Baseball: Cook County All-Area captain O’Brien pulls off rare two-sport special

Leadership comes in many forms and certainly in many different methods.

Fremd’s Johnny O’Brien knows that. And his approach in both football, where he was an All-Area quarterback, and baseball, where he is an All-Area center fielder, is very different.

“Football is where the camaraderie is really important and you all need to be together,” O’Brien explained. “And baseball is kind of more like individualized. There is a team concept because both games are obviously team games.”

O’Brien takes his competitiveness from the football field right to the baseball diamond. The junior had a huge part in Fremd’s hot start where the Vikings opened the season with 23 games without a loss and finished with a 27-win season and Mid-Suburban West title.

O’Brien hit .440 BA with 34 RBI. He had an OBP of .521 and an OPS of 1.092 with 10 doubles and a triple along with 10 walks and 13 stolen bases.

For his play on the field and his leadership on and off the field, O’Brien has been named the captain of the Daily Herald’s 2025 Cook County All-Area team.

O’Brien also was named captain for football last fall, becoming the first Cook County player to be named captain in both sports. The first baseball All-Area captain dates back to 1974 while football dates back to 1969.

O’Brien becomes just the fifth junior to be named captain for baseball. He joins Buffalo Grove’s Mike Marshall (1978), Barrington’s Dan Wilson (1987) and John Austin (1998) and Prospect’s Jack Landwehr (2012).

In addition, O’Brien is the first Fremd captain since Clint Terry, a pitcher for the Vikings, who was named in 2010.

Fremd coach Chris Piggott, who also coached Terry, said O’Brien is special.

“Johnny O’Brien had an amazing year and did everything for us offensively,” Piggott said. “He was the guy you wanted with the game on the line or when you needed to drive in a run. He played a great center field and covered a ton of ground. Not many people ran on him because of his arm. He is just a smart baseball player with a high baseball IQ.”

O’Brien was a beast in center field, patrolling the outfield like an old-time beat cop. He threw out only one runner this season after throwing out five last year.

“Defensively, he was solid,” said Piggott, who played outfield when he was at Stevenson and then at Creighton University.

“He made a lot of plays and running balls down that other guys couldn't get. He just got a really good jumps on balls. The instincts were there. I played outfield so I don't think it's that hard. However, I know that there's lots of good players and good athletes that have a hard time just reading the ball off the bat from the outfield.”

O’Brien’s arm was the main reason Piggott originally brought O’Brien to the varsity at the start of O’Brien’s freshman year. It was the first time and only time in Piggott’s 24 seasons that he had a freshman up on the varsity to begin the season.

“I had (Mike) Tauchman up as a freshman,” Piggott said. “But that wasn’t until late in the season. I brought Johnny up right away because he could pitch. And he did really well. But he hurt is arm later and his football ability was really blossoming, so he stopped pitching.”

With football becoming O’Bien’s main focus and the offer and acceptance to Northwestern completed, O’Brien contemplated not playing this past season. Despite being a two-year varsity starter, Piggott never put pressure on O’Brien to play baseball this past season.

“We actually just took a few laps throughout school while we are talking,” Piggott said. “We were talking about his future in football and how this is going to be the last time that he would ever have a chance to play baseball with all the buddies that he grew up.”

O’Brien said he appreciated Piggott not pressuring him.

“Coach Piggott just gave me the room to think,” O’Brien said. “I talked to my family a lot and to my friends. I met with coach Piggott and I was like, ‘Yeah, one more year.’”

O’Brien will not be playing next season for the Vikings. He will complete his credits at Fremd at the end of the fall semester and then enroll at Northwestern to get an early start for the Wildcats.

Piggott said despite O’Brien being a junior, he and his staff treated O’Brien like a senior.

“He grew up with all the seniors,” Piggott said. “And he's not going to be playing next year, so we treated him as this was his senior this year. He was involved in all of our of leadership things that we did with seniors. I think that football does a lot of stuff with leadership as well. So, he had a lot of good insights in our meetings and wasn't afraid to speak up and share things that he had learned through football. He just was well respected by everybody on the team.”

O’Brien said he approaches his leadership abilities in baseball much differently than those he employs in football.

“They are definitely two completely different sports with two different mindsets,” O’Brien. “I do switch off between the sports with my leadership style. It definitely took some time to get used to because football can be such a rah, rah sport where baseball, you just have to, you know, if a guy's feeling down, I just let them know that you're there for them and we are just supporting the team. There are so many things that can happen in baseball, and you just have to remind all your teammates it is just one play at one time through the end of the game.”

Players play and leaders lead.

O’Brien has shown can do both.