James Francis Callahan (April 1, 1893 – May 25, 1961) was an American attorney who was president and minority owner of the

Pittsburgh Pirates The Pittsburgh Pirates are an American professional baseball team based in Pittsburgh. The Pirates compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) Central division. Founded as part of the American Associati ...

of the

National Hockey League The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...

Career

Callahan was legal adviser of the

hockey club under its original owner Henry Townsend. Callahan continued in that role when Townsend died and left the franchise to his sons Horace and Edward. In the fall of 1928, the Pirates were ostensibly sold to ex-lightweight boxing champion

Benny Leonard Benny Leonard (born Benjamin Leiner; April 7, 1896 – April 18, 1947) was a Jewish American professional boxer who held the world lightweight championship for eight years, from 1917 to 1925. Widely considered one of the all-time greats, he was r ...

, although the money for the purchase is suspected to have come from Bill Dwyer, owner of the

New York Americans The New York Americans, colloquially known as the Amerks, were a professional ice hockey team based in New York City from 1925 to 1942. They were the third expansion team in the history of the National Hockey League (NHL) and the second to play ...

, who may have hid his involvement with the Pittsburgh club to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. At this point Callahan was made president of the Pirates. Callahan was also a minority stockholder. Shortly after the Pirates moved to

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

in 1930 to become the Philadelphia Quakers, Callahan became secretary and treasurer of the new

Pittsburgh Yellow Jackets Pittsburgh Yellow Jackets was the name of three separate ice hockey teams based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The original team was part of the United States Amateur Hockey Association (USAHA) from 1920 to 1925 and developed from predecessors dating ...

of the International Hockey League, which took over the franchise of the defunct Niagara Falls Cataracts.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Callahan, James 1893 births 1961 deaths National Hockey League owners National Hockey League team presidents Pittsburgh Pirates (NHL) Sportspeople from Pittsburgh Ice hockey people from Pennsylvania Pennsylvania lawyers