MANAGER OF THE YEAR
Stubby Clapp PCL’s best
It’s another notch in the baseball belt of a guy affectionately known as the Mayor of Memphis.
Windsor native Stubby Clapp has been named manager of the year in the Pacific Coast League.
A first-year skipper of the Memphis Redbirds, a triple-A minor pro team in the St. Louis Cardinals’ organization, the 44-year-old Clapp has led the Redbirds to several franchise records, including most wins in a season.
He is the first Redbirds’ manager to receive this honour in the team’s 20-year PCL history. Past winners have included Tommy Lasorda, Terry Collins, Charlie Manuel and Ryne Sandberg.
Fellow Windsor native and former Major League player Joe Siddall tipped his own baseball cap to Clapp.
“Managers are managers of people more than anything,” said Siddall, now part of the radio broadcast team for the Toronto Blue Jays. “And triple A is the most difficult level to manage because you’ve got a lot of disgruntled people there. You’re either on the way up thinking you’re better than someone who is in the big leagues or you’re the guy who’s been to the big leagues and been sent down for someone else.”
Somehow, Siddall said, “He’s got them all pulling on the same rope.”
The Redbirds boasted a gaudy 8848 division-leading record heading into a home game Wednesday night against Iowa.
“He’s a special homegrown young man,” said Greg Hamilton, head coach and director of national teams for Baseball Canada. “I’m very happy for him.”
Hamilton worked with Clapp during Clapp’s playing years as a two-time Olympian for Team Canada and as a coach on Canada’s gold-medal winning Pan American team in 2015.
“He has the ability to identify and relate to the day-to-day grind of a minor league ballplayer,” Hamilton said. “Stubby was an overachiever so other players can see even if you’re not the biggest or the strongest those dreams of making the Major Leagues can still come true. So he really connects with them.”
A 36th-round draft pick of the Cardinals in 1996, Clapp toiled through an exhausting 911 minorleague games, capped by a 23-game stint with the Cardinals in 2001.
He became an immensely popular figure on the Memphis sports scene, having played more than 400 games through four seasons with the Redbirds. Dubbed the Mayor of Memphis, he was beloved for his hustle and grit, and the backflip he did each time he took the field.
The Redbirds have done two bobblehead giveaway nights in his honour and made him the first player ever to have his jersey retired.
London native and former pro Chris Robinson saw the respect Clapp garnered first hand as a teammate on Team Canada through the Olympics and two World Baseball Classics.
After retiring in 2006, Clapp took a job as a hitting coach in the minor leagues for the Houston Astros. He’s managed at the single A level and served as a hitting coach in the Blue Jays’ organization.
Memphis hired him as their triple-A manager last November.
“He’s only one notch away from at least coaching at the Major League level,” Siddall said of Clapp’s future in the game.