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QB Frank Kremblas (official thread)

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Sounds manager credits late father for instilling coaching values By Nate Rau, Sports Correspondent
August 24, 2006
If Frank Kremblas had listened to his dad, he might have become a concert pianist instead of one of the top managerial prospects in all of baseball.


082406kremblas02.jpg

Frank Kremblas Sr. was the starting quarterback for Ohio State when the Buckeyes won the 1958 Rose Bowl. He passed away Tuesday night at the age of 69.
Photo courtesy of Ohio State
“He made me take piano lessons and I hated it,” the current Nashville Sounds skipper said of his father, Frank Sr. “Hell no, I wasn’t gonna take piano lessons.”

Growing up in tiny Carroll, Ohio, Frank Sr. never pushed his son to play sports. This came despite the fact Frank Sr. was himself an accomplished athlete.

He played quarterback for legendary coach Woody Hayes at Ohio State from 1956-58, helping the Buckeyes win the Rose Bowl in his senior season. Frank Sr. was selected by New York in the 1959 NFL Draft, but the Giants wanted him to play defensive back so he chose instead to remain in Columbus. There, he played semi-pro football and put himself through law school at OSU. He became a partner at the law firm of Kremblas, Foster and Phillips, where he remained for 36 years.

Prior to Tuesday’s game against Albuquerque, Kremblas talked with The City Paper about his father. Hours later, after his team’s 6-2 victory over Albuquerque, Kremblas would learn his dad had died at the age of 69. According to a family friend, Frank Sr.’s death was “somewhat unexpected” although the cause of death was not immediately made available.

***
Instead of playing piano, Kremblas followed in the athletic footsteps of his father, playing baseball, basketball and football for Canal Winchester High. He went on to play baseball at Eastern Kentucky, then in the minors for eight years, before pursuing a coaching career.

Managing the game is where Kremblas found his niche. He was named the top Double-A managerial prospect by Baseball America while with Huntsville in 2004. He led the Sounds to the Pacific Coast League championship in 2005 and has the team contending again this season.

Kremblas obtained many of his coaching traits from his father.

“He was a good teacher,” Kremblas said. “He made sure I was mentally tough without a problem. He had good mental discipline and good mental toughness. He worked hard and he played hard.”

Kremblas said his dad passed onto him the lessons he learned playing for the legendary Hayes at OSU.

“He learned a lot and he had good coaches that always helped. It was a good athletic background in the family,” Kremblas said. “When he was with Woody Hayes at Ohio State, he was a pretty smart guy and strategizer and discipliner and all the necessary attributes for winning teams and winning players.”

While his sons pursued a career in baseball (younger brother Mike also became a minor league player and actually played for Frank’s Huntsville team in 2003), Frank Sr. earned his reputation in the Columbus area as an attorney.

“I’ll tell you one thing, everyone here loved him. He was one super guy,” said Frank Foster, Kremblas’s law partner for 36 years. “In the core, he was just a good guy.”

After learning of his father’s passing, Kremblas left the Sounds prior to their five-game road trip to Memphis to be with his family. He is expected to rejoin the team, which has a four-game lead in the PCL American Northern Division pennant race, next week in Albuquerque. Hitting coach Gary Pettis will manage the team in Kremblas’s stead.

***
Kremblas may be permanently absent from the Sounds bench after this season is complete.

Many baseball insiders credit Kremblas for laying the groundwork of the youth movement currently leading the Brewers organization.

Prior to joining the Sounds, Kremblas, who turns 40 in October, managed Double-A Huntsville, which featured current major leaguers Prince Fielder, Rickie Weeks, Jose Capellan and Corey Hart. When that group of prospects made the jump to Triple-A in 2005, Kremblas came with them, eventually ushering the group to the Brewers. This season, Kremblas has a new pool of prospects, including Tony Gwynn Jr. and Nelson Cruz, and has guided the Sounds to the cusp of another PCL playoff appearance.

“He’s done an excellent job for us,” Milwaukee assistant general manager Gord Ash said. “In Triple-A, the most difficult job is keeping everybody happy because the guys who have been up want to get back up and the guys who haven’t been up want to get there. Frank does a good job of keeping everybody happy. We’ve been in first place pretty much the last two years.”

Kremblas makes no bones about his top career goal of one day becoming a big-league manager or assistant coach. During his eight-year playing career he topped out at Triple A.

“I think in time he can,” Ash said. “He’s well-rounded. He’s thorough in baseball knowledge and a thorough planner. He’s a great in-game strategist, an aggressive manager, all of the things you look for.”

The Brewers keep their minor league coaches on one-year contracts, which they typically renew after the season. Last year at this time, Kremblas was asked if he’d be back in Nashville in 2006 and he said “yes” without hesitating. But when asked that same question earlier this week, Kremblas did not give a firm answer.

“It would be nice to be on a team that makes the playoffs in the major leagues as a coach,” Kremblas said. “When you play any sport, you’re always trying to win. Anyone who plays sports is a little bit of an adrenaline junkie and the adrenaline you get when you’re in a playoff game is incomparable to any other.”
 
Frank Kremblas was the Superman of my experience. I met Frank when I was a football and baseball coach at Canal Winchester. Frank Jr. and Michael (his two sons) and Michelle his daughter were all students of mine and Frank and Michael played baseball and football for me. Frank also helped as an assistant when I became the Head Football coach. Frank was exceptionally modest and a great man, father and husband. Frank passed due to cancer. He beat cancer twice but finally was defeated by one of the most insidious diseases that face us. Till the end, Frank was upbeat, positive and refused to surrender to this disease. Frank Jr. and Michael both played quarterback in high school and were super kids and fantastic athletes. In fact both also played defense and were real "hammers". When we made the playoffs, Frank brought Woody Hayes to speak to the team before the playoff game. He never bragged about his National Championship or playing quarterback and defense at Ohio State, or playing for the New York Titans. He was modest to the end and was as tough as they come. I miss Frank and his great knowledge of football, life and life lessons. For me "Superman" has passed.
 
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Frank Kremblas Jr.: Following his own path
Son of a quarterback at OSU, he chose baseball, where he's waiting for his big break
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
By Jim Massie
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

His name no longer draws the instant glint of recognition from Ohio State sports fans as it would have when he was growing up in Canal Winchester.

Frank Kremblas Jr. is his late father's namesake, but the uniform he wears as manager of the triple-A Indianapolis Indians is entirely his own. That doesn't diminish the pride he has for the sports legacy that Frank Kremblas Sr. left him.

His father was a three-year letterman with the Ohio State football team from 1956 to '58. His coach was Woody Hayes, and he quarterbacked the Buckeyes to the 1957 national championship with teammates such as Dick LeBeau and Jim Marshall.

Time, however, has marched down the field in the inexorable three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust manner associated with Hayes. Memories have faded.

"That's no longer much of an issue here," Kremblas said before a recent Indians game against the Clippers in Huntington Park. "It's been so long ago. My dad has friends in the area that still associate the name. It's five or six guys that he played golf with a lot when he was here.

"But it's not really more than that, because we lived outside of Columbus. And he didn't like to go to Ohio State football games because the traffic was so bad. I liked to go when I was young because it was new to me. But when I started driving, I (understood). The traffic is horrible."

BuckeyeXtra - The Columbus Dispatch : Frank Kremblas Jr.: Following his own path
 
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