

The 18 W. 33rd St. location, which had had numerous names and themes since opening in 1913, some more successful than others, was officially re-christened” Foley’s” in 2004.

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Foley’s NY is also the home of “Baseball Digest TV” and will be the site of an MLB TweetUp on Thursday, Nov. 10 from 4pm-7pm. Watch us tape the show, and then hang out to talk Hot Stove!