SEASON IN THE SUN
Uconn slugger and pitcher Reggie Crawford a potential top MLB pick after breakthrough summer
The summer of Reggie Crawford began early with a blast. A 450-foot home run vs. Seton Hall on May 21, in one of the first chances for Connecticut fans to see him at the new Elliot Ballpark. Then Crawford, a lefty hitter, finished the college season with two homers for Uconn in the NCAA tournament on June 6. On to the Cape Cod League, where Crawford, pitching regularly, hit 101 mph on the radar gun on June 28. Scouts and agents began flocking to his games with the Bourne Braves.
Finally, Crawford moved on to North Carolina with USA Baseball’s collegiate team, where he struck out eight in four innings, culminating the tour with a scoreless inning July 19 against the U.S. Olympic team, leaving its experienced pros shaking their heads and raving about the best arm they’d seen all year.
“Holy cow,” said Jerry Weinstein, a former Yard Goats manager, who was coaching with USA Baseball this summer. “He’s unbelievable. Super athletic, electric stuff, three well-above average big league pitches, curve ball, slider and fastball. He was the best arm in that camp, for me, and the best prospect in that camp, for me. … If he stays healthy, I would be very surprised if he were not in the first five guys picked [in the 2021-2022 MLB draft].”
As Crawford’s breakout summer ends, he is back at Storrs, training for a fall season and a final, full regular season that could bring a new level of attention to Uconn baseball. The plan is for Crawford to
pitch on Sundays, and play first base or DH the rest of the week.
“He could be the face of college baseball next year,” Penders said. “He’s just so full of positivity and drive, and he has fun. He knows how to enjoy people and have people enjoy him. It’s just an innate ability. He has a magnetism. It’s like a moth to a flame. People are just drawn to him, it’s very rare.”
Pursuing the major leagues as both a pitcher and slugger is rare but, thanks to Shohei Ohtani, no longer far-fetched.
“As of right now, I have no idea what the future looks like,” Crawford says, “but I’m going to just keep rolling with both and see how it works.”
Natural ballplayer
The moment Crawford was given a tiny, toy bat by his uncle Frank Vernusky during a visit in San Francisco, he seemed a natural for baseball.
“One of the little baseball bats you’d get at a minor league game and some tennis balls,” Crawford says. “I was maybe 3, or 3 ½. I was crushing them.”
Crawford, now 6 feet 4 and 235 pounds with hands big enough to devour a baseball, was smaller than the other kids around Frackville, Pennsylvania, where he grew up with two younger sisters. He played multiple sports but focused on swimming with its early morning and late-night work.
“Swimming is what took off, and I thought that would be my ticket to a college scholarship,” Crawford says. “I will never, ever do anything in my life that’s as hard as swimming. It’s a mentally draining and exhausting sport, which I think makes me mentally tough today.”
He also continued with swimming because it was “the cheaper route.” Travel baseball gets pricey. After his junior year of high school, college recruiters started coming around, urging Crawford to go all in on baseball.
“Being a single mother, it was definitely hard,” says Cathy Crawford, a substitute teacher and track coach. “We had a lot of contributors, and I attribute a lot to my brother. He put a lot of money in to help do things with him. … I always knew he was strong, but I couldn’t afford the $300 lessons people were getting since they were 10 years old, which I don’t regret because his arm doesn’t have the wear that a lot of pitchers have.”
As a senior at North Schuylkill High, Crawford hit .482 with eight homers and 39 RBIS in 26 games and struck out 49 batters in 33 innings on the mound. The Royals drafted him in the 37th round, but by then he was sure Uconn was the right place.
“I don’t know what he is,” Uconn pitching coach Josh Macdonald told Penders, “but we’ve got to have him.”
The Huskies coaches were on him early. He committed before even meeting Penders face-to-face.
“When we did our first visit to Uconn, in my heart, I knew that’s where he was going togo ,” cathy crawford says .“The campus, the coaches, I knew Reggie’s personality and that suited him perfectly. I made sure that he saw inner-city schools, suburban schools, so he could see for himself.”
Electric personality
Crawford arrived at Uconn during interesting times. His freshman season was cut short due to COVID-19, and his sophomore season was disrupted by it. Over the two seasons, he pitched only eight innings, striking out 17, but it was clear that the lightning in his bat and electricity in his arm was accompanied by an engaging, large-as-life personality. He naturally draws in teammates, coaches and fans close.
“He was born with that personality,” his mother says. “When he was a baby, he was probably about two months old, we were in a store, and this woman comes over to me and said, ‘Your son is just so adorable, I just had to buy this for him.’ In kindergarten, the teacher told me once, ‘We had some trouble today, the boys were crying because they all wanted to walk with him when we went to the park.’ ”
After Uconn games, the line of youngsters seeking autographs is always the longest for Crawford, who is already getting stuff to sign in the mail.
“The Reading Phillies were the closest minor league team to me, and I’d go and sit behind the fence, ‘Can I have a bat? … Can I have a ball?’ So I would never turn my back,” Crawford says. “If somebody sends something in the mail, I’ll always sign and send it back. It helps me stay humble, and appreciate the situation I’m in right now.”
Double duty
Crawford describes himself as a “low heart rate player,” calm at bat and in the field, but he found himself getting amped up on the mound this summer. Crawford’s raw power would make him a pro prospect of some significance if all he did was hit. But a lefthander who throws 100 mph? That’s the skill that could make him the highest drafted player in Uconn history.
They’re different disciplines, and for most of baseball’s 150-year history, it has been conventional wisdom that no one can put in enough time and work to master both hitting and pitching at the major league level.
Babe Ruth did both successfully but transitioned from pitcher to slugger, getting significant plate appearances and innings pitched in the same season only in 1918 and ’19. This season, Ohtani, 27, has 40 homers and an 8-1 record in 18 starts for the Los Angeles Angels.
“After the college season I didn’t even know what I wanted to do, how to go about pitching and hitting,” Crawford said. “To know Ohtani’s doing it at the highest level, and doing it well, I would ask him how he keeps his body in such good shape to be able to go out and do it over and over again, because it’s draining.”
Weinstein, who was Team USA’S bench coach in the Tokyo Olympics and is a roving instructor with the Colorado Rockies, sees Crawford as a top-five pick based solely on his pitching.
“The [two-way] concept is alive and well in professional baseball, but there are 750 players in major league baseball,” Weinstein says. “There’s only one Ohtani.”
Crawford will get a rare opportunity to showcase both at Uconn. His hope is to be drafted by a team that will let him try to do both until it becomes obvious where his future is. What he knows after the summer of 2021 is that a world of possibilities awaits.
“It was a fun and eventful summer,” Crawford says. “This summer definitely was an eye opener for me, and I think it opened a lot of people’s eyes. And now have some goals and dreams for the team and the draft. It’s an exciting time.”