NORTH STAR, Ohio — The flatness is unending.
An hour in any direction and more than two hours in most directions from anything resembling a big city, the vastness and simplicity of the terrain is a lullaby to hustle and bustle.
This is the place where Craig Stammen, the new manager of the Padres, was raised and returned to and never seriously considered leaving.
His house, next door to the one he grew up in and where his parents still reside, is technically in Rossburg, Ohio. But he proudly hails from North Star, which is a little more than a mile away.
North Star is where Stammen attended elementary school with three other boys and a dozen girls. That school shuttered several years ago. The building is now the community center, which is next to Craig Stammen Field, which every summer hosts the Craig Stammen Classic.
There is a lot to say about this little town.
But before that …
Of course Craig Stammen is from North Star.
He went on from here to become a relief pitcher whose authenticity made him more than a relief pitcher in the eyes of teammates. He was a guiding light.
It is this quality, more than anything, that led Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller to pursue Stammen as his manager
“I have more respect for that man than almost anybody I have ever played with,” Padres second baseman Jake Cronenworth said of Stammen. “Just the way he (goes) about his business and how he treats people.”
A drive-through town in a flyover state, made up largely of Stammens, tells a big part of the story of why.
“I think if I wasn’t who I was growing up, they’d let me know real fast,” Stammen said. “I think what this place has done for me is one, it’s given me a moral ground to stand on, basically, like simple things, hard work, faith, treating other people with kindness, and being able to say sorry, are like four things that you can live your whole life on and have success. I’m thankful for growing up in this area with the parents that I have in the support group around here, because I don’t think I’d be who (people) seem to think I am without that. I’m not the only person like that around here. There’s a lot of people like that around here. It’s normal.”
Family town
On the corner lot leading into a cul-de-sac on the far eastern edge of North Star is the house where Stammen’s grandparents, Robert and Loretta, lived when Craig was growing up.
While driving slowly up the street and then back, Stammen explained which of his cousins live in each of the first seven of the eight houses on the street. As he pulled out of the neighborhood, he pointed to the street sign: Sweet Loretta Way.
The story goes that while Robert Stammen was stationed overseas during World War II, he won the right to name his crew’s tank in a card game. He named the tank “Sweet Loretta” after the young lady whom he would marry in 1946.
When family members developed the land behind Robert and Loretta’s home, they named the street as a tribute to them both.
Robert Stammen, Craig Stammen’s grandfather, poses next to the tank he named after his future wife during World War II.
Such is the history that makes North Star magnetic for Stammen.
He spent 13 seasons in the major leagues, playing in Washington, D.C., and San Diego.
That he chose to return to his hometown speaks to who he is as much as any actual testimonials about him.
He is inextricable from this place and vice versa.
North Star is a big part of why he didn’t actually pursue the Padres manager’s job at first and a big part of why he was qualified for that job in the first place.
In the Nov. 10 news conference where he was introduced, Stammen spoke about family and how it would characterize the Padres under his watch.
He says, as if it is a joke, that half of North Star’s population is made up of his cousins. But it isn’t a joke.
He is the oldest of three siblings and somewhere in the middle of a hundred or more cousins, many of whom he still sees.
“My first cousins are like brothers and sisters,” Stammen said. “You have this family, like a bigger family.”
There are, depending on the year and source, something like 225 people in North Star. That distinction doesn’t matter so much, because the towns here run together.
Besides North Star, there is Rossburg, Versailles, Yorkshire, Maria Stein, Russia and a few other dots on the map that altogether are home to fewer folks than Petco Park holds on a Friday night.
The villages are united, by and large, by a love of God, family and hard work, as well as the fact that a good number of people in Cleveland and Cincinnati have never heard of them.
“It’s an area of ultimate accountability,” said Maria Stein native Cory Luebke, who played for the Padres before Stammen did and played against him in Little League. “There is just so much respect that everybody has for each other. … It’s a really cool area. Nothing is about what you do for a living. It’s, ‘Hey, are you a good person?’ It’s a badge of honor, being a good person.”
Craig Stammen was introduced as the San Diego Padres manager by President of baseball operations and General Manager A.J. Preller at Petco Park on Nov. 10, 2025 in San Diego, California. (Photo by K.C. Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
‘Things have changed’
The way to North Star is traveled via two-lane roads that cut mostly perpendicular lines through acre upon acre of fields that, before the recent harvest, grew corn or soybeans or wheat. There are the occasional cross-tipped churches and water towers emblazoned with the names of towns. In the distance are trees bunched so thick they make up full-fledged forests.
Every half-mile or so, there is a house and an accompanying barn.
There are a lot of barns in western Ohio.
Some of them are practically see-through, weather-beaten and seemingly a good shove or a stiff breeze from falling over. Others are sturdy and functional, a place to store the tractors and the feed.
Then there are the barns in name only.
Such a structure is rising behind the home just off U.S. Route 127, where Craig and Audrey Stammen and their four young children live.
This particular “barn” was envisioned as not just a gathering spot for friends and family but as a place to coach.
It will have a volleyball court and pickleball court, a basketball hoop and two batting cages. But it won’t get as much use right away as the Stammens anticipated.
“We weren’t expecting to be living in San Diego,” Craig said.
Audrey has helped coach volleyball at nearby Versailles High School (Craig’s alma mater) since her husband retired as a major league pitcher in 2023. In addition to helping from time to time with the high school’s baseball team, Craig coached the Versailles Tigers 7-under team this past spring. For years, he has been frequently asked to give lessons.
“Well, I don’t really want to go anywhere to do it,” Craig recalled reasoning at some point. “So we’ll just do it in the backyard.”
He paused before punctuating his thought with a gargantuan understatement:
“And things have changed.”
Craig Stammen coaches the Versailles Tigers 7U team in a tournament this past spring. In the foreground is his oldest son, Chase.
First job offer
When Versailles athletic director Scott Broerman heard that Stammen had been named Padres manager, he sent him a text:
You didn’t give me a chance to match the offer.
This past spring, Broerman had proposed something to Stammen.
“I thought there was a good chance he was gonna be our next baseball coach,” Broerman said.
Stammen has given money and helped raise even more for the Versailles HIgh School baseball team and athletic department over the years. The Stammens are frequently around the school, which houses kindergarten through 12th grade. Chase Stammen is in second grade there, and Summit started kindergarten this fall. The other two children, 4-year-old Ty and 2-year-old Cece, are frequent visitors to the school for various events. The Saturday after he was introduced as Padres manager, Stammen was at a fundraiser for the athletic department.
“No. 1 was his being a good role model,” Broerman said. “I look for that in all our coaches. Seeing things he has done on such a large level but then also him taking the time to do what he has done already in his short time being back. He’s already gotten active in our youth baseball program. When he has come home he has helped out our coaches.
“I know it’s easy for kids to look up to him for what he has done. But it’s truly a good story of him not being the No.1 (pitcher) in high school. He has worked hard to get where he has gotten. He (was) a scholar. He has always treated people right. His wife being a coach, he’s always been around. You can just tell it means something to him.”
Stammen told Broerman he was too busy to be the high school baseball coach. He loved working with the players and wanted to continue to do so on occasion. But he had his family and his routine.
“And then now I just decided to do this,” Stammen said while breaking into a wide smile.
To be clear, some five months after turning down a job as a high school baseball coach over concerns about the time commitment, he decided to become a major league manager, a job that requires nearly constant focus for at least eight months and not much less the rest of the year.
“You know, God’s calling is interesting,” Stammen said. “And I didn’t feel it for (the Versailles High School job) as dramatically. And I felt it for this in a way that I wanted to say ‘no’ a million times and I had to say ‘yes.’”
The Stammen family. Clockwise from top: Craig, Summit, Chase, Audrey, Cece and Ty. (Courtesy of the Stammen family)
Fully aligned
To truly appreciate and understand the journey Craig and Audrey Stammen took from “no” to “yes,” it is important to appreciate and understand where they were coming from, not just literally but figuratively.
Their dynamic is unique. Audrey played college volleyball and was a college coach when she met Craig. Two months after they began dating, she withdrew from consideration for a Division I head coaching job she was almost certain to get.
“I felt pretty quickly this guy could be my racquetball partner for a long time,” she said.
See, not only has Audrey coached exponentially more games than Craig, she has played a lot more racquetball.
They played for hours on their first date. It was Craig’s first time on a racquetball court. Audrey estimated, without any protest from her husband, that she currently leads the all-time series “100-2.”
On a recent Friday afternoon, in between Craig participating in Zoom calls regarding the makeup of the Padres coaching staff and other offseason matters, the Stammens sat in the dining room of their home and spoke of the decision that befuddled them before it perplexed so many others.
They sometimes finished each other’s sentences or corrected details, all while maintaining a serenity accomplishable only by two people fully aligned in their decision-making.
At one point, they offered a portion of their rationale in succession so rapidly it was as if one person was speaking.
“I think right now, with their age, is the only time I could make it work,” Craig said.
“When we talked about it, we were, ‘Actually, there’s not a baby, they’re not in high school sports,’” Audrey continued.
“Yeah,” Craig said, “10 years from now, I think it’s a ‘no’ for sure.”
Craig Stammen was introduced as the San Diego Padres new manager by President of baseball operations and General Manager A.J. Preller at Petco Park on Nov. 10, 2025 in San Diego, California. (Photo by K.C. Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Serious offer
During a phone conversation early in the final weekend of October, Preller asked Stammen to rank the candidates the team had interviewed via Zoom calls that week.
After he did so, Preller said that his No. 1 candidate was Craig Stammen.
“I was like, ‘What?’” Stammen recalled saying. “I thought he was joking. … He was like, ‘No, I’m serious.’”
This wasn’t entirely out of the blue.
“It’s been a decade in the making,” Preller said at the news conference introducing Stammen as manager.
Preller had long professed his admiration for Stammen, a relief pitcher he signed in 2016 and later re-signed in 2021 in part because of what he brought to the clubhouse.
Stammen was among the veteran players at the center of the team meetings and a series of internal discussions credited with the Padres rallying to make the playoffs in 2022.
Preller had seen Stammen hold his own in a meeting with former Padres chairman Ron Fowler in 2020, when the pitcher humbly but forcefully let the sometimes domineering Fowler know he didn’t agree with him.
Preller had been on the receiving end of Stammen voicing his displeasure over manager Andy Green being fired in 2019. Stammen told Preller at the time that the players bore responsibility for the team’s poor finish to the season and that Preller had failed them as well.
On the August day in 2023 when Stammen called assistant general manager Josh Stein to tell him he was officially retiring, Stein didn’t let him off the phone without telling him there was a job for him in the organization whenever he was ready. Stammen didn’t hang up before saying he was ready.
Stammen spent the past two years a special assistant in the Padres’ player development department. He visited minor-league affiliates, working individually with players and advising coaches. A big part of his role, too, was spending time with the major league team, serving as a sounding board for players and observing how the staff went about its business. Another facet of the job was being part of discussions involving potential trades and free-agent signings.
While there will be differences in his and Preller’s new dynamic, the familiarity between them makes Stammen comfortable.
And that comfort only grew during the stretch of not quite two weeks in which the Stammens’ “no” turned into a “yes.”
“In this process, how he treated us,” Craig said. “there’s no way that is fake.”
Padres relief pitcher Craig Stammen and manager Jayce Tingler celebrate after beating the Cardinals to win their Wild Card Series at Petco Park on Friday, Oct. 2, 2020. (K.C. Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
The pull
Preller knew that family was the priority for the Stammens.
So when the response to Preller’s pitch that October weekend went along those lines again, it figured that would be the end of the discussion.
But Preller called Stammen again on the night of Oct. 28, a Tuesday, to reiterate his seriousness about him being the Padres’ next manager. He said he would travel to North Star to talk to Audrey to make sure she understood he was committed to finding a way to make it work.
It was late, and Audrey was asleep. The next morning, the couple spoke and agreed they would talk with Preller. They set up a Zoom call for that Thursday (Oct. 30).
For nearly two hours, the couple spoke with Preller and Stein, who pledged to work with the family to make the job manageable. They made Craig and Audrey believe they knew how important that was.
Audrey also digested the interaction through the filter of a coach. She noted how the three men meshed and thought similarly and played off each other on topics they did not necessarily view the same way.
“There wasn’t one specific thing,” Audrey said. “It was just listening to A.J. and Josh talk — their excitement about how to get better, what (Craig’s) involvement could be and what it could lead to. The general optimism and hope, I enjoyed. You could tell how much they love their jobs, how much they love the Padres, who they are as people.
“I had a generally good feeling. I’ve worked with enough staffs, and if you don’t like the people you’re with, it can be miserable. And if you like the people you’re with, it can be a great job. I just felt the cohesiveness. I liked that.”
Audrey had to attend a second-grade play and coach a volleyball match that evening, so Craig spent another two hours talking with Preller and Stein after she left.
He felt a pull, even if it still seemed to him he was heading down a path that led to an inevitable dead end.
The Stammens had been through similar (though not nearly as extensive) exercises before when Preller had discussed expanding Craig’s role.
“We just logically were like, ‘Nah, we got four kids, and we like what we’re doing,’” Craig said. “She likes coaching. I like having the schedule to myself. It’s working out.”
At the same time, Craig wanted more. He maintained a closeness with many Padres players, but said he did not feel connected.
“I felt like I wasn’t in the hunt with them,” he said. “I felt like I was removed from the day-to-day, in-the-grind. I could relate to them, but then I couldn’t relate. That (special assistant) job, that was the struggle. I didn’t feel like I was making any impact. There is a difference when you’re with somebody every day. When you can go home and play golf, hang out with your family … I wasn’t connected.”
His dad knew there was a pull. When they would work on the land around their adjacent properties, Jeff Stammen and his son sometimes talked about the Padres and what he was doing.
Jeff recalled saying, “They’re going to suck you in.” Craig would reply, “No, dad. The kids.”
There was a war raging in the new manager’s mind for a while.
“In the back of my head, I’m like, ‘Well, I keep asking this,” Stammen said. “So it means I probably keep wanting to do it.’ But then I also see the future of, like, 20 years from now, that’s the only time I feel like I’ll be able to do it. Do I want to wait 20 years? Why am I even doing the special assistant stuff if I’m gonna wait 20 years for this? So there are all those small thoughts.
“But (there is) also the logical like … I gotta be a husband, I gotta be a father in the right way. And I’d be making a selfish decision if I made this type of decision.”
San Diego Padres new manager Craig Stammen greets pitching coach Ruben Niebla after a news conference at Petco Park on Nov. 10, 2025 in San Diego, California. (Photo by K.C. Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Figuring it out
The lease agreement from the rental management company was in Stammen’s email inbox. He was about to sign and send it to Jason Adam.
The Padres relief pitcher and his family were going to rent the Stammens’ Coronado home. Hours before Preller called to say he wanted the chance to talk to Audrey, Craig had called Adam to let him know he could start moving things in early.
That is how certain the Stammens were that Craig being manager was simply not workable.
Still, he and Audrey set about the process of making sense of something that seemed impossible to the point of being nonsensical.
“We had to weigh the pros and cons,” Craig said, “Is this opportunity worth the cost of uprooting our life and going to San Diego?”
They marked up a calendar with possible times Audrey and the kids could visit San Diego during the season or that the family could meet the Padres on the road.
It wasn’t penciling out. But Craig is big on finding solutions, and he believes in being called to do things.
So they continued to talk to each other and to God. They asked friends and family to pray for a big decision they had to make.
“I think part of it was I didn’t pursue it, knowing that like this wasn’t something that I was jonesing for my life,” Stammen said. “It’s more of like this was put in front of you, an opportunity, and then you had to decide if this fulfills your identity or if it doesn’t. And that was really what the decision came down to. I view my identity as four attributes: leader, companion, gatherer, encourager. Those are what I’m really good at. That’s what God put me here on the earth to do. And is this thing that just got put in your lap and said, basically, if you say yes, you got it, does that fulfill those four attributes?
“And it was, like, pretty obvious. Not to go down the you know theology things too much, but our goal as Christians is to follow God’s will. And this felt like this was his. If I said ‘yes’ to this, I was saying ‘yes’ to him. If I said ‘no’ to this, I was saying ‘no’ to him. And that was the conundrum that I was feeling. It was an easy ‘no,’ because I’ve got a cushy life as a special assistant. I’m a retired baseball player. There’s no more money to be earned. We’re in good shape. I can find a tee time whenever I want to, and my golf game can get better. And our relationship is great because, like, I’m here at home a lot. … The hard (part) was changing all that and doing something that we don’t quite know is how it’s gonna work out with (the marriage) relationship, our kids’ relationship.”
Craig went to San Diego on Nov. 1 and interviewed for the job in person the next day, a Sunday.
He boarded his plane in San Diego on Nov. 3 having a good idea the job was his if he wanted it but with a bad feeling that he just couldn’t accept it.
Just before takeoff, he answered a call from Preller and verbalized his inner conflict.
At around the same time, Audrey was meeting with a friend, Andrea Borchers. She had already received counsel from friend Mary Catherine Melancon, wife of former major league pitcher Mark Melancon, that made her see they were essentially looking at the situation through a faulty lens. When Andrea echoed the same sentiment, the answer crystallized for Audrey.
Both of her friends were of the opinion that there was no way the Stammens could take the job if Audrey and the kids remained in Ohio. But if they could see fit to join Craig on the adventure, they should do it.
“It was like, we can take the kids out of school,” Audrey said. “It’s not going to, like, destroy them for life to get lots of cool experiences, traveling and doing unique things. We can do this even though they’re going to be scared, switching schools and all that kind of stuff.”
She recalled telling Borchers she needed to text Craig immediately.
He received the text, in which she explained how the family could do it and said she was “all in,” while in the air.
At that, Craig recalled, “The squat rack that was on my back fell off.”
The Stammen family during the centennial celebration for North Star Hardware and Implements in 2024.(Stammen family)
The store
A row of farming equipment lines the highway a little more than a mile from the house Stammen grew up in. Beyond the tractors and combines is a gravel parking lot and a series of buildings that houses the North Star Hardware & Implement Co.
Craig’s great-grandfather founded the business, which the family refers to as “the store,” in 1924. Craig’s grandfather and great uncles took over, and in turn Craig’s father and uncles did so. It is now run by men who are all Craig’s cousins, either by blood or marriage.
Craig majored in entrepreneurship at the University of Dayton with the intention of one day joining in the ownership of the store. It is a source of humor in the family as to when he officially decided he would not do so.
“He never said, ‘No, Dad, I’m not going to go to the store,’” Jeff Stammen said. “He never said that to me. So I never believed that he wouldn’t.”
Craig’s mother, Connie Stammen, said, “I came to the realization a little bit sooner. I didn’t say anything, but you know, you every once in a while (Jeff) would say, ‘You know, Craig’s gonna come back to the store. And I was like, ‘I don’t think that’s gonna happen. You know, 13 years in the major leagues.’”
Craig said it was “probably once we got to the point we were financially secure” that he knew he did not want to commit to what it would take to work the store.
But he was quoted frequently throughout the first half or so of his career saying he planned to join the family business after he was finished playing.
Kevin Selhorst, whom Craig calls his best friend, is one of the cousins who owns the store now. When Selhorst would see those quotes, he would tell Craig, “I can’t wait until you start here and I start you at $15 an hour.”
Craig was familiar with such pay.
That is about what Craig and Kevin would make during the summers they were a part of the “bin crew” in their high school and college years.
A part of the service North Star Hardware & Implement Co. provided was installation of the grain bins they sold.
That involves digging a trench, spreading rock around it, then pouring a cement pad and erecting the metal bin from the top down.
“They’re 100% metal,” Selhorst said. “It’s like an oven on the inside. … There’s no air movement on the inside, and you have the sun beating down on that metal structure, and it’s just like a hot box inside there. It’s hard work, very hard work.”
Today, a hydraulic jack helps greatly in lifting the portions of the bins, which can be 50 feet tall. Back when Craig and Kevin were on the crew, the lifting was done by a hand jack.
“That was the hardest part,” Stammen said.
When it came to the bin construction portion, Kevin and Craig were bolt pushers. They would push the bolts through holes and hold them while someone on the other side of the metal shell used a hydraulic wrench to tighten them.
Craig sometimes has trouble providing fingerprints due to scars incurred at that job.
It wasn’t until he was drafted following his junior year at Dayton that his dad moved him to the office answering phones.
That he was drafted at all might be a miracle.
“The hard part for me during the bin crew days was I (would) go out on the bin crew from 8 o’clock till 3 o’clock, and then, ‘Hey, I got a game at 5.’ Like college summer ball, where scouts are watching me. Yeah, looking back, (it was) stupid. What I did was do that all day long, wear myself out, hop in the car, go to the game.
“I was a starter then, so I knew when I was pitching. But like, I would pitch and then get back home at 11 o’clock at night and then go to bed and then wake up and do it all over again. We had to be there at 7:30. If I was late by 30 seconds, dad was pissed. But we did it. Like, every summer baseball game we had, that was what we did. It made me tougher.”
Craig Stammen
Craig Stammen played three sports — baseball, football and basketball — at Versailles High School in Ohio. (Craig Stammen)
‘Lack of talent’
As a pitcher, Stammen primarily threw a sinker. It only occasionally would top 93 mph.
Yet from 2018 through ’21, there were just seven MLB relievers who appeared in more games in high-leverage situations. He had a 3.66 ERA in 562 career games. His 330 games for the Padres are the third most in franchise history.
He did OK for a guy who was the second-best pitcher on his high school team.
At 6-foot-2 and somewhere around 225 pounds, Stammen looks every bit the shortstop, quarterback and shooting guard he was as a three-sport standout in high school.
But back then, “he was scrawny,” said Tim Blakely, Stammen’s high school baseball coach at Versailles.
A left-hander named Josh Bruns was the Versailles ace.
“We were better when I played shortstop and Josh pitched,” Stammen said.
Stammen remembers pretty much every pitch he has thrown in his life. He and Blakely can reconstruct the entirety of Stammen’s senior season.
“Coach Blakely was the first person I remember who could do that,” Stammen said. “I was like, ‘We are on the same wavelength.’”
Stammen recalls at length how Blakely instilled a love for the details of baseball and doing things right, but also having fun.
“I was always starving for information in baseball,” Stammen said.
In the fall, he was a big-armed quarterback with little mobility playing behind a small offensive line. And in the winter, he was just good enough to make the starting five in basketball.
He does recall lessons learned in those other sports as being formative as he evolved into a leader in major league clubhouses.
When Stammen was not voted a captain his senior year in football, coach Al Hetrick pulled him aside.
“He came up to me, like, right after it, and he said, ‘Just because you’re not a captain doesn’t mean you’re not a leader. You need to keep being a leader,’” Stammen recounted. “And so that stuck with me. That’s honestly probably why I viewed that as something I could do as a relief pitcher. Because just because you’re not the shortstop or you’re not the best player on the team doesn’t mean you can’t be a leader. And so I’ve always remembered that, and that was a small influence that he had on me.”
Stammen credited basketball coach Roger McEldowney with inspiring him to get better at a sport he was pretty much playing just to play.
“The challenge of being good at something you’re not great at was very beneficial,” Stammen said. “And then, like, part of that was being a leader on that team, even though I wasn’t the best player.”
His senior season in basketball, Stammen won the Tiger Award, which he described as the award for when “you’re not that good, but you’re a great teammate.”
Craig knows his new job will do its best to overwhelm him at various points, as it does all men who take it on.
“I’m enjoying the challenge of it,” he said. “It has turned me on to the same challenge it was to be a major league baseball player with my perceived lack of talent. And I think, this manager thing is almost the same thing, because, you know, former pitcher, reliever, hasn’t coached ever. So I have that, like, ‘lack of talent’ and I will try to prove that I can do a good job.”