Virginia fans love their refurbished baseball stadium. It has all the bells and whistles, expanded seating, a nifty hall of fame area, and even a sports lounge.
Welcome to Disharoon Park. They affectionately call it “The Dish,” an abbreviation of its namesake.
But wait. Just who is Disharoon, specifically Leslie B. Disharoon?
Easy answer.
Coach Brian O’Connor considers Disharoon the godfather of Virginia baseball. Some of Disharoon’s closest friends sum up the 85-year-old in simpler terms.
“He’s the best friend you could ever have,” said Don Laing during a recent sitdown of the octogenarian’s admirers.
“Everything Les does, there’s one standard,” said Charles “Chips” Longley.
“That standard is Les always does it the right way, first class,” added White Matthews.
Like Disharoon, all three men enjoyed successful executive leadership careers in major corporations and the financial world, while serving on multiple corporate boards. Also as Disharoon, they all retired to Charlottesville. Unlike Disharoon, they graduated from UVa, which makes Dish’s love of the school and baseball program even more intriguing.
And get this, Disharoon, once a CEO of a major national company, and a longtime board member of the Baltimore Orioles, was opposed to putting his name on the park.
“When Brian called me about this my immediate reaction was I didn’t want to do it,” Disharoon said. “It’s frankly embarrassing to me. It’s not who I am.”
Understand that while this man has been a leader his entire life, he prefers to remain behind the scenes, quietly helping others, lending a hand. He carries a lot of clout, doesn’t suffer fools, but is humble when it comes to personal achievement.
When UVa received a major financial gift for naming rights to the stadium from an anonymous donor, O’Connor’s desire was to honor Disharoon, so that legacy could carry on for the impact he has made. It was a tough sale.
O’Connor had a few conversations with Disharoon and explained what it would mean to him and his family and the Virginia program if he would lend his name to the facility. The Cavaliers skipper had to recruit some help, Disharoon’s daughters, who are as into baseball as their father.
“I talked to my daughters at length about it, and they said, ‘Dad, you really ought to do this because it means a lot to Brian. We know you don’t want to do it, but you ought to do it,’” Disharoon said.
They convinced him to agree and the deed was done even though Disharoon confessed that he’s still embarrassed every time he hears his name on the radio broadcast. His box at the stadium is right beside the press box and he listens to the broadcasts while he’s watching the games.
“It’s a wonderful honor, and even though she’s not with us, a big part of why Brian wanted this to happen had as much to do with Ann as it did with me,” Disharoon said.
Ann Disharoon, who passed away in 2013 from pulmonary fibrosis, was as loyal a fan as Virginia baseball ever had. She rarely missed a game, even though she was on oxygen for seven years before she died.
Ann knew her stuff. Raised in a Brooklyn Dodgers household, she understood the game’s intricacies to the point where she would often quiz O’Connor about certain decisions on his way to the press box for postgame interviews.
In fact, when the Cavaliers made their miracle comeback against UC-Irvine that sent UVa to the College World Series in 2011, O’Connor’s first thought, first action when the winning run crossed the plate, was dedicated to Ann Disharoon.
“The Daily Progress ran a huge picture of Brian on the front page,” Les Disharoon said. “He ran out of the dugout and behind home plate with his arms raised victoriously in the air toward our box. Ann was on heavy oxygen at the time, and Brian aimed his emotion to her. I have that picture in my box.”
O’Connor remembered the moment.
“Certainly that win in 2011 was special and I wanted to make sure that Les and Ann knew that it was a special impact they had made on this program,” he said.
There are two great love stories here, the 59-year marriage of Les and Ann, and then the couple’s affection toward O’Connor and his program.
“The love story between Les and Ann is to be admired and applauded,” Longley said. “It’s like what we heard about George and Barbara Bush.”
Les and Ann fell in love when they were 13 years old, eighth-graders in the Philadelphia suburbs. Neither ever dated anyone else. Both avid baseball fans, they used to scrub enough quarters together for two $1.25 tickets to Shibe Park’s grandstands.
“That was our date,” Les smiled.
As time went on and Les lived the American dream, starting at the bottom of the corporate ladder and eventually making it to the very top, the couple shared a box in Shea Stadium and watched the Mets, driving twice a month from Hartford. Then it was on to Baltimore in 1977, and before they even unpacked in their new apartment they gazed out the window to notice the lights were on at Memorial Stadium, and drove straight over to watch the Orioles play.
Little did Disharoon guess at that time he would become a member of the Orioles board of directors for 20 years after Eli Jacobs bought the team. He had his own box behind first base, and when it came to building a new ball yard, Disharoon had a significant influence on convincing Mayor William Donald Shaffer to locate the stadium at the old vacant railroad yards rather than in a then-rundown area on the harbor.
The new place was named Orioles Park at Camden Yards and was hailed as one of the best parks in baseball.
Disharoon lived two houses down from Brooks Robinson and they became great friends. It was a wonderful time to be an Orioles fan, and Disharoon can still give details of the loss to the Pirates in the ’79 World Series. Heck, he can still recite the entire starting lineup for the 1950 Philadelphia Phillies, rattling off the names as if he were still sitting there in Shibe’s grandstands.
Along the way the couple had four daughters, and three of them were in town for the recent series with Carolina. The oldest, Lee Ann, who is an Episcopal priest in Connecticut, knows baseball like her mother. A Dartmouth grad, she constantly updates her dad on where all of Virginia’s players are in the minor leagues and how they’re performing, as well as those in the Majors.
“When they were growing up, we were always at the baseball game, all six of us,” Les fondly remembered.
When it came time to retire, Les had bought a home at Wintergreen and heard that UVa baseball was playing at home, but was forewarned that he and Ann should bring lawn chairs because the seating wasn’t comfortable. The couple was aghast when they arrived for a game against Wake Forest and there were only eight fans in the old wooden bleachers.
Then there was the field, part grass, part used Astroturf from the football stadium. That was before O’Connor’s arrival and revival of UVa baseball.
“Fifteen years ago when I came here, very early on I made a connection with Les and we got together for lunch, and that led to many, many lunches, sometimes once a week,” O’Connor said.
The two shared a common goal and that was to have a great baseball program, but even more importantly to give UVa’s players the best experience they could have. O’Connor quickly learned why Disharoon had enjoyed success at running organizations. He had ideas on how to grow the stadium, the fan base, the level of interest, and visibility of the program.
During a game, Disharoon noticed on a TV set in the box that casual viewers wouldn’t recognize where the stadium might be located. He suggested V-Sabres for the outfield walls, then later a Virginia turf collar, then Virginia painted atop one dugout, Cavaliers on the other, all developed by Disharoon’s designer back in Baltimore.
“Anytime I have lunch with Les, I have a list of things I need to cross my T’s and dot my I’s on,” O’Connor chuckled.
For the first 10 years or so, the Disharoon’s hosted O’Connor and his family and the assistant coaches and their families for Christmas. They also held an annual team picnic and sometimes had the team over for dinner.
So, why would a guy who attended Brown and Columbia, get so involved in Virginia baseball?
“I feel very strongly about Division I athletics at schools like Virginia, Wake Forest, Georgia Tech,” Disharoon said. “The quality of kids these schools bring in to compete in any sport, they go to class, they’re expected to be students and to respect the university. I’ve known a lot of them that are wonderful young people. Anything that any of us can do to help a school like Virginia succeed, ought to be doing it.”
Disharoon has also mentored O’Connor, who arrived here as a 32-year-old former Notre Dame assistant and had never been a head coach and little knowledge of the East Coast. The relationship became special.
“I know how much Les and Ann deeply cared about this program,” O’Connor said. “It has never been about wins and losses for them.”
Disharoon calls himself a lucky man. He has had a lifelong passion for fishing and hunting as well as baseball, and a passion for helping people, whether it meant connecting Charlottesville people with various medical departments for cures, or writing a check to help someone in need.
“He’s a problem solver,” Longley said. “He’s in the background and does things extremely professionally, very quietly. He never wants accolades. But he has rules and enforces them.”
Such as no baseball or golf caps on indoors, and no cell phones on the golf course. Oh, and he was responsible for the extremely challenging creation of Caves Valley golf course outside Baltimore, one of the Eastern Seaboard’s most prestigious gems.
“They said only one person could have gotten that project done, and that person was Les,” Laing said.
“He’s a very caring man,” Matthews said. “He knows the personal history of every employee at Caves Valley, and I guarantee you that if Sam the waiter’s family needs a check, Les probably writes it. He is one of the most generous, caring guys I’ve ever encountered.”
The stories of Les Disharoon’s generosity and accomplishments are endless. His impact on Virginia baseball has been extraordinary. His love for Ann is the one thing that will always stick with O’Connor and others close to the family.
He will always cringe a little every time he hears his name on the radio. That’s who Les Disharoon is.