CLEVELAND, Ohio - A diamond is forever? So was a baseball diamond to Russell Schneider.
In all likelihood, all the old baseball men are getting an earful in their sky boxes from Russ today. The long-time Plain Dealer reporter died this morning at 89 after years of declining health.
He probably is looking up Frank "Trader" Lane so he can ask him what in the world was he thinking when he traded Rocky Colavito?
He'll look up George Steinbrenner, too and they can debate what it would have been like had the Boss purchased the Indians, as he had wanted to do, and not the New York Yankees.
This newspaper's Cleveland Indians beat reporter from 1964-78, Schneider was tough, dogged, competitive to the point of combativeness, and my friend.
The friend part took a while. Schneider wanted the columnist job I got in 1984. Eventually, however, we became not only friends, but confidants. Knowing him was certainly one of my great privileges.
Baseball lifer
Schneider also covered the Cleveland Browns for a time in the 1980s and became great friends with former Browns coach Sam Rutigliano.
After Schneider assumed the beat, Browns owner Art Modell said effusively, "Welcome to the family."
"I'm here to cover the team," Russ said gruffly. "Not to be part of your family."
Before that, he realized his life-long dream of covering the Indians because he simply would not give it up. Russ wore down former Plain Dealer sports editor Gordon Cobbledick, beating a path to his door every day from the spring of 1963 until he got the Indians beat in December.
On the beat, he was so competitive he would not talk to rival reporters, zealously guarded his sources, and once almost brawled with former Indians president Peter Bavasi when Bavasi tried to confiscate Schneider's tape recorder during a heated interview at the old stadium.
You won't see those "Front Page" types in the business anymore.
After retirement, he had a second home at the Indians' old Winter Haven spring training headquarters so he could check the prospects out in person.
Tough and passionate
Schneider was a former Marine. And it would take much more than a cold day in May for him to back down from a challenge, any challenge -- and May was often far from a nice day here with ice mantling the Lake Erie shoreline long past Opening Day.
A former catcher, Schneider coached amateur baseball in the area. He approached every game as if it were the seventh game of the World Series. The joke was that umpires around town asked for hazardous duty pay when they had his games.
Last visit
The last time I saw Russ was Oct. 16, a few days after the Indians' lost the divisional series to the New York Yankees.
Schneider's final days were spent in an assisted living facility in Broadview Heights. It was near the Cavaliers' practice building, so I swung by there after their practice session ended.
I had brought a small notebook, hoping to ask Russ about his favorite players and the highlights of his long career. But by then there would be no more interviews in this life for Russ.
He was asleep when I entered his room. I'm not sure whether he knew me or not after I gently roused him. I think there was a gleam of recognition in his eyes and the faintest nod, but I'm not sure. I left a note for him with the nurses.
Before I left, I leaned over and lightly kissed the tough old Marine on the top of his head. It might be best that he never knew about that.
There are worse things to lose than a baseball game.
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