All-Star dad Daniel Murphy showed the world what fatherhood meant to him when he missed Opening Day last year for the birth of his son. Now Murphy is eager to begin teaching soon-to-be 1-year-old Noah a new tradition with a St. Patrick’s Day surprise: “Silly McGilly.”
“Silly sounds like the first book for our son’s Noah’s library,” the Mets All-Star second baseman told The Rumble. “He will be celebrating his first birthday on March 31 and this will be the perfect way to learn about his Irish heritage.”
Eileen Coffey-Cowley and her two sisters created Silly McGilly a year ago.
“Noah Murphy’s gonna have the time of his life — [Silly McGilly] comes back every year,” she said. “Don’t worry when he goes back to Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day — he’ll be back next year. They’re gonna have a ball.”
Who, pray tell, is Silly McGilly?
“Silly McGilly” is a book that is packaged with doll which children are encouraged to put by the window at night so a Leprechaun named Silly McGilly will leave a fun Leprechaun trick or treat for them by the next morning before St. Paddy’s Day arrives.
“Silly McGilly loves all children — he’s a loveable Leprechaun. … All he wants to do is come here on his vacation during the month of March, and spread joy, and fun, and bring families closer together,” Coffey-Cowley said.
The hope is that baseball wives of all faiths and backgrounds will one day learn to welcome and embrace Silly McGilly.
Coffey-Cowley belongs to a renowned soccer family in Sea Girt, N.J. She grew up on Long Island a Yankees fan — “Is that OK?” she asks — and played soccer at Colgate. Her daughter MacKenzie stars at George Washington. Her husband Scott Cowley played right field with the Watertown Pirates of the New York-Penn League in 1988, where he was a teammate of knuckleballer Tim Wakefield, a first baseman at the time. He’s a Mets fan. And a Daniel Murphy fan, silly.
“I love watching him hit,” Scott said. “He’s got a good pair of hands.”