Every day is Father’s Day for Memphis Redbirds manager Stubby Clapp. Always has been. Growing up in Windsor, Ontario, the man who made backflips a part of the baseball experience at AutoZone Park kept at his dad’s heel both in warm-weather months (Richard Clapp was an accomplished softball player) and cold-weather (Mr. Clapp coached youth hockey). Now with three children of his own — sons Cooper (13) and Cannan (10) and daughter Crosbie (5) — Clapp has new perspective on fatherhood, but he doesn’t so much as blink when asked about his favorite Father’s Day. It was June 17, 2001.
“The day I got the call,” says Clapp. “I was going to the major leagues [with the St. Louis Cardinals]. Prior to that, we celebrated Father’s Day, but to me, every day was Father’s Day. I love my dad. But when I got that call, I wanted to tell him and couldn’t find him! He was actually putting a tile floor in my sister’s bathroom [in Ontario]. They couldn’t hear the phone ringing. But I eventually got him. It was loud, and there were some tears.”
In measuring Father’s Day anecdotes, installing a bathroom floor for one child on the day another gets called to the major leagues distinguishes Clapp’s dad. But it’s the everyday life lessons that have shaped Stubby for 44 years now, lessons he finds himself incorporating in raising his own family. “He was always there to talk about what could potentially happen if I took this road,” says Clapp, “or if I wasn’t smart and took that road. He didn’t hide anything. He taught me about street sense, along with book smarts. He took pride in raising us.”
Clapp was never pushed in sports, and made the choice of baseball over hockey — counterintuitive to the thinking of many Canadians — without so much as a raised eyebrow from his father. “He let me choose at an early age,” says Clapp. “There are issues today in youth sports, with parents being overbearing. If he coached one of my teams, it was because he was asked. And he’d come to me to see if I wanted him to coach. I always wanted him to coach, because it meant more time with him. But he’d warn me that he’d be harder on me than anyone else. He never raised his voice. But he’d ask if I had fun.”
Clapp and his wife Chastity are now baseball parents, their sons often playing tournaments in Southaven. (The Clapps live in Savannah, Tennessee, where Stubby runs Elite Sports Academy & Fitness.) Clapp has started taking Cooper (also known as “Stubby IV,” as it says on his birth certificate) on hunting trips, the extended quiet time a valuable relationship booster, and a chance for Clapp to teach safety lessons with a firearm. Little Crosbie is a soccer player, choosing to play “soccer-ball” when her brothers grab their gloves and bats.
In steering his own kids down that proverbial road, Clapp feels his father’s wisdom and guidance at the wheel. “When you’re going through elementary and high school,” reflects Clapp, “and there’s an odd kid out, make sure you treat that person right. You could become friends. I’d take one of those kids for my team at recess.”
Baseball continues to bind for the Clapp family, and across many miles. “By the time I get in after a game,” says Stubby, “there’s usually a message on my phone from my dad. ‘Great game’ or ‘Tough loss.’ He doesn’t miss a game. He loves it.”
Starting with the December 2015 press conference that introduced him as the new football coach at the University of Memphis, Mike Norvell has emphasized two words in shaping his program: fit and family. Every Sunday is family night at the football complex on the U of M south campus. The children of coaches and staff romp together on the practice fields and enjoy dinner with the players for whom those coaches sacrifice countless hours all year long. (If you think college football is a four-month sport, you’ve never taken a recruiting trip.)
Norvell and his wife, Maria, became parents almost ten years after marrying one another. Daughter Mila’s arrival in June 2014 — eight days after Father’s Day — redefined the Norvell family dynamic, and the coach’s leadership mission, but not as dramatically as you might think. “Up until she was born, I had no idea of how your life changes,” says Norvell. “She was born the first day of a vacation I had, so I was able to be there, 24/7, for the first few weeks. There was some fear, knowing we’re responsible for her upbringing, and making sure we do things the right way. Maria’s been incredible in supporting that. You see all the emotions, the challenges of what it takes to be a mother.”
Mila’s life-altering arrival has only reinforced Norvell’s vision for a family-oriented football program, one where job duties blend with those of parenting. “You can’t change the schedule,” he says. “I’m gonna be gone. There are going to be 18-hour days. But we talk about sacrifice and service. It’s important for our players to see each of our coaches as fathers. Sometimes you have to sacrifice time from your job responsibilities.” Among Norvell’s favorite activities with Mila is a weekend trip to Gibson’s Donuts. (Mila prefers pink-and-purple sprinkles.)
Every Tuesday, Mila attends practice with the children of other coaches. At the final whistle, the Tiger head coach shouts, “Hey!,” and Mila sprints into his arms, an instant work-family transition Norvell has come to see as critical to his workweek. “Our players seeing us being fathers, being husbands . . . that’s big,” emphasizes Norvell. “A lot of our players don’t have a father figure in their homes. Lots of others have stepfathers. And I want Mila to know who we’re impacting every day. This is why I might not be at home when you go to sleep. I wouldn’t have come to a place that didn’t allow this kind of atmosphere.”
At age 35, Norvell is among the youngest head coaches in college football. He sees himself not so much as a father figure for the players under his watch, but as a guide of sorts. More of an authority figure than a big brother, but close enough in age to share perspective on the all-important transition into adulthood. “The values I try to instill are the same that coaches tried to instill in me,” he says. “What matters is the impact.”
Norvell had a distant relationship with his biological father, so associates Father’s Day more with, yes, impact than with any individual. Several men in his life, many of them coaches, helped instill the values he now considers central in leading a football program and, not incidentally, raising his daughter. “When I think about family,” he says, “I think about the people who pour themselves into you, who invest in your life, to help develop who you are as a child or young man. I had a lot of those. My brother and I have different dads, but his dad has meant the world to me.”
Norvell is tasked with winning football games. (The Tigers went 8-5 in 2016, his first season at the helm.) But there are few careers that require so much commitment during the hours — weekends and evenings — most of us reserve for family. “It’s a hard profession,” he says. “We’ve had a good first year, and there’s not been much of a negative push. But when you lose a game, it’s difficult. No matter whether we win or lose, Sunday night is there [for families]. The highs and lows come back to reality when you see those kids running around the field. That’s what we’re here to do, what we’re here to impact.”