A Warning

Name: Tim Crews

Card Company: Fleer

Year: 1990

Team: Los Angeles Dodgers

Bats/Throws: R

Ht: 6'0

Most of the time when I come on here to write about pitchers who never panned out, it’s because they had injuries or some other form of bad luck. But not this time, this time it’s because of something that is completely preventable. But before I get to that I’ll talk about the career of Tim Crews, a relief pitcher that played 6 years with the Dodgers. And like many other relief pitchers before him he was looked over because he wasn’t the closer.

Tim Crews was selected by the Milwaukee Brewers in the 2nd round of the 1981 free agent draft. He would then proceed to get traded to the Dodgers after struggling in the upper levels of the Brewers farm system. But in 1987 he would make his Dodger debut pitching in 20 games with a 2.48 ERA and nailed down 3 saves. And in 1988 Crews would join a dominant Dodger bullpen that included the likes of Jesse Orosco, Brian Holton, Alejandro Pena and Jay Howell, which helped the Dodgers win the 1988 World Series. And over the next four seasons with the Dodgers he would go on to post a 3.59 ERA while pitching 323 innings.

Like many relief pitchers Tim Crews loved to pitch, because you have to love pitching if you’re in the bullpen. You see bullpen pitching is kind of a messed-up scenario, you pitch in nearly twice the amount of games for a fraction of the pay. In 1990 Fernando Valenzuela pitched in 33 games as a starter for the Dodgers earning $2,000,000. That same year Tim Crews pitched in 66 games earning only $215,000. Now as we all know starters generally throw more innings and is a more glamorous position so that’s why they get payed more. Bill Plaschke of the LA Times once said about Crews, “he pitched in blowouts; he pitched in both games of a doubleheader; he pitched every other day; he pitched despite vomiting on the mound; he pitched until his arm grew sore, then he lied about it and pitched some more.” Players like Tim Crews are hard to find, but when you find them you don’t want to let them go. However, after a disappointing 1992 season Crews would be allowed to hit free agency for the first time in his career. He would eventually sign with the Cleveland Indians on January 22nd, 1993.

Now here’s the part where I usually talk about how a player’s career never took off with another team due to injuries or some other form of bad luck. But Crews career never began, much less take off with the Indians. And it wasn’t because he was cut or because of some nagging shoulder injury, it was because of drunken

carelessness. On March 22nd, 1993 Tim Crews, along with Steve Olin and Bob Ojeda were involved a boating accident that claimed the lives of both Crews and Olin. It was discovered some time after the accident that Crews had a blood alcohol level of .14 nearly twice the legal limit. Ojeda the lone survivor said in an interview with the Desert News that “Tim Crews was the safest boatman I know, the safest, most cautious guy I know”. I don’t want to talk ill of the dead here, so I’m not going to drag this out much longer. But in less 4 than years we have seen three incidents so eerily similar to this one. Oscar Tavares died in 2014 driving drunk in the Dominican Republic, Jose Fernandez died in 2016 after he crashed his boat in Florida under similar circumstances as Crews. And most recently Yordano Ventura died when he crashed his car driving in the Dominican Republic, no toxicology report has been released yet.

It’s a damn shame really that athletes today don’t heed the warnings of these past tragedies and instead choose to take these unnecessary risks. It doesn’t matter if the person you are entrusting your life with is the safest person you know or not, if they are drunk they are drunk no two ways about it. This isn’t to take away from what Crews accomplished in his career, but what he did that day was selfish and he wasn’t a selfish man. Who knows what Crews might have been able to accomplish in Cleveland had this tragedy not taken place. It just goes to show that anybody can make a mistake, but know that any mistake has the chance to be fatal.

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