Doyel: Victory Field usher, fan: Friends, then family

INDIANAPOLIS — The usher is here because he needed a job. He was a professional college student at the time, seeking a master’s degree in one thing or another, when his wife became pregnant. He found work at the airport, throwing bags onto planes. He found work in a factory. And then he saw the ad in IndyStar. Ushers wanted, the Indianapolis Indians were saying. Eight bucks a game.

Clint Stoutenour cut out the advertisement. It was 1992.

The fan is here because he had nowhere else to be. He grew up in Winchester, Ky., baseball crazy like his old man, an incorrigible Mets fan from upstate New York. It was 2005 when he and his girlfriend moved to Indianapolis for work. Patrick Segura took a look around, realized he didn’t know anybody, and decided to get season tickets at Victory Field.

The usher got himself a job. The fan got himself a hobby.

And then, they got more.

* * *

It started with an autograph. Patrick Segura can’t remember the player, and it’s not important. What matters is that Patrick was waiting in line for that Indian's autograph when he hit it off with this 12-year-old kid. Clayton was the kid’s name. A few days later when Clayton saw Patrick and his girlfriend at a game, he sat down.

The usher sees it and comes over. Clayton is his kid, see, and the usher doesn’t want his kid, so comfortable at Victory Field that you’d think he owns the place, to be an imposition on a paying customer.

“If Clayton drives you nuts,” Clint Stoutenour told Patrick, “come tell me.”

Never happened. What did happen: Patrick and his girlfriend, a Southport grad named Katie Frommeyer, started referring to Clayton as their little brother.

Clayton’s dad – the usher, Clint – mans the Victory Field information booth. While Clayton was sitting with Katie, Patrick started spending an inning or so at the booth, just visiting. One inning became two, then three or four, and soon everybody was hanging out at the ballpark. And then away from the ballpark.

“Baseball has kind of created a sub-family,” says Clint, 50, who never did get that master's degree. He's now head of ushers at Victory Field.

Patrick and Katie married eventually, bonded by their love of baseball and scary movies, if you can believe it. They married on Halloween 2009, a traditional wedding at a historic bar in Edinburgh followed by a Halloween party for a reception. When Katie became pregnant with a boy and her doctor said the due date was Halloween 2010, well, that was perfect.

They named the kid Gage.

Hang on, I asked Patrick Segura. You named your son after the zombie boy in the 1989 Stephen King movie, "Pet Sematary"?

“Yes, yes,” says Patrick, 34, laughing pleasantly at himself. “OK?”

Gage was going to need a godfather. Patrick and Katie knew whom to ask:

The usher said yes.

There are more layers to this story, more layers to the family that Victory Field and the Pittsburgh Pirates' Triple A affiliate have given Patrick and Katie Segura. For example, the Indians’ catcher in 2008, a 1996 Cuban defector named Michel Hernandez, became close with the Seguras. They sit close to the field – Section 115, Row G – and they’re always there. Players notice. Conversations happen. Friendships happen, too.

Hernandez ended that 2008 season with the Tampa Bay Rays, went to the postseason, invited Patrick and Katie Segura to Chicago for the Rays’ playoff series with the White Sox. It’s like that.

So when Gage was born three full months premature in July 2010, Michel Hernandez showed up at the hospital to support the parents and hold the tiny baby. Six years later Gage has decided he wants to be a catcher like Uncle Michel, so Michel Hernandez – now a coach in the New York Yankees organization – sent Gage his first catcher’s mitt last month for his sixth birthday.

* * *

Life isn’t always happy, you know?

So it was, last August, that Clint’s father was dying at age 74. The ballpark knew, of course. Clint’s a friendly sort, oversees close to 60 ushers and therefore makes his way all over Victory Field, so folks around the ballpark knew Robert Stoutenour had been placed into home hospice care.

Patrick Segura knew more. He knew Robert Stoutenour, not a big baseball fan himself, loved his son so much he took Clint, the head usher of the Triple A Indians, to Cooperstown in 1998 to see the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Patrick knew Clint’s dad once ran the Perrysville Café, worked for an insurance company, fiddled with the banjo and used to pal around with the Kingston Trio.

So when Robert Stoutenour died at 9 a.m. on Aug. 16, 2015, Clint called Patrick to tell him. And a few hours later when the Indians played the Durham Bulls at Victory Field, Clint reported to work. His dad would have understood.

A time like that, a man needs his family. And Clint’s family was waiting at Victory Field.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStar or atwww.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.