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Sam Crawford
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- For the Union general in the American Civil War, see Samuel W. Crawford
Samuel Earl Crawford (April 18 1880 – June 15 1968), nicknamed "Wahoo Sam", was an American right fielder in Major League Baseball who primarily played for the Detroit Tigers. He batted and threw left-handed, standing 6'0" tall and weighing 190 pounds. His nickname comes from his birthplace, Wahoo, Nebraska.
Contents
- 1 Professional playing career
- 2 Post professional career
- 3 See also
- 4 External links
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Professional playing career
Crawford played 19 big league seasons, starting his career in 1899 with the Cincinnati Reds, before jumping to the newly founded American League's Detroit Tigers in 1903, where he finished out his career.
Crawford twice led the major leagues in home runs, hitting 16 in
1901 and 7 in
1908. He still maintains the major league record for the most
inside-the-park home runs in a season with 12 in 1901, and the most in a career with 51.
Crawford also holds the career major league record for triples with 309, a record unlikely to be beaten given the difference in the style of baseball played in the modern era compared to that of the dead-ball era of Crawford. When he retired, he had a career batting average of .309. Crawford fell just short of the magical 3000 hit club, compiling 2961. There has been debate about whether Wahoo Sam deserves inclusion in the 3,000 hit club. Crawford maintained that the 87 hits he got in the Western League, which became the American League in 1900, were supposed to be included in his official total under the 1903 agreement between the two leagues.
He played twelve years in the same outfield with Ty Cobb, accompanying him to the 1907, 1908, and 1909 World Series, falling to Honus Wagner's Pittsburgh Pirates in 1909 in seven games.
Post professional career
In retirement, he became somewhat reclusive, staying away from official baseball functions. In 1962, he was interviewed by Lawrence Ritter for his book The Glory of Their Times, a series of interviews with the players of the early 20th Century. Crawford's tales of Tiger teammates such as Cobb, Cincinnati teammates like deaf player William "Dummy" Hoy, and opponents such as Wagner helped to make the book one of the most admired ever written about baseball.
He was selected by the Veteran's Committee to the
Baseball Hall of Fame in
1957. He was inducted into the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame in 1968. On his passing in
1968, Sam Crawford was interred in the
Inglewood Park Cemetery in
Inglewood, California. In
1999, he ranked Number 84 on
The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, and was nominated as a finalist for the
Major League Baseball All-Century Team.
See also
