A Canadian baseball folk hero ever since a bases-loaded single in the 11th inning beat the United States at the 1999 Pan American Games and propelled the national team to a surprise bronze, the 45-year-old was recently named Pacific Coast League manager of the year and has led triple-A Memphis in the St. Louis Cardinals system to consecutive titles.
Prior to that Clapp spent four years as a hitting coach in the Blue Jays farm system – 2013 and ’14 at single-A Dunedin and ’15 and ’16 at double-A New Hampshire – after five years of coaching in the Houston Astros system, two of them as manager at single-A Tri-City.
All that followed nine years of minor-league ball in the St. Louis, Atlanta and Toronto systems, two years of independent ball in Edmonton, 23 big-league games with the Cardinals in 2001, and appearances at the Pan Am Games, Olympics and World Baseball Classic with Canada.
Along the way, those varied experiences allowed Clapp to craft his own style at the helm centred around "patience and character management."
"The in-game stuff, that comes with the territory, you’ve done it so much as a player that eventually when you start looking at it the right way it translates into what to do as the manager, or how to direct the players," says Clapp. "I like letting the guys play. I don’t like to micromanage every move they make, I like to see their creativity and let them be themselves on the field."
"That was always the way Ernie Whitt managed us (on the Canadian national team). He let us play and he let us explore ideas and explore different things we could possibly do in the game to create runs, stop runs and stuff like that. In that aspect, I encourage the players to play and show why they’re here and show their talents."
