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Sam Crawford

Baseball is an outdoor sport in which a pitcher pitches a hard, fist sized ball to the hitting area of a batter. The batter hits the hard ball with a tapered, smooth, cylindrical bat made up of wood or metal. The batsman scores by running counter-clockwise within the four markers called the bases arranged at the corners of a diamond. Baseball is sometimes called hardball to differentiate it from similar games such as softball.

Sam Crawford was born on April 18, 1880, in Wahoo, Nebraska. Crawford was 19 years old when he broke into the big leagues on September 10, 1899, with the Cincinnati Reds. His height was 6 foot with weight 190 pounds. He was died on 15 June 1968, Hollywood, California. Crawford is most famous for hitting triples, 312 of them over a 19-year career, first on the all-time list. The order is ironic because although the two were teammates, and often pulled off some uniquely synchronized double steals, the normally easy going Crawford despised the fiery Cobb.

Crawford was nicknamed Wahoo Sam after his birthplace, Wahoo, Nebraska. A former barber, Crawford started out with the Cincinnati Reds in 1899 and hit a then-astounding total of 16 HR in 1901. In 1903 he jumped to the Tigers and led the American League in triples with 25. In 1908, Crawford led the AL in homers with seven, and so became the only player in baseball history to lead both leagues in homers.

Once Cobb started winning batting titles regularly, fellow lefthanded hitter Crawford began to drive in more than 100 runs a season, leading the league three times in RBI in the 1910s. But, like Cobb, Crawford could find no success in the World Series. The duo's failures at the bat were the main reasons why the Tigers lost three straight Series in 1907, 1908, and 1909. Crawford's one shining World Series moment came in Game Five of the 1909 affair when he went 3 for 4 with a double and a homer, but the Tigers lost the game, 8-4, and the Series to Pittsburgh. Crawford ended his career 36 hits shy of 3,000 in 1917, then umpired in the Pacific Coast League for four years.

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