By Niall O’Dowd

Right after September 11, when fear and loathing was at its height in America, Tim Brosnan took his wife Claire and three kids to a baseball game in Shea Stadium in New York.

He felt it was the best way to make the statement to his family and to himself that despite everything, America would persevere and that baseball was the proof of that.

That night, the rituals of the game never seemed so important to him, the slow beauty of the game as it unfolded once again taking his thoughts away from the horror of the week before. He felt safe at home.

As a kid growing up close to the Lower East Side, Brosnan, now 47, had come to love baseball, or the big city version of the game that was played wherever there was a patch of grass amidst the looming skyscrapers.

His parents, Kevin and Ann, encouraged his dreams. His dad held down a decent company job but they often struggled to pay for the three kids to go to baseball games. Tim became an avid drinker of milk and a collector of empty milk cartons at a time when a certain amount of tops from the cartons could gain you admission to Mets or Yankee games. He saw his first Yankees bat day from the second last row at the highest point in the stadium. It didn’t matter, it was still live baseball.

It was the time of the mighty Yankees, the era of Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, and Brosnan fancied himself some day in pinstripes in Ruth’s house in the Bronx

Baseball always feeds that child’s fantasy within, that, give or take a missed strike, we could all be playing in the big leagues. It is the glorious and impossible dream.

Brosnan was a sports crazy kid – he even attended Gaelic football games with his father in the Bronx. But baseball was his first and enduring love. Day and night he could be found with his mates on the streets playing whatever version of his game, including stickball, or kickball, fit the space.

Tim Brosnan was a decent college pitcher at Georgetown where he was a four-year player and captain of the team while working on his bachelor’s degree.

Law school at Fordham followed, by which time he knew he did not have the stuff for the big leagues. Instead, he thought he might be Mayor of New York as politics had begun to captivate him.

However, a spell as counsel to the New York State Commission on Government Integrity, set up in 1987 to probe massive corruption in Queens County, soon persuaded him that the black art of politics was a pretty dark experience all around. He joined a white-shoe law firm, but still his love of baseball continued to gnaw at him.

Most would have walked away with a shrug and a regretful backward glance full of “woulda, coulda, shoulda.”

Not Tim Brosnan. He wanted baseball to be his life, but not necessarily one where he was starting game seven of the World Series pitching for the Yankees.

He just wanted to work in baseball, to absorb the game from within in whatever capacity. It is revealing that his first letter seeking employment stated that he was prepared to clean toilets if that was what it took to put him in the game.

He discussed it with two of his mentors,former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and John Feerick, Dean of Fordham Law, who had hired him to work for the corruption commission. They all said it was a longshot but agreed to help, putting him in touch with contacts in the field

Luckily, Brosnan has not had to use his toilet-cleaning skills as yet. Indeed, he has had a meteoric rise in the game to the point where he is now Executive Vice President Business, for Major League Baseball, overseeing all commercial aspects of the game except the Internet. He led the negotiations which recently secured the $6-billion contract with television networks for live broadcasts of major league baseball. Worldwide merchandising of baseball is now a $3 billion a year business.

Thus, from his Park Avenue office, not far from his boyhood field of dreams, he oversees the multibillion-dollar enterprise that baseball advertising and promotion has become.

These days, baseball is a global business. The game has huge success in Japan and now in Taiwan in large part because local players are making it to the big leagues in America.

Further expansion in Europe is very likely. Brosnan foresees the day when countries including Ireland will play in the World Baseball Classic, an equivalent of soccer’s World Cup, which was won by Japan who beat Cuba in March this year in its inaugural outing.

After a slump in the 70s and 80s when, Brosnan believes, baseball took its fans for granted, the game has continued to thrive. Seventy-six million people went through the turnstiles this year in the regular season, over eight million each in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. The sheer volume of games, and the massive inventory, means that baseball, more than any other sport, is ideally suited for the digital age.

Brosnan is a critical player in all that, negotiating contracts all over the globe where baseball is played. Despite all the travel he says he enjoys the “last three feet” best – when he is actually closing a deal, be it big or small.

“When you utterly believe in your product, it is much easier to sell,” he says. “Being the biggest fan helps me be a good salesman. “

He also believes that baseball has never been more culturally relevant. In an uncertain world, the time spent with family and community on a spring or summer night at a baseball game is a very precious commodity. “The desire and need for community has never been greater,” he says, pointing to the meteoric rise of the Starbucks coffee chain, which seeks to create that friendly neighborhood feel.

He is also proud that baseball is still the cheapest of all the big four sports, so families can still afford the ticket prices.

His Irish heritage has always been important to him. His grandparents were from Kerry and Sligo, and Brosnan has visited Ireland many times and seen the baseball field that former Dodgers Chairman Peter O’Malley gave to Dubliners as a gift. It says much for his enthusiasm for the game that he spent most of a precious vacation day trying to find the park, which is well hidden in a Dublin suburb.

Brosnan thinks that an Irish player in the major leagues is a real possibility in the future, and if that occurs, Ireland can catch a case of baseball fever.

“Currently some European teams like Italy are very good, and we expect to see an Italian or maybe a Czech player in the major leagues at some point. Ireland has some catching up to do, but I’m confident the game will prosper there too.”

He points out that Irish immigrants to the United States always played the game. The seminal poem “Casey at the Bat” from 1888 is full of players with names like Flynn, Cooney, and Blake, who are Casey’s teammates. There may have been no joy in Mudville when Casey struck out, but no doubt the Irish drowned their sorrows well.

Baseball can be a tough game to understand for newcomers, Brosnan freely admits. “The best time is between pitches, trying to figure out what is going to happen next, looking for the nuance, what did that step to the right by the shortstop mean,” he says. “But once you get it, there is no game like it.”

Brosnan has a dream job in many respects, but he is sometimes amused when people say it must be easy – after all, it’s selling baseball, America’s game. He is at his office from seven in the morning and works late many nights, in addition to traveling the globe signing up new deals for MLB. Still he’s not complaining. “I’m living my dream,” he admits. We should all be so lucky.