Stubby Clapp and the Ascent to Canada’s World Baseball Classic Moment

When Canada hit the field for the inaugural World Baseball Classic with the most talent the country had ever assembled, there was no surprise in seeing Stubby Clapp take his usual place at second base.

Clapp will be inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame this summer and deservedly so, with an ongoing and decorated career in international baseball for his country. He is serving as Ernie Whitt’s third base coach for this year’s Classic. It's a relationship that goes back to the ‘90s, a decade Clapp bookended with huge successes with the national program. Clapp was a part of the 1991 Canadian national junior team that captured gold on home soil near the 100th meridian in Brandon, and in ‘99, he returned to Manitoba as a member of the Canadian team competing in the Pan American Games being held in Winnipeg.

1991 is the only time Canada has captured the now-named U-18 Baseball World Cup, and the championship was voted as the top moment in Baseball Canada’s 50-year history in 2014. The gold medal game was not televised, so you needed to be among the 5,000 (!) fans that packed the still-best amateur baseball diamond in the country to see the 5-2 win. (photo credit: SaskToday/Jason G. Antonio)

Clapp said the ‘99 Games became a “changing” moment for the national program. Whitt was managing Canada for the first time, and at stake were two spots in the upcoming Sydney Olympics, spots expected to go to the U.S. and Cuba. Clapp was having a good season in the Cardinals’ system at Triple-A Memphis and joined his fellow countrymen in a 16-4 win over Brazil in the new downtown ballpark by The Forks. The next afternoon, Canada faced the Americans in an 11-inning game that took over four hours to play because of that 11th inning.

Things had soured for Canada when Whitt walked to the mound to speak to his pitcher, Chad Ricketts, who just surrendered a home run to give the U.S. a 6-3 lead. Whitt had made a mound visit the previous inning Ricketts pitched, and the crack international umpiring crew ruled the Canadians had to make a pitching change for Whitt’s second-but-actually-first mound visit. A fuming Whitt was ejected and filed a protest that took over a half hour to go unresolved. When play resumed, catcher Andy Stewart stepped up to be the first Canadian hero. With two on and two outs, Stewart hit a game-tying home run and unraveled the Americans, who quickly loaded the bases with two walks and a hit batter. At the plate with a full count, Clapp poked a ball into shallow left, where a miscommunication allowed the Canadians to walk off in victory.

The Canadians finished the round robin undefeated before losing 3-2 to Cuba in the semi-finals. The team missed out on the Olympics but finished strong with a bronze medal win and, more importantly, injected energy into the national team program. Canada advanced to the semi-finals in the 2004 Olympics, and the upcoming WBC would give the program a chance to continue to impress on the international stage.

For the first time, Whitt would build his Canadian side with active major leaguers, but there would be some notable omissions. Larry Walker had retired after an injury-riddled ‘05 season, and after thinking about coming back to play for Canada in the tournament, the legend from Maple Ridge decided to join only the coaching staff. Rich Harden and Éric Gagné would also be left off the roster on the pitching side, the latter recovering from an injury that would end his stretch of pure dominance of the National League.

Even without Walker, the Canadians would bring some offensive punch to the first-ever Classic. Jason Bay would fill an outfield spot coming off his first All-Star season with Pittsburgh and would be joined in the middle of the lineup by incoming AL MVP Justin Morneau. Veterans Matt Stairs and Corey Koskie would be there, as well as major league outfielders Aaron Guiel and Adam Stern. While some returnees to the national team would be relegated to lesser roles, second base still belonged to Clapp. While his brief major league days were over, Clapp was now peppering the ball alongside up-and-coming indy ball legend Aharon Eggleston for the Northern League’s Edmonton Cracker-Cats. Clapp, along with Pete Orr, would play up the middle and set the table in Whitt’s batting orders.

The Canadians began round robin play against one of the tournament’s weaker entrants. South Africa was last seen on the international stage in the 2000 Olympics, where they finished last, scoring only 11 runs over seven games. The opening game felt like a tune-up going the right way, but with a 3-0 lead in the sixth, veteran reliever Paul Quantrill coughed up four runs behind some shaky defending. A two-run blast from Koskie put Canada back in front in the seventh, but Canada’s bullpen faltered, and they trailed 7-6 heading into the ninth in a game that, if left unanswered, would go down as the tournament’s first major upset.

Clapp was due fourth, and while it wasn’t his turn for the spotlight again, a teammate from ‘99 helped kick-start Canada’s effort to avoid embarrassment. When he arrived at the Pan-Am Games seven years earlier, Ryan Radmanovich was trying to work his way back into Seattle’s outfield mix after 75 plate appearances with the Mariners the year before. He never returned to the majors, and by 2002, his affiliated ball career was over, but he had become a star in the Atlantic League. Coming into the game earlier as a defensive sub, Radmanovich led off and hit a triple to the deepest part of Scottsdale Stadium. He would score the tying run on a double by Stern, and Canada would keep scoring to escape with an 11-8 win.

The result barely registered with Dontrelle Willis across the Phoenix metro. The American starter watched on as his team started the tournament with a 2-0 win over Mexico in front of a rowdy, 50-50 crowd at Chase Field, where Willis would start the following day against the Canadians. The Marlins lefty was excited to represent his country and play with the high-caliber talent around him, saying he felt like “a kid at a candy store” walking around the clubhouse. Canada? Pfft. “We briefly went over the hitters,” Willis said, “I got a chance to play against Jason Bay and Peter Orr and what have you.”

Willis started the contest with a four-pitch strikeout of Orr before Clapp hit a triple into the right field corner. The Windsor native would score the game’s first run on a Morneau groundout, giving an early lead to a young Adam Loewen. With ace Jeff Francis set to face Mexico in the final game of the round robin, Whitt decided to open the tournament with the more established Érik Bédard, whose six strikeouts over four innings of work went largely wasted against South Africa. As Loewen walked a pair of batters to load the bases in the first, that decision loomed over the Canadians early, but Chipper Jones ended the threat by bouncing into an inning-ending double play.

Loewen settled in and was steady through 3.2 innings as the Canadian what-have-you’s introduced themselves to Willis. Back-to-back triples from Guiel and Stern made it 2-0 in the second before Stern drove in two more charged to Willis with a base hit off Al Leiter in the third. As reigning NBA MVP Steve Nash watched on from the stands, the Canadian onslaught continued with two more runs in the fourth on a double by Stairs. In the fifth, Stern put what looked to be the exclamation point on the game with an inside-the-park home run that put Canada up 8-0.

Chris Begg had come on for Canada to record the final out of the fourth inning, and Whitt would leave him out for the fifth. Begg would stay out to face seven hitters, five of whom would reach. When Whitt finally pulled the plug, the Americans had scored two runs, and Begg had left the bases loaded with Jason Varitek up. Oncoming lefty Eric Cyr switched Varitek around, and from the right side, the Red Sox catcher hit a gigantic blast into the concourse in center field. The star-powered Americans had answered, and the remaining two-run lead felt as small as it could with four innings left.

Cyr settled in and would give Canada three-up, three-down innings in the sixth and seventh. With the score still 8-6, Scott Mathieson entered and walked Vernon Wells and Johnny Damon between a pair of flyouts to start the eighth. Wielding his bat next as the go-ahead run, Chase Utley thought for a second he may have done it. Utley spat on a 2-1 pitch, and the ball sailed into the vast Arizona outfield space, but not at the clip of Varitek’s. Stern raced back immediately, reached the warning track, and had a split-second to spin and make a game-saving catch.

Sans Gagné, Whitt tasked Steve Green with the final three outs. Green was another player on the WBC team who had been a bronze medalist at the Pan-Am Games. His major league career had lasted one Saturday afternoon in Oakland, when he took a no-decision, allowing two runs over six innings for the Angels on April 7, 2001. Green was still bouncing around Triple-A organization to organization, hoping this year to make the Orioles after previously failing with Cleveland and Detroit. Green would start the ninth by getting a pair of weak groundouts off the bats of Jeff Francoeur and Derrek Lee. 

Canada was an out away from victory as universal villain Alex Rodriguez strode to the plate. Rodriguez took two pitches for strikes to start the at-bat before watching another two off the plate, as Green tried to end it with an A-Rod whiff. The 2-2 offering was another breaking pitch off the plate, and Rodriguez got wood on it out towards shallow center. Racing in this time, Stern extended and caught the ball only for it to pop out as he hit the outfield grass. “The United States has life,” Gary Thorne exclaimed on the broadcast, as millions of fans up north dreaded the worst in a game that was feeling elusive.

Rodriguez would weasel his way to second base on indifference on a first pitch strike to Mark Teixeira. Green would get Teixeira to roll over on the next pitch, an easy hopper fielded by Morneau a few feet from first base. Morneau would touch the base and embrace Green as the rest of Team Canada spilled onto the field in celebration. There were many contributions in the upset win, but none were louder than Stern’s, with some early run-scoring hits, the inside-the-park home run, and the game-saving catch in the eighth. “I just put my head down, ran to a spot and said, 'Come on, baby, don't hit the facing.’”

Yet, here we are in 2026, and Canada has yet to qualify for the second round of a World Baseball Classic. Francis was bashed by Mexico in a 9-1 loss, and with three teams tied at 2-1, the Canadians' performance against South Africa cost them as they were eliminated on run differential. It was as close as Canada has gotten to reaching the second round prior to their eliminating loss to Mexico in the last WBC.

Clapp would play for Canada again at the 2008 Olympics and the 2009 WBC before joining the coaching staff. Now in his fourth decade with the national program, he will maybe see it reach new heights again this month.