If you’re in Omaha, you’ve gotta stop by Barry O’s, UVA’s home base

By Jerry Ratcliffe

If you’re a Virginia baseball fan and headed to Omaha for the College World Series, then “Barry O’s Tavern” is a must-visit spot.

Barry O’s is a sports bar with character and the official Wahoos hangout during College World Series week. Located on 10th Street (you can’t miss it because a UVA flag is prominently flying in front of the place), not far from Charles Schwab Field, the establishment has a long history with UVA and particularly its coach, Brian O’Connor. 

When O’Connor was a baseball player at Creighton University in the early 1990s, he worked at Barry O’s (named for bar owner Barry O’Holloran) to make some extra cash. The two developed a strong bond, and so the watering hole is a home away from home for Cavaliers supporters. You can check out their Facebook page here.

“I started bartending at Barry O’s my senior year at Creighton because I needed to pick up some extra money, then continued to do it when I was the second assistant at Creighton for a year,” O’Connor once told this writer. “Back then, it was a restricted-earnings position. You could only make $12,000 a year, so you had to have a side job.

“Fortunately I picked up quite a bit of extra cash. I think being a bartender is a very good thing because it teaches you how to deal with a lot of different groups of people and how to handle situations, so I recommend it to anybody.”

To this day, O’Connor’s UVA jersey, No. 26, is framed on the wall behind the bar.

“There’s a lot of people around the Omaha community that are supportive of me and our program,” O’Connor said. “Barry O’s is a Virginia home base.”

We’re assuming that Barry O’s is still producing the orange T-shirt emblazoned with “O’Connor’s Army,” a popular purchase by UVA fans visiting Omaha.

Should be a sizable O’Connor Army in Omaha this week in Virginia’s sixth trip to college baseball’s mecca.