Pat Gallagher, born in 1945 grew up in Brooklyn, New York.  his first baseball games at Ebbets Field.  He has never forgiven the Dodgers for leaving his home town.  He went to high school Regis High School in the upper east side of Manhattan, an hour plus subway ride fromhis home in the most southern part of Brooklyn.  He didn’t want to go there, but his mother made him.  He thinks she liked the fact that it was the only tuition free private high school in the country  (still is).

He studied mathematics at Boston College and at Notre Dame, interrupted by a year and a half stint as a counselor in a halfway house for teenage boys in the Roxbury section of Boston.

After finishing his degree, he served a year on the faculty at Notre Dame, followed by Chico State and Long Beach State (hence I’m in California.)  Along the way acquired a wife and a child and could no longer live on one year contracts.  So from 1978-1992 he served as VP and actuary at several life insurance companies in the  Los  Angeles area.  Was fired in 1990 and again in 1992 and haven’t had a job since.

For 20 years he’s been self employed.  “ I hit a good point in the market and, for a while, I was much in demand.  For over a year in the mid 90s I had 10 day a month contracts with three different insurance companies, which caused an obvious problem, but you got to take it when it’s there.”

Work has died down a lot since then.  Most of what he does now is in litigation, expert witness related.  He gets to be a teacher again, but at a much higher hourly rate.  Unlike on the softball field, he is undefeated in the courtroom.

“I take advantage of being basically unemployed to travel a lot, mostly to Korea and China.  I’ve found something called the beer softball league in Seoul.  If I’m there this summer I’ll check it out.”

Pat first played in the MBSSA, for the Kettle in 2004.  He was promptly blackballed by George Taylor for being underage, at 59.  The next year he walked on to the field and asked George if he knew any team that needed a player.   He reached into his bag, handed him a shirt, and said, “You’re on my team.”

As we all know, some years later, when better underage players became available and legal, the league relaxed its rules allowing players younger than 60 to play in order to keep rosters full during any particular season.