Columbus Clippers (11x Governors Cup Champion)

[OSUBasketballJunkie]

Dispatch

Clippers
Seasoned pro takes reins as new manager

Wednesday, December 19, 2007 3:14 AM
By Shawn Mitchell


The Columbus Dispatch

Tim Foli


The Washington Nationals named Tim Foli manager of the Clippers yesterday in a move the parent club hopes will help shore up a suspect minor-league system.
"We're trying to put the best people in the best spots," Nationals vice president of player development Bob Boone said. "We wanted Timmy back on the field. He is as good a baseball man as exists and a tremendous teacher.

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[osugrad21]

Dispatch

Memories of the Coop
Longtime home of pro baseball in Columbus has seen greats such as Mays, Mantle, Bench, Jeter
Thursday, April 3, 2008 6:34 AM
By Jeff Thitoff


THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

File
Cooper Stadium's final opening game is tonight.

The Reverend Billy Graham visited in 1993.

Red Bird Stadium is built in 1932.

Some former Clippers (from left): Joe Garagiola (a Red Bird), Derek Jeter, Otis Nixon

Some of the best storytellers were named Grandpa, Papaw or sometimes just Gramps. They were older, yes, and they looked a little different, but they spun wonderful tales of the past and had a way of comforting us. Today, Cooper Stadium -- one of the grandfathers of ballparks -- kicks off its final season of playing host to professional baseball in Columbus. The mecca on Mound Street, built in 1932 to house the Columbus Red Birds, will serve as the Clippers' home for the 2008 season before the team heads off to shiny new Huntington Park in the Arena District.
Until moving day, the old stadium promises to reveal many of its best old yarns.
The Clippers have a new manager in 2008 in Tim Foli, a former major-league infielder. Although Foli is new to Columbus, he is familiar with Cooper Stadium.



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[osugrad21]

Dispatch

Cooper Stadium history

Thursday, April 3, 2008 3:24 AM




1932: Red Bird Stadium is built for $450,000 for St. Louis? top minor-league team, in the American Association. It?s one of the first baseball stadiums with permanent outdoor lights. The opener on June 3 draws more than 15,000 fans as Columbus posts an 11-2 win over the Louisville Colonels. 1932: On June 17, the first night game in the stadium attracts more than 21,000 people as the Red Birds beat St. Paul 5-4 in 11 innings. Two months later, Franklin D. Roosevelt kicks off his first presidential campaign in the stadium.
1933: The Red Birds won the American Association East division after going 101-51. They drew a league-best 178,190 fans. The Columbus Blue Birds, a Negro League team, also plays home games in Red Bird Stadium.
1936: Jack Winsett sets a Columbus record with 50 home runs. Branch Rickey called him the next Babe Ruth. Two years later, Winsett (then with the Brooklyn Dodgers) became the first baseball player to appear on the cover of Life Magazine.



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[osugrad21]

Dispatch
Coop's final first pitch will evoke memories

Thursday, April 3, 2008 3:19 AM
By Jeff Thitoff


The Columbus Dispatch
John Romonosky didn't get the call from the Clippers until spring training was winding down. President and general manager Ken Schnacke wanted him on the mound opening day and Romonosky was going to do whatever he had to do to get ready for the choice assignment. He immediately started building up his arm strength by playing catch outside his Groveport home -- with his 49-year-old son, Richard.
And tonight in Cooper Stadium, Romonosky, 79, will throw out the first pitch to begin the last season of professional baseball in The Coop.




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[osugrad21]

Dispatch

Mellowed manager
A grinder as a player, Foli wants his teams to enjoy the journey
Thursday, April 3, 2008 3:18 AM
By Jeff Thitoff


The Columbus Dispatch

FRED SQUILLANTE Dispatch
Clippers manager Tim Foli will focus on helping players reach their full potential.


During his major-league career, shortstop Tim Foli was regarded as a competitor with a fiery streak. Sometimes he rubbed other players the wrong way, but ultimately he was recognized as a guy who would do whatever it took to try and win the game. Now 23 years removed from his playing days and starting his tenure as manager of the Columbus Clippers, the 57-year old Foli has a different perspective on Foli the player.

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[osugrad21]

More Dispatch Clipper info:

Tickets

Washington Nationals organization

By position

Clippers 2008 overview

Clippers outlook

 

[osugrad21]

Dispatch

Baseball | Clippers
One last look
Boost in sales sparked in part by fans' fondness for stadium
Tuesday, July 22, 2008 3:11 AM
By Jeremy McLaughlin and Jeff Thitoff


THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Doral Chenoweth III | Dispatch
Carrie Eubanks, right, and her sister Rebecca Wright ring their cowbells after a Clippers player slaps a base hit in a recent game.



Clippers usher Harold Winters use to know the season ticket-holders by name in his section along the first-base line in Cooper Stadium.
They had come for years to see future New York Yankees players such as Derek Jeter, Don Mattingly and Deion Sanders play for the Clippers. They rarely missed a game.
When the Yankees moved their triple-A affiliation from Columbus to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre after the 2006 season, many of Winters' patrons didn't come back.
"We lost a lot of Yankees fans," he said. "There was a couple here (recently), and they've been here only twice since the Yankees left. They hardly ever missed many games."
Winters, though, is staying busy this season even if he's no longer on a first-name basis with his clientele. Attendance is up in Cooper Stadium even though interest in the Washington Nationals, the Clippers' current affiliate, is not as high it was with the Yankees.
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[OSUBasketballJunkie]

Dispatch

Bob Hunter commentary: Ballpark's charms are already apparent

Sunday, August 10, 2008 3:45 AM
By Bob Hunter

Adam Alexander | Dispatch
Sixty percent of the seats in Huntington Park, which opens next spring, will cost $10 or less.

Ken Schnacke wasn't more than 10 feet past the chain-link fence that guards the construction site at Huntington Park when he turned to the visitor and grinned.
"This is so cool," he said.
That is definitely one word to describe the new ballpark that is rising from a dusty, Downtown weed patch at Nationwide Blvd. and Neil Ave., a place that used to look like a good place to forage for old scrap metal or to dump worn out tires. When we reached the home run terrace in right field a few minutes later, the Columbus Clippers general manager uttered a phrase to himself that seemed almost reflexive.
"This is fabulous."
The home run terrace sits on top of the 22-foot-high right-field wall, "a mini-Green Monster" that does remind you a little of the massive 37-foot high left-field behemoth in Boston's Fenway Park. Anyone with a general admission ticket will be able to stand there, park their beer and sandwich on a small counter in front of them, rest their tootsies on a foot rail and watch the game.
Cool? Well, yeah. If there's one thing that's obvious from the steel and concrete already in place, it's that there are going to be lots of places in the Hunt for people to hang out. A picnic area in left. A sloping lawn in center where parents can lounge in the grass and watch the game while monitoring their kids' play activities behind the wall to their left. Lots of clubs and party areas.

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[OSUBasketballJunkie]

Dispatch

Jim Massie commentary: The soul of a ballpark
As long as the tales survive, Cooper Stadium will live on
Monday, September 1, 2008 3:09 AM
By Jim Massie


The Columbus Dispatch

Staff and File photos
The final game at Cooper Stadium is tonight.



The county stadium on Mound Street has been home to baseball in Columbus since 1932. The Clippers will play their last game there tonight; next year, the team will move to the new Huntington Park in the Arena District.
A man who spent his adult life chasing baseball dreams used to say that nothing new ever occurred during the course of a game.
"This has all happened before," insisted Frank Verdi, an original Columbus Jet and later the manager of the Clippers. "All the plays, all the things in every game have happened before. It's just different faces, different names and different places."
I found myself thinking about Verdi and many other baseball men as the final game neared for Cooper Stadium. I covered the Clippers from 1980 through '84. He managed two of those teams.

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[osugrad21]

Dispatch

Bob Hunter commentary: The Coop's legacy is the memories it created

Tuesday, September 2, 2008 3:06 AM
By Bob Hunter


THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

SHARI LEWIS | DISPATCH
Members of the Clippers line up for the national anthem before the start of the final game at Cooper Stadium.


Cooper Stadium was never formally introduced to me. I slipped through an open gate and said hello to the old park in the mid-1970s when the field was a weed patch and the grandstand looked like it might not last another five years. The fact that the Jets had been gone for four or five years and the stadium's only occupants were insects and rodents was no deterrent to me. Old baseball parks were a peculiar love of mine, and it was important to see the place before I awoke one morning and discovered it had been torn down.
The place was quiet, gray and more than a little depressing. The field where Enos Slaughter and Willie Stargell slugged their way into successful major-league careers looked like a good place to hunt wildflowers or pick blackberries. The Red Birds and Jets were buried here, memories of hundreds of old stars were buried here, and no one seemed to care. The irony of that day wasn't lost on me last night. With the stands packed with people and hundreds more sitting and standing beyond the outfield fences -- remember when the San Diego Chicken drew a crowd of 20,131 that looked just like that on July 17, 1980? -- Cooper Stadium was anything but a graveyard. The place was jammed with 16,770 fans who wanted to celebrate the memories that seemed to haunt the place on my first visit, and they had 32 more years of happy memories to add.
Everybody was here to say goodbye, but the occasion didn't have the feel of a tearful farewell. There were special drawings, games, music and finally fireworks, and lots of former players, coaches and team personnel who came back to honor the old ball yard and see their old friends.
"Why should it be sad?" Howard "Hop" Cassady said.
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[osugrad21]

Dispatch

Final out for Cooper Stadium

Tuesday, September 2, 2008 3:03 AM
By Jim Massie


The Columbus Dispatch

SHARI LEWIS DISPATCH
The crowd passes the Coop's home plate to a moving truck so it can be taken to its new home at Huntington Park.

SHARI LEWIS DISPATCH
Fans take their last opportunity to run the bases and play catch in Cooper Stadium's outfield. Harold Cooper, below, the stadium's namesake, threw out the last first pitch. The 16,770 people who attended last night's game made it the third-largest crowd in the stadium's history. The Columbus Clippers lost to the Toledo Mud Hens 3-0.

The people packed the house last night to say a final goodbye to Cooper Stadium in the manner of old friends parting. In the minutes following the Toledo Mud Hens' 3-0 victory over the Columbus Clippers, the fans lingered. They took the last opportunity to run the bases or to play catch in the outfield on what has served as the local field of dreams since 1932.
Seventy-six years and 4,697 games after the stadium opened on W. Mound Street, the Clippers are moving their baseball business to Huntington Park in the Arena District next season. The prospect of a fresh, new ballpark holds the excitement of Christmas morning for many.
Yet the affection felt for the Coop, even with all its well-earned wrinkles, showed in the overflow crowd of 16,770 fans. The third-largest crowd in stadium history moved the total attendance to more than 22.5 million fans.
"If people felt something special when they left, we did our jobs," Clippers general manager Ken Schnacke said.
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[osugrad21]

Dispatch

Festive finale has sad ending
16,770 turn out to bid farewell to Cooper Stadium
Tuesday, September 2, 2008 3:05 AM
By Jeremy McLaughlin


THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

The excitement in Cooper Stadium began to build early yesterday afternoon. Fans started arriving three hours before the Clippers' finale against Toledo. A steady stream followed into the third inning. Tucked away in their clubhouse, the Clippers tried to follow their daily routine. Most relaxed, a few took extra swings in the cage, and the rest finished cleaning out their locker. But they were not oblivious to the anticipation growing outside. This wouldn't be an ordinary game.
"We can sense it," first baseman Larry Broadway said. "We've been getting a little more fanfare and there's more hype about this game. It's always good to see more faces in the crowd."
Eventually, 16,770 fans -- the third-largest crowd in Cooper Stadium -- came to see the final game in the ballpark. They saw an old-fashioned pitcher's duel between Columbus' Tyler Clippard and Toledo's Virgil Vasquez, but the Clippers gave Clippard no support. Columbus lost 3-0.
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[osugrad21]

Dispatch

Cooper Stadium's last game

Tuesday, September 2, 2008 3:06 AM

• Final score: Toledo 3, Columbus 0
• Final out: Gregory Porter of Columbus strikes out on a foul tip
• Final hit: William Rhymes of Toledo singles to right in the top of the eighth inning
• Final run: Erick Almonte of Toledo scores in the top of the seventh inning
• Final game attendance: 16,770
• Final team record: 69-73, third place in the International League West

 

[OSUBasketballJunkie]

Dispatch

Baseball
Big-league clubs can soon talk to Clippers
Negotiations can start Thursday; many expect Indians will take over
Tuesday, September 16, 2008 3:16 AM
By Jim Massie


THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

On Thursday, major-league franchises that would like to become the first home team for the inaugural 2009 season in Huntington Park can officially begin to court the Columbus Clippers.
The Cleveland Indians, with their double-A team already in Akron, are widely regarded as the odds-on favorite to sign a deal with the triple-A Clippers.
Rules being rules, however, neither side can talk about this intriguing possibility until the International League and Pacific Coast League champions play the Bricktown Showdown game today in Oklahoma City. Secrecy, of course, never smothers speculation.

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[PrincessPeach]

Dispatch

"A source" is saying the deal is done... Keeping my fingers crossed!

The Columbus Clippers have signed a four-year deal with the Cleveland Indians to be the Tribe's top minor-league affiliate, a source told The Dispatch today.

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