English major Patrick O’Shea ’18 has always sought out ways to fuse his love of team sports with his passion for storytelling. The play-by-play announcer for both the men’s and women’s varsity soccer games this past fall, he also wrote sports articles for the campus newspaper, The Bi-Co News, during his junior year. And now he’s headed to New York to start work as a video intern with the Hudson Valley Renegades, one of the the minor-league affiliates of the Tampa Bay Rays.
O’Shea played for the men’s baseball team throughout his four years at Haverford, but it was only in his second-to-last year that he started seriously considering pursuing a career in the field. “[It was] The Bi-Co News writing gig… that ended up being an activity that kind of kick-started my path to working in baseball,” O’Shea says, “as it helped me land a summer internship at the Major League Baseball (MLB) Network after my junior year.”
Though his current internship ends in September, O’Shea hopes that it will be the first step on a path to a full-time job in the baseball industry. Ideally, he would like to work as a player-development coordinator, which he describes as “a mix of a coach and a front office employee where you work to help ensure players are in the best position to succeed.”
With the Renegades, a team that likes its video interns to be very hands-on, he’ll get to try out a little bit of everything. “The Rays want their video interns to be more than just the guys that set up the cameras to capture footage for players to learn from,” he says. “[They want them] to also hit ground balls to guys, throw batting practice, do advanced scouting, and to act as a pseudo-extension of the coaching staff.”
O’Shea is looking forward to doing it all. “Being able to work at a baseball field instead of in an office while also helping minor league players to achieve their dreams of making it to the big leagues,” he says, “would be absolutely incredible.”
“Where They’re Headed” is a blog series reporting on the post-collegiate plans of recent Haverford graduates.
Photo: Patrick O’Shea ’18, who was a right-handed pitcher for the Haverford men’s baseball team, catches a ball during a game. Photo by David Sinclair.