By Kevin Glew
Stubby Clapp didn’t do a back flip on stage at the Baseball Canada Awards Banquet on Saturday night.
But you get the feeling that if the 51-year-old baseball legend could still do one, he would have.
That’s the kind of joy and pride Clapp felt being at being inducted onto Baseball Canada’s Wall of Excellence.
“It’s hard to rank it but my heart is partial to Baseball Canada,” said Clapp, when asked to compare it to previous honours, “so probably everyone else is second.”
READ MORE: A look back at Clapp’s time with the Edmonton Cracker-Cats
Over the years, Clapp has appeared in a national team uniform more than a dozen times, which has earned him the nickname “Captain Canada.” He is the only person to have been in the dugout for all three of Canada’s international gold medals. He played for the junior team that won the World Youth Baseball Championship in Brandon, Man., in 1991 and was a coach on Canada’s gold medal-winning squads at the 2011 and 2015 Pan Am Games.
“It was my dream as a young kid to play for my national team,” said Clapp prior to the banquet on Saturday. “So, when the opportunities started to show up, what else would you want to do, but to represent your country at these prestigious events. If I had the time and I was able to do it, I was going to do it.”
On top of his stellar Team Canada track record, Clapp has spent close to three decades in pro baseball as a player and coach and is preparing for his seventh season as the St. Louis Cardinals’ first base coach. It’s an impressive resume for someone who never dreamed of a career in Major League Baseball as a kid.
Born in Windsor, Ont., in 1973, Richard Keith “Stubby” Clapp is a third-generation Stubby (after his father and grandfather). When he was growing up, his favourite team was not the Detroit Tigers or Toronto Blue Jays, but rather his father’s softball team.
“That’s how I fell in love with baseball, following my dad around the softball field,” said Clapp. “I loved watching my dad play. My dad played shortstop for the most part. I remember watching him lay out on the field and making diving plays and throwing the ball across the infield. That got me excited. And I wanted to be able to do stuff like my dad did.”
Ironically enough, the energetic young kid who would become “Captain Canada” decided to focus on baseball after serving as a batboy for Team USA at the World Junior Championship tournament that was held in Windsor when he was 13.
“That’s where the dream of playing for my country became a thing,” said Clapp. “I was the batboy and I thought it was the coolest thing ever to see those guys playing for their country.”
Clapp would hone his skills in his hometown before attending the Academy Baseball Canada (ABC) in Montreal. He joined the Junior National Team in 1991 after enduring a grueling selection camp in Kindersley, Sask. The camp was held in the middle of a heat wave in a town where Clapp says the mosquitoes were the size of pterodactyls.
“I still wouldn’t go back there today. Those things would probably carry me away,” joked Clapp.
From that camp, Canada’s greatest junior national team was born.
Managed by John Haar (Vancouver, B.C.), that Canuck squad – which also included future big leaguer Jason Dickson (Miramichi, N.B.) – went 8-2 in the World Youth Baseball Championship in Brandon. Man., to win gold.
“We clicked as a team. We had great pitching and we had a lot of fun together off the field and we played together well on the field,” said Clapp, who played third base during the tournament.
Dickson was Clapp’s teammate for the first time in that competition.
“I can remember Stub as that high energy guy. He was just getting everybody all ramped up. He was someone who was really vocal and leading the charge . . . He gave us a bit more swagger,” said Dickson. “And that helped the team a lot and helped us win a championship.”
A few years after that tournament, Clapp headed to Texas to play college ball – first with Paris Junior College and then at Texas Tech.
“At that point, playing Major League Baseball wasn’t even part of my dream,” said Clapp. “I was playing baseball because I loved it and it paid for my education.”
So, he was caught off guard when his Texas Tech coach called him into his office in 1996 to ask him what he was going to do if he was drafted.
“When my coach said ‘drafted,’ I said, ‘I’m not sure what you’re talking about. I’m Canadian I can’t fight for your Army,’” recalled Clapp with a chuckle. “They were laughing because they were talking about the major league draft and I had no clue.”
But Clapp was drafted — in the 36th round by the Cardinals and he signed with the club. He knew he was a longshot to make the big leagues, but the 5-foot-8, 160-pound Canuck had a track record of proving his naysayers wrong.
His all-out hustle, strong plate discipline and baseball smarts made him a fan favourite and a manager’s dream. So, too, did his back flips, which he had been perfecting since he was 14 after seeing Ozzie Smith doing them on baseball highlights.
“I was just young and dumb enough to go out in my backyard and teach myself how to do it,” said Clapp.
When he was with the triple-A Memphis Redbirds from 1999 to 2002, his backflips became one of the team’s biggest attractions.
“The back flip really became a thing in Memphis. Fans started to request it and I would do it on Friday or Saturday night or for a sold-out crowd,” said Clapp.
Clapp enjoyed four strong seasons with the Redbirds and helped them to their first PCL championship in 2000. Seven years later, he became the first player to have their number retired by the team.
But even during his pro career, Clapp never forgot his roots. In 1999, he suited up for Canada at the Pan Am Games in Winnipeg and delivered a walk-off single in Canada’s come-from-behind, extra-inning win over the U.S. in the first game of the tournament.
Clapp broke out the back flips at the tournament and helped Canada to a bronze medal. Not surprisingly, by the end of the competition, he was the most popular player on the field.
Ernie Whitt managed Clapp for the first time in that tournament.
“He was the ultimate professional. He was prepared. He played the game with pride and passion and he never took a minute off . . . To me he’s the biggest representative of the culture [of the national team] we’ve established. They’ve all taken after Stubby after what he started in 1999,” said Whitt.
Two years later, Clapp was called up by the Cardinals. He made his major league debut on June 18 when he pinch-hit for Mike Timlin in the eighth inning against Todd Van Poppel of the Chicago Cubs. The Busch Stadium fans greeted him with a standing ovation and rewarded him with another after he struck out following a long at bat.
“It was unbelievable. I levitated going back to the dugout after I struck out,” said Clapp. “It was an eight- or nine-pitch at bat against Todd Van Poppel . . . I remember walking back to the bench and getting a standing ovation and I still haven’t touched the ground since.”
In all, he appeared in 23 games with the Cardinals before finishing out his playing career in the affiliated minor league ranks in the Atlanta Braves and Toronto Blue Jays organizations.
In 2004, he enjoyed another career highlight when he played for Canada at the Olympics in Athens.
“That was an individual dream come true,” said Clapp. “My whole goal as a 12-year-old was to be able to represent my country in the Olympics . . . I get goosebumps even thinking about it now.”
That Canadian team finished fourth and four years later, Clapp suited up for Canada again at the Beijing Olympics.
The year prior to that, he began his pro coaching career as a hitting coach in the Houston Astros’ organization.
“When I got back into coaching, it was sort of a means to an end. It was helping me pay the bills and it was keeping me in the game,” Clapp said.
But two years into it, he made it his goal to get back to the big leagues as a coach.
He moved on to the Blue Jays’ organization to work as a hitting coach at the class-A and double-A levels from 2013 to 2016.
He was also on the coaching staff for Canada’s gold medal-winning teams at the 2011 and 2015 Pan Am Games.
At the Pan Am Games in 2015, he was the third base coach during one of the wildest and most memorable game-winning sequences in Canadian baseball history. In the gold medal contest that was played in front of 5,489 boisterous fans in Ajax, Ont., Canada headed into the bottom of the 10th inning trailing the U.S. 6-4.
International baseball rules dictate that teams must start extra innings with runners on first and second base. With one out, Pete Orr (Newmarket, Ont.) flared a single to centre field to score Tyson Gillies (Vancouver, B.C.) to make it a 6-5 game. American lefty David Huff then threw wildly when he attempted to pick Orr off first base and Skyler Stromsmoe (Bow Island, Alta.) darted home from second to tie the game.
Orr aggressively dashed for third base and U.S. right fielder Brian Bogusevic threw the ball wide of the bag. Orr then scampered for home, while U.S. shortstop Tyler Pastornicky corralled the ball and threw it to U.S. catcher Thomas Murphy. Orr slid in safely in a close play at the plate and Canada won 7-6.
“I was all the way up the line because I was worried about the tying run . . . I can’t any take credit for it. It was Pete Orr’s scramble . . . I remember Pete rounding third and coming home and I think I told him to slide at home when I should’ve been at third base waving him in,” recalled Clapp.
Clapp said it was “complete jubilation” after Orr scored. In the video, you can see that Clapp had the best view in the stadium of Orr’s slide into home plate.
“Yeah, because I was in the wrong spot at the right time,” Clapp said then laughing loudly.
In 2017, Clapp returned to the triple-A Memphis Redbirds to manage. In his first season as skipper, he led the club to a franchise record 91 wins and a Pacific Coast League championship. He followed that up by leading Memphis to another championship in 2018.
After that season, he achieved his goal of returning to the big leagues when he was promoted to be the first base coach of the Cardinals.
There are many that feel that Clapp would make an excellent big-league manager and he has had interviews over the years.
“Eventually if it gets thrown on my plate, I’d love to have the opportunity [to manage], but right now with St. Louis, I’m in a position where I like where I’m at and we’ll just see what happens in the future,” said Clapp.
Clapp makes his off-season home in Savannah, Tenn., where he lives with his wife, Chastity, his two sons, Cooper and Cannan, and his daughter, Crosbie.
Like his father, Cooper is an infielder. He is getting ready to begin the season with Middle Tennessee University.
Cooper and Cannan made the 13-hour drive to Toronto for the Baseball Canada Awards Banquet with their father after Clapp’s flight was cancelled due to weather. On the way to Toronto, Clapp stopped to see his father, brother and sister in Windsor.
While Clapp stood on stage at the Baseball Canada Awards Banquet on Saturday, a highlight video was played that showed many of his contributions to the national team, and yes, it also showed him doing a back flip.
“The back flip is retired,” said Clapp, who gave it up in 2015. “We attempted it one too many times and we almost had a traumatic injury and we’ve left it at that.”
For those of us who have followed Canadian baseball for a long time, the back flip will live on in our hearts, as will our pride and admiration for Captain Canada. For us, the inspirational Clapp was right where he belonged on Saturday — on stage, receiving a standing ovation and being honoured with his rightful place on Baseball Canada’s Wall of Excellence.
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