Walking into baseball heaven
St. Louis’s new Ballpark Village is enough to make any Toronto fan jealous
ST. LOUIS, MO. Staring out to centre field, you see the famous St. Louis Arch, the Gateway to the West looming in the not-too-distant distance.
A look at the scoreboard in right field moves the eye upward, to 11 World Series championship banners flying atop the bright structure, reminding you that the St. Louis Cardinals have taken home a title more often than any other team in the National League, second only to the Yankees overall.
Their first was in 1926, guided by baseball immortals Branch Rickey and Rogers Hornsby. The latest came in 2011, featuring a Game 6 in which the Cardinals were down to their last strike on two separate occasions but came back to beat the Texas Rangers, then knocked them out in Game 7 (because knocking out the Texas Rangers, as Blue Jays fans well know, is a good time).
When the Busch Stadium gates open and the fans come pouring in, the public address announcer proudly proclaims, “Welcome to baseball heaven.”
And he’s right.
The local Canadian legend, Stubby Clapp, has been coaching first base for the Cardinals since 2019 and is very, very impressed by what he sees in St. Louis.
“You walk in here and you see the red seats,” beamed the Windsor native before his Cards faced the Blue Jays on Monday night, “and see the surroundings of the stadium. And you see what they’ve done with the outside, the community around the stadium and stuff like that.”
The immediate area surrounding the stadium is called Ballpark Village, a 150,000-square-foot retail and entertainment complex. Within it is the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame, and soon enough they’re expecting a $65-million (U.S.) Loews hotel to be built. All of it within tape-measure home run distance of the ballpark.
It’s the sort of baseball-centred complex you wish we could have in Toronto, as discussions continue about renovations to the Rogers Centre and (perhaps) the surrounding areas.
“It’s just a lot of fun,” Clapp said about the way St. Louis embraces baseball, much like Toronto does hockey — although without the simmering undercurrent that 55 years without a championship can bring. “You can have any conversation with any fan in St. Louis and they understand what you’re talking about. Not only do they come here to watch the game, but they understand what they’re looking for.”
What I was looking for was a little hardware, but Clapp doesn’t bring his bling out on to the field with him.
That bronze medal he helped win for Canada at the 1999 Pan Am Games in Winnipeg is safe and secure. Clapp’s two-run single in the 11th inning beat the heavily favoured U.S., catapulting the Canadians to a semifinal berth. They eventually took down Mexico to bring home bronze.
The 49-year-old wore the maple leaf at three World Baseball Classics, but his greatest career highlights came on a different international stage, when he was an Olympian.
“A childhood dream come true,” Clapp recalled of his days with Team Canada at the 2004 Olympics in Athens and 2008 Summer Games in Beijing. “I fell in love with (baseball) when I was a bat boy at 12 years old for the U.S. national team, when the international scene came through Windsor, and that became a goal of mine. For me, playing in the Olympics was the epitome of all the sacrifice and discipline that you put into your work and your craft.”
Marching in a pair of opening ceremonies remains a lifetime highlight for the former infielder generously listed at five-foot-eight, but he’s given back to the game time and time again since calling it quits as a player.
Clapp hung up his spikes and immediately went into coaching, spending three years in the Astros system, then moving to the Jays and finally the Cardinals, where he was named Pacific Coast League manager of the year and Baseball America minor league manager of the year in 2017, after leading the Memphis Redbirds to the PCL championship.
In between, he returned to the Canadian team and served as thirdbase coach at the 2015 Pan Am Games in Ajax, helping his country to a gold medal.
Clapp has worked with many Jays, both as a coach in the system and as a manager in the Arizona Fall League. And he’s tried to plant a maple seed in the mind of one of Canada’s best big-leaguers, one who is expected to compete internationally for the Dominican Republic.
“I started that process back in Arizona,” Clapp remembers, “by trying to teach (Vladimir Guerrero Jr.) the national anthem.
“I hit him up (Monday). I saw a video of him singing it, so I hit him up again just to see if he’s got a couple more phrases left. So I’m sure we’ll be over there at first base working on the phrases, making sure he hits the high notes.”
And as far as recruiting Vladdy to some day play for Canada?
“I might slide him a few loonies and toonies and put them in his back pocket to see what happens.”
Hey, it couldn’t hurt.
It’s just a lot of fun. You can have any conversation with any fan in St. Louis and they understand what you’re talking about.
STUBBY CLAPP FIRST BASE COACH FOR ST. LOUIS