The Mystery of Chris Sabo: Secret Hawkeye?

 I'm in the process of digging through coaching staffs of the Iowa professional baseball teams (i.e. Iowa Cubs, Waterloo Bucks, etc.)  I also try to collect at least one card of every player who played for those teams.  I am force feeding my brain tons of new name to remember when digging through cards, and sometimes I'll cross some streams and get confused.  Which brings me to Chris Sabo.

I have recently processed the major leaguers for Clarinda and Waterloo, while also finishing up coaches for teams and I ran into a Chris Sabo card.  Chris Sabo, for those of you who don't know him, was the third baseman for the Cincinnati Reds during their 1990 World Series year, and the guy who made googles on the field cool.

I had his name in my head, and I thought maybe it had been on one of those Iowa Connections.  I remembered he played for Cedar Rapids, perhaps he coached there as well.  So I went to Google and typed "Chris Sabo ".  My heart skips a beat now when Google suggests what I want to see...."Chris Sabo Iowa".  I had just recently found a Turk Wendell connection this way, and was excited to see what I'd find here.

What I found was questions.  Well, kind of.  See, most of the results tell the same story.  Chris Sabo was born in Michigan and played for the Michigan Wolverines before being drafted by the Reds.  He played in Cedar Rapids, through the rest of the Reds minor leagues, to the pros where he won a World Series with the Reds, played a few more years, retired, and coached a bit.  Where was Iowa?

Typically, Iowa wouldn't show up for a Google suggestion unless it is in a result.  Cedar Rapids, while in Iowa, does not trigger that.  None of his coaching stints were with Iowa teams.  However, oddly the Akron Zips page for him (he was head coach there) was towards the top.  Why?  

The article was from when he became the coach in 2018.  It described the same things as I described early, more in depth on his college years at Michigan (1st All-American, College World Series, etc).  However, at the bottom of the page was this:

Chris Sabo went to the University of Iowa?   That's great!  Now, as a good adequate fake  journalist with a blog, I should second source this.  You know what though, I can not find a second source.  Not on his LinkedIn page, nor his Facebook, nor BaseballReference, nor Wikipedia, just not to be found.

Why not?  I have theories:

1.    He didn't play baseball there, so no one cares

2.    He didn't earn a degree there, so no one cares

3.    He didn't like his time there, so no one cares

4.    Akron copied from somewhere else and forgot to fix it, and no one cares

Well, I care. 

Here's the story I want to believe. Chris Sabo was drafted out of  Michigan before he graduated.  So, during his off seasons he went to Iowa to get a few more classes towards his degree.  Why Iowa?  Because his time in Cedar Rapids was so awesome.

Chris Sabo, great ball player, with an eye towards his education and making himself better, and better yet, an Iowa Connection.