2025 Hall of Fame Feature: Tom Shipley

When you attend college in your hometown, it can either render you indifferent or, in the case of Tom Shipley, totally engaged.
“Wisconsin wasn’t just a school to me,” he said. “It was a way of life.”

Shipley grew up in Madison, attended Edgewood High School where he was a multi-sport standout, and eventually enrolled at UW and embarked on an outstanding baseball career as a shortstop and center fielder with the Badgers.

The notion that he would be part of the latest class of Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame inductees is hardly a surprise given his athletic, civic, and scholastic résumé.
“To be honored by them,” he said, “is a dream come true.”

Shipley was a two-time captain and was named most valuable player for the Badgers in 1972 and ’73 while earning first-team All-Big Ten Conference honors in 1973. At various times, he led the club in batting average, hits, and stolen bases. He hit .407 in 1973, making him, at the time, one of only five in program history to surpass that plateau, three of whom went on to play Major League Baseball: Rick Reichardt (.443), Harvey Kuenn (.436), and Red Wilson (.426).

Shipley, who served as president of the National W Club in 2000–01, now joins that trio in the UW Athletic Hall of Fame.
“He’s absolutely worthy of it,” said Vince Sweeney, a boyhood friend of Shipley’s who went on to work as a sportswriter in Milwaukee and Los Angeles and serve as an administrator in the UW Athletic Department. “The numbers are incredible if you’re a statistical guy and you follow Wisconsin baseball. I think he represents the history of Wisconsin baseball very, very well and it’s an appropriate choice.”

Tom Fahey, another boyhood pal of Shipley’s who starred at Edgewood and earned a baseball scholarship at Xavier before returning to UW to play basketball and baseball, said his friend has all the right qualifications.
“I think it was a great choice,” Fahey said. “Just his leadership with that team, his hits record, speaks for itself.”

In 1972, Shipley banged out 48 hits — 41 singles — tying the school record set at the time by Kuenn in 1952. That Kuenn went on to play for six MLB clubs, had a career batting average of .303, and wound up managing the Milwaukee Brewers to the 1982 World Series is a major reason why Shipley has multiple baseball cards of Kuenn as a player and a manager.
“I can only imagine how excited he was getting closer to the great Harvey Kuenn,” Sweeney said. “As a kid, (Kuenn) was a big star and he was a UW grad — among the most famous — and for (Shipley) to be in that category is huge for any fan of baseball.”

Along the way, Shipley made some more personal history. When he transferred from South Alabama — where he played as a freshman for former MLB All-Star Eddie Stanky — he became the first Wisconsin student-athlete to utilize the NCAA redshirt rule eligibility.

When UW dropped baseball in 1991 — one of five sports discontinued due to budget constraints — it left most everyone with ties to the program feeling the same way.
“It was extremely disappointing,” Fahey said, summing up the mood of all the alums.

Shipley was a senior at Edgewood when Joel Maturi, a former associate athletic director at Wisconsin who went on to serve as AD at Miami (Ohio), Denver, and Minnesota, was in his first year of teaching and coaching at the high school.
“Probably the most talented of any of my 19 years there,” he said of Shipley, calling him “ultra-talented and competitive.”

The Badgers were 53–57 overall, 21–24 in Big Ten play during Shipley’s time there.
“We were always a middle-of-the-road team,” he said. “We showed up, we played, sometimes we won, sometimes we lost. But we always had a good time. (Opponents) knew we were there.”

By the time Shipley graduated from the UW School of Education in 1974 and earned a master’s degree in educational administration from Northern Illinois, he had married and started a family. He learned some important lessons along the way, but one stood out.
“That I wasn’t an athlete and I wasn’t a student alone; I was a student-athlete,” he said. “You had to stay on task. Not that we didn’t have a lot of fun; we did. But whether it was baseball, education or family, you kind of directed your time and effort, and it gave you the parameters you needed to be successful if you wanted to go get it. A lot of people went and got it, and I just happened to be one of them.”

Shipley believes he maximized his time at Wisconsin.
“I think I put 10 pounds of flour in a five-pound sack when I was at Madison because, between family and athletics and schoolwork and those types of things, I always found time for friends,” he said.

“I look back on it now and say, ‘What would I have done differently?’ I’m not sure I would have done a whole lot differently. I don’t have any regrets.
“I was able to grasp and get a hold of so much that the university offered and that Madison offered, so I think I did pretty well in that regard. I still have friends from baseball. I still have friends from Madison, from high school.
“I think you can look back and say, ‘I could have done this or I could have done that,’ but it’s not on the tip of my tongue right now where I could articulate that to you. I think I did what I needed to do,” he said.

Shipley returned to Edgewood in 1989, where he became the Catholic school’s president — the first layperson to have that role — one that he held until 2002. Enrollment and funding took major leaps forward during his stewardship.

He took on a similar role in 2011 when he became president of the Academy of Holy Angels in Minneapolis, where his impact was just as sizeable until he stepped down last year.
“We went to his retirement party up there last year and, boy, the devotion and respect people have for what he did for that school,” Fahey said. “I think he’s got a lot to be proud of with the success he’s had.”

Fahey said Shipley’s easy-going presence helped him relate to everyone from students and parents to teachers and other administrators.
“He was someone who knew how to bond with people,” Fahey said. “That’s been the real secret to his professional success, too. He’s a leader, a glue guy, always with a spirit of fun about him.”

In the end, that approach is what Shipley is most proud of.
“I think I affected the lives of many young men and women in my two educational settings,” he said. “I think I made a difference in their lives and I’m most proud of that. I think back to all the graduates that I formed relationships with, the teachers that we had at both places.”

BEST OF THREE

One: Shipley and his buddies were huge fans of the old Milwaukee Braves growing up. Shipley still has a sizeable baseball card collection — “A very valuable one,” Fahey noted — that includes all the stars from that National League club that reigned as World Series champions in 1957, including Hank Aaron, Warren Spahn, Eddie Mathews, Joe Adcock, and Lew Burdette. Of course, Shipley also has cards featuring Kuenn, the former UW standout who played for six MLB teams — his career batting average was .303 — and managed the Milwaukee Brewers to the 1982 World Series.

Two: Baseball Hall of Famer Dave Winfield was one of Shipley’s contemporaries. In 1973, Shipley recalled struggling at the plate in the final series of the regular season, costing him the league batting title. “I didn’t have a good weekend,” he said. Turns out Winfield, the former Minnesota standout, didn’t win it either. “I think a kid from Purdue went 10-for-13 and hop-scotched all of us,” Shipley said.

Three: Shipley said he had several mentors throughout his time growing into multiple roles — he mentioned, among others, former UW baseball standout Jack Nowka and Sister Kathleen O’Connell, who was his principal at Edgewood High — but he also looked in the mirror. “When you’re 21, 22 years old, married with a family, you’ve got to be your own mentor, too,” Shipley said. “You have to kind of pick up the bootstraps and make some things happen. There were a lot of people who played a role and, collectively, they helped form me. But not many of them more than the other one. They were just all a group of good mentors.”