Samuel Newhall Crane:
Born: January 2, 1854, Springfield, MA
Died: June 26, 1925, Bronx, NY, age 71
d. developed pneumonia during Giants' western swing. Arrived home in Bronx, went right to bed, couldn't rally.
ML Player / New York sports writer;
Minor league manager, amateur player, 1875-82.
ML 2Bman, 1880 - 1890
New York Press, 1890-1898,
New York Journal, 1898-1925
New York sports writer; 37 years, 1888-1925;
Atlantic League president, 1895.
Considered best fielding 2B for his time. Famous for how loved he was by all.
(NY Journal, 1898-1925, at time, this paper had over 1 million readers, largest daily in US.)
Studied civil engineering at MIT for 2 years, ML 2B, 1893-1890, managed Buffalo in NL (1879-80) & Cincinnati (U, 1884). Old Atlantic League President (1895), New York Press sports writer (1890-98), NY Journal (1898-1925).
One of McGraw's closest friends, fought with him often. Made all road trips with Giants. Arguably most beloved sports writers of his day.
When Tim Murnane of Boston died February 7,1917, Crane became the new 'Dean of Sports Writers'. Knew many things due to his close proximity to McGraw, never was known to take advantage of it to "scoop" rival writers.
Wikipedia
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Excerpts from Baseball Magazine, April, 1918, 'The Dean of Baseball Writers, by F. C. Lane, pp. 475-476)
-----The Dean of Baseball Writers: How Old Sam Crane, of the New York Journal, Has Enjoyed a Richer, More Varied Experience Than Any Other Scribe in Baseball, by F. C. Lane-------------------------------------------------
The dean of American sport writers is Sam Crane. There died in Boston, last summer, the only man who could compete with him in length of baseball service. Yes, Tim Murname was the one person to challenge Sam's right to the laurels of his craft, and Tim has passed on to that bourn where "the box scores cease from troubling and the sport scribes are at rest."
Within Sam's single experience is embraced the entire history of Major League baseball. Before ever the National League emerged from the chaos of ill assorted ball clubs, and took its first feeble, tottering steps down the broadening road of profession ism, Sam was a rising young second baseman of undoubted ability, playing for money in the days when salaries in the field of sport were lean and few.
Many of us of the younger generation, look upon Wright and Barnes and Spaulding as vague names of an almost mythical age in baseball history. But to Sam Crane these names awake vivid recollections of those old heroes of the diamond, when they were in their prim, while they were still blazing the untrodden trail for the greatest sport the world has known. Sam has seen them all come, and the vast majority of them go. Where others laboriously turn the ancient dope sheets Sam looks into his inner consciousness, revives the faded memories of old time heroes, and pictures them as he knew them when they were in their prime.
Sam Crane occupies a peculiar position in the ranks of sport. We have had many writers who became prominent in baseball as owners, or officials. Charles Webb Murphy was once a newspaperman. So was Ed Barrow and Ban Johnson. Most of baseball's business managers and secretaries have been newspapermen. Yes, the link between the writer and the game is very, very strong. But Sam is the only prominent scribe whom we recall off hand, who was a famous player before he entered the field of journalism. In Sam's case, at least, the favorite route from the paper to the game has been reversed. He has led the way from the game to the paper.
Sam graduated from high school and for two years attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He studied electrical engineering but the attraction of the diamond was so strong that he soon entered the ranks of the ball player and never attempted to make any use of his scientific training.
In 1889 he was called upon to see what he could do as manager and took the helm of the Buffalo club then in the National League.
Sam didn't get on very well at Buffalo. "Those were lean years in baseball," he explains, "and I thought I would be better off in some other business. So I got a job traveling for an envelope company in Holyoke."
Sam kept this job for two years but in 1883 he joined the famous Metropolitan Club. The following season found him again a manager, this time at Cincinnati. . . . In 1888 he again tried his hand at managing, having secured the reins of power at Scranton.
Yes, he once filled that important role (League President), with the Old Atlantic League along in 1895. . . When 1890 had demonstrated the fact that Crane was through as a player he sought and obtained employment on the New York Press. At first he grew rather slowly into the unaccustomed task, but fully twenty years ago the New York Journal took him on and he has been with that paper ever since.
Baseball writers are divided roughly into two groups. One group hold their jobs through their known ability to write; the other through their proved experience and knowledge of the game. It is no disparagement to Crane's ability as a writer to say that he belongs in the latter class. Sufficient for him that he has the knack of expressing facts in a straightforward common sense way, well suited to the million old readers who peruse the sport sheet of the New York Journal. It is credit enough to say that a man has held a job as sport writer on the largest daily in the country for twenty years. That achievement, in the face of keen competition, speaks for itself.
But Crane's experience is unique, unparalleled. When he discusses baseball he is in a position to do it from every conceivable angle. His experience runs the gamut of things possible. He has been everything there is to be in the game from player to league president. And his experience embraces all Major League history.
. . . There are old timers who seem to take special pride in the fact that they are old timers. They conjure up forgotten facts about individuals who have long since passed from the stage of action, discant on their own vast experience in baseball, and the crudity and general ignorance of the younger generation. If some of these fossils who think they know it all realized how ridiculous they seem when making such remarks, they might act otherwise. But no shadow of such criticism could ever attach to Sam Crane.
With a fund of experience which must impress by its sheer vastness there is never a taint of that overbearing self satisfied quality about him. The one perhaps, most of all entitled to special consideration, he is the most modest of sport writers. Of all the multitude of baseball men, players, writers and owners that he has known it is a hundred to one shot that not a solitary enemy from that vast array could be called an enemy to Sam Crane. And literally a host of these men are glad to call him friend.
"Other men have made more of a success than I," said Sam recently, "I don't know why I haven't got along better. I guess perhaps I was always too backward about shoving myself ahead." Perhaps. But what is success? Charles Webb Murphy broke into baseball when Sam was already a fixture in the game and then broke out again with a smug, large fortune. Ban Johnson entered the arena long after Sam Crane had blazed the trail and became the most powerful figure in the sport. Others, many others, have held positions of more influence than any that ever came Crane's way. Others, many others perhaps, have amassed more wealth, than he can call his own. But if true success is measured in full, rich experience, in knowledge of a life's career well spent, in absence of enmity and multitude of friends, then we know no sport writer more genuinely successful than old Sam Crane.
His kindly face, with its drooping white mustache is known to thousands. His tall, dignified presence, his freedom from all snobbishness, his accommodating ways, the unconsciousness friendliness for all which shown forth, from his eyes are familiar features of the Polo Ground press box. And may they continue to be such for many years to come. (end of excerpts) (Baseball Magazine, April, 1918, 'The Dean of Baseball Writers, by F. C. Lane, pp. 475-476)
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New York City Sports Writers, 1911: Polo Grounds---------------------------------------------------------------------------------March 11, 1922,
Sam Crane is seated at the far left. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------next to Mrs. Blanche McGraw.
New York Times' Obituary, June 27, 1925, pp. 8.---------------Sporting News' Obituary,-----------------------New York Herald-Tribune Obituary, July 27, 1925.
----------------------------------------------------------------------July 2, 1925, pp. 4, col.1
