Cassady enters Columbus baseball hall
Sunday, August 28, 2005
Shawn Mitchell
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
In 1955, Howard "Hopalong" Cassady was bestowed with what is perhaps the most famous honor in college sports: the Heisman Trophy.
Fifty years after winning the revered bronze statue, Cassady will join another select fraternity. He’ll be inducted into the Columbus Baseball Hall of Fame today. That’s not too shabby for a guy known more for hitting holes than fungoes.
"He was one of the greatest all-around athletes to come out of the state of Ohio," said Clippers first-base coach Frank Howard, who hit 382 home runs in his major-league career and grew up with Cassady in Columbus. "If you had Howard Cassady on your ballclub, you had a chance to win."
Cassady, 71, rushed for 2,466 yards in four years as a two-way star at Ohio State and had a nine-year career in the NFL with the Detroit Lions, Cleveland Browns and Philadelphia Eagles.
Baseball, though, has been an even bigger part of Cassady’s life. He was a multisport star while growing up in the Bottoms on the city’s West Side and attending Central High School. He played infield and outfield in three seasons at Ohio State and took longtime friend George Steinbrenner up on an offer to join the New York Yankees organization in 1973.
Cassady lives in Tampa, Fla., where the Yankees have two minor-league teams and their spring-training complex. He has been a scout, instructor and strength coach for the Yankees. He spent 14 seasons working with the Clippers, including a 12-year run as their first-base coach that ended in 2003.
"He’s a great competitor a legend in central Ohio," Clippers general manager Ken Schnacke said. "He was very good for this team. He’d hit ground balls and fungoes to whomever wanted to take them. If a guy didn’t get enough work in, it was the player’s fault. He had a real love of the game."
The Clippers will honor Cassady today with a random giveaway of a dual figurine that features his likeness in both his Ohio State and Clippers uniforms. The state, Columbus and Franklin County all have proclaimed today to be "Hop Cassady Day."
"America loves a winner, and that’s Hop," Howard said. "He had probably the finest athletic instincts of anyone, of this or any era. I mean, if he had chosen professional baseball, he would have been one of the finest power-hitting second basemen of that era. Hop Cassady could hit a baseball a long way."
Perhaps more than his athletic prowess, Cassady was known for his competitive nature. He was a bit undersized even by mid-century standards of football, but he was known to have a mean streak.
"I always said if I was ever to be in a fight, I’d want Hop on my team," Schnacke said. "I’d want him behind me."
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