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Clippers’ exec has some stories to tell

Indians’ farm team in Columbus has long history as AAA franchise

Tribune Chronicle / John Vargo Joe Santry, team historian and director of media and communications for the Cleveland Indians’ Class AAA farm team, the Columbus Clippers, loves to tell people about the history of the team.

COLUMBUS — Joe Santry’s three-ring binder is so full that a normal-sized outstretched hand would be hard-pressed to span the girth of the vast amount of history inside.

There’s much more inside the head of the Columbus Clippers team historian and director of media and communications.

He began to talk. You couldn’t help but be enthralled by the plethora of baseball history slowing filling the crevasses of your mind.

Can I find this information on a website?

“It’s called job security,” the 65-year-old historian said laughing, as he pointed to his head.

The mounds of baseball history and lore transports you to Cooperstown, N.Y.

Enter the Hall of Fame bar beyond left field at the home of the Clippers, Huntington Park, which is nestled inside the downtown Columbus landscape. Santry told stories, keeping all in his grouping enamored and yearning for more — as if you were touring the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

The Clippers currently are the Class AAA franchise of the Cleveland Indians. The franchise has its stories, a rich history that Santry delivers like second nature.

It’s funny for a town where another sport looms over the Ohio state capital like an F-5 tornado, sweeping all in its immediate wake in furious fandom — college football.

Youngstown State president and former Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel was invited to the former Cooper Stadium, where the Clippers resided until 2008, to throw out a first pitch. The team was a New York Yankees AAA affiliate at the time.

As Santry told the story, Tressel took the mound and one of the Clippers, Drew Henson, crouched down to catch for the OSU coach. Henson had been the University of Michigan quarterback prior to joining the Yankees’ organization. Tressel wanted someone else to catch him instead of someone who played for that team up north.

The 1955 Heisman Trophy winner Howard “Hopalong” Cassady was Columbus’ first-base coach at the time. The 69-year-old football legend caught the eye of Tressel who gestured toward Cassady to come out and catch the first pitch.

Cassady heard the Cooper Stadium crowd chant, “Hop, Hop, Hop.” The Columbus native acquiesced to the peer pressure.

Tressel, wearing a Clippers hat and jersey, revealed a football instead of a baseball. The former Baldwin Wallace quarterback threw it toward Cassady, who caught the ball over his right shoulder. The OSU legend, then wearing Yankee pinstripes, struck a Heisman pose as the crowd at hand attentively stood for a great-minute ovation.

“He was a treat to be around,” Tressel said about Cassady.

Santry was a young boy when baseball consumed his very existence. He won tickets to a Columbus Jets game against the Rochester Red Wings. His name was pulled out of a fish bowl at a local barbershop.

Santry’s father taught him the finer points of fandom as he soaked up every facet of the game, especially its history — starting with the Buckeye Baseball Club of Columbus in March of 1866.

He’s been a Clippers’ employee since 1987 and been around the team since that life-changing game in 1965.

A friend of Santry’s was the official scorer, knowing he had a passion for the game. That led to odd jobs and an eventual future with the Clipper organization.

Santry enveloped the Columbus Clippers history, even talking to groups either in the ballpark or around Ohio during the year. He speaks to about 300 groups in a calendar year.

Stories like Cassady and Tressel are strewn through Santry’s mind. This history follows suit.

“I just absorb it,” Santry said. “I really can’t explain it.

“I talk to the players. They tell me stories. Fans tell me stories. Everybody does. I’ve read every Columbus newspaper since 1866.”

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