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Russell Schneider

 

If sports are king in northeast Ohio, then sportswriters are the windows into the royalty.  And few have been able to paint as vivid a Cleveland sports landscape as Russell Schneider, and he did so in an era where the information was not nearly as accessible as it is now.  The route to getting there however, was filled with several detours.  Russell had two tours of duty in the United States Marine Corp and played minor league baseball briefly in 1949.  Once he got to the big stage of Cleveland sports writing though, Mr. Schneider was there to stay.  He was a Cleveland Plain Dealer sportswriter/sports columnist for nearly 30 years, from 1964 to 1993 covering the Indians, Browns and had a column titled “Plain Dealing”.   Following his departure from the Plain Dealer, Russell was anything but idle.  He spent ten years writing a bi-weekly column for the Sun Newspapers, and has written 14 books, including an encyclopedia published in 2013 called “Cleveland Indians Legends” totaling 630 pages.  Schneider is also a member of 5 sports hall of fames – Cleveland, Parma, West Tech High School, Sport Media of Cleveland and Ohio, and has been a resident of Seven Hills for over 42 years.