Reggie Crawford’s baseball journey began where it has taken him: in San Francisco.
As a preschooler, Crawford and his family visited his uncle, Frank Vernusky. Most of his family is condensed in central Pennsylvania. But not Vernusky, who lived in the Presidio at the time.
The Crawfords went to a Giants game and Little Reggie got his hands on a miniature, 12-inch wooden bat. When they got back to Vernusky’s front lawn, by the garage, it was the first bat he ever picked up.
“I’m like, ‘I don’t know if he can really hit a tennis ball,’” Vernusky said. “He was probably three or four. I’m a physical therapist, so I’m thinking developmentally, three or four is probably a little young.”
Vernusky backed up about 10 feet and started lobbing tennis balls toward Crawford. They came back as line drive after line drive for the next 30 minutes, some pelting houses across the street.
“I’m just standing there with my mouth hanging open,” Vernusky said. “Like, this can’t be real.”
It was real, alright.
Crawford was a natural, but didn’t fully commit to baseball until his junior year of high school. He had prodigal hand-eye coordination, but didn’t become the hulking figure he is today until a late-blooming growth spurt. In college he was headed for stardom, but Tommy John surgery sidelined him and allowed the Giants to select him with the 30th overall pick in the 2022 amateur draft. Through it all, he’s complemented what he can do on the diamond with a personality beyond his years.
Equal parts physically and psychologically gifted, Crawford, 21, enters his first winter in the Giants offseason program brimming with potential. How he got to this point — as a two-way player already ranked eighth in San Francisco’s farm system — was neither easy nor traditional.
Until his junior year of high school, Crawford was a swimmer. A state champion in the 50-meter freestyle, he dedicated 12 months of the year to the lanes. To countless early mornings in the water.
He and his older sister, Caylah, started swimming at five years old — two hours a day, five days a week.
Crawford thought competitive swimming was his ticket to college, so he committed to it even though he didn’t like the sport. Vernusky remembers his nephew pushing himself just enough to win races, but never chasing record times.
Unlike the isolating nature of swimming, Crawford gravitated toward baseball. He loved the field, the summer weather, the camaraderie with teammates. Only like most players who grow up in the northeast, he couldn’t play year-round. There was no way he could get as many reps as other hopeful baseball prospects.
When he was 16, entering his junior year at North Schuylkill High School, Crawford sprouted up a few inches. He filled out. Before then, Vernusky recalls, he was about average height.
That’s also when Crawford decided to drop swimming and focus only on baseball.
“There was a big argument between the swim coach and the baseball coaches,” Crawford’s mom Cathy said.
Even though his experience was relatively limited, Crawford excelled. He earned an invite to the Area Code Games and East Coast Pro tournament in 2018. Scouts started to line chain-link fences. He was making a name for himself just off pure talent.
“I had no clue what I was doing,” Crawford said. “I’d get on the mound and I’d throw the ball. I’d get in the box and I’d swing the bat. That’s all there was to it.”
He didn’t need to have a clue to star.
It was Aug. 17, and Crawford’s pearly white smile lit up the Oracle Park dugout. For the first time since signing his $2.3 million bonus, he could really feel like a big leaguer. He introduced himself to local reporters, front office brass, coaches and Giants staffers.
“There’s two things that really grab your attention immediately upon meeting him,” UConn coach Jim Penders said. “His smile is probably one of the most legendary on the planet — he’s just got a great smile, and it’s readily available. Big, friendly guy. The thing I’ll never forget is shaking his hand for the first time. You feel like you’re not of the same species because his hands are just enormous.”
Not only did Crawford have a locker in the Giants’ clubhouse, not only did he take on-field batting practice at Oracle Park, not only did he meet Joc Pederson and Logan Webb, but Crawford was about to face live pitching for the first time since his left elbow gave out on him on Oct. 16, 2021.
Ask Crawford about his Tommy John recovery and he starts to sound like the posters that might line the wall of any physical therapy room rehabbing athletes spend so much time in. But his poise — the cadence with which he speaks, the confidence of his stream of consciousness — prevent the platitudes from feeling cliché.
“In life, things are not going to work the way you want them to work all the time. When you realize that, it make things so much easier.”
“Ultimately, there’s nothing at all that I could do to go back in time to change that, right? So who would I be to beat myself up for that?”
“This happened. This is real life. There’s no going back. What can I do now to make sure that in 15 months, I’m going to be five times as good as I was before this injury?”
“I go in every single day with a plan, and it’s like I’m going to maximize this as much as possible. When I know I have to do A, B, C in a day, I know I’m going to do A, B, C as well as I possibly can. And it’s just day-by-day.”
Crawford meditates and listens to mindfulness podcasts like “The Mindset Mentor,” daily. He surfs Youtube to find parasocial mentors — in business, sports and otherwise — like Kobe Bryant to draw inspiration from.
He and Penders are convinced Crawford’s background in swimming — all those hours confined inside white walls in the water — helped him refine his mental muscles, which showed during his recovery.
Crawford never missed a rehab session, Penders said. Penders called him “Reggie Regimen” because of his meticulous habits and attention to detail.
“He is extraordinarily disciplined,” Penders said. “He’s not a partier. He’s very predictable. You could set your watch to him. He’s getting a lift in first thing in the morning, he only puts good things into his body, he’s very dedicated to his nutrition.”
More than anything, his advanced perspective ultimately comes from his family.
In Frackville, PA, population short of 4,000 and median income of around $30,000, the Crawfords didn’t have much. Crawford’s mother, Cathy, is a physical education teacher. As a single mom, she raised Reggie and his two sisters for most of their lives.
When Cathy sent Crawford to Connecticut for college, she let him take her car. That meant she had to find ways to get to school every morning on time.
There were travel baseball teams Crawford couldn’t play in because they were too expensive. Things weren’t always comfortable.
“I’m not someone who comes from money at all,” Crawford said. “And that was something that really weighed heavily on my family growing up. Whether it be the fact that I couldn’t experience things all my friends are able to, or I can’t go to this or that, or go to all these tournaments or play on a team I want to. I know the kind of effect that had on my family. Even like Christmas time — that’s something in many families, not just mine.”
Cathy said her son has always been mature, always someone who befriends everyone and is always a strong judge of character.
“As talented as I think he is, and as much as I’m betting on his talent, it was just as easy to bet on the person,” Giants scouting director Michael Holmes told The Athletic.
One memory that encapsulates Crawford’s personality immediately comes to his uncle’s mind.
Crawford was 12, playing his last year of Little League. He and his uncle were in a batting cage practicing when a couple kids around his age began teasing a younger kid. Crawford saw the scene unfold out of the corner of his eye, the bullies stealing the victim’s hat and taunting him.
“Reggie actually said, ‘Hey Frank, I want to go see if this kid’s okay,’” Vernusky said. “Went over, talked to the two kids, took the hat from the two kids, gave it back to the eight year old kid and had a conversation with the 12 year old kids and then left. That’s been Reggie.”
Crawford didn’t need money to develop a strong moral compass — at 12 or 21. Now with a seven-figure signing bonus, Crawford knows for certain what he always thought: money doesn’t buy happiness.
But it does afford him security — and a 2022 Toyota Tundra — so he can take care of anything that might pop up with his family. He can support his support system.
“It definitely does take many worries off your mind,” Crawford said. “I’d say that’s the biggest thing. I still go about my business the way I would originally.”
Now Crawford is roughly the same size as George Kittle. When he last pitched for UConn in 2021, he routinely touched triple digits on his fastball. During his Oracle Park BP session, he socked line drive after line drive — just like he was back in Vernusky’s Presidio driveway.
In his best — and only full — season at UConn, Crawford hit .295 with 13 home runs in 51 games. That year, he made six relief appearances, striking out 17 in 7.2 innings.
In the Cape Cod Baseball League the summer after that college season, radar guns clocked Crawford’s fastball at 102 mph. But then his injury stole his junior year from him.
“I think if he did get a chance to play, he could have gone in the top couple picks,” Penders said. “His talent is that extraordinary.”
This fall, Crawford got a place down in Scottsdale, near the Giants’ new Papago training facility, and is currently with other prospects in San Francisco for Oracle Camp.
Tommy John complicates Crawford’s offseason training, but he has been throwing bullpens on and off since the draft. While he said his arm has felt physically 100% for months, Crawford still hasn’t ramped up to full intensity throwing.
For now, Crawford will continue working both on pitching and hitting. Perhaps one day the time will come when he’ll have to choose one position or the other, but the game will dictate that for him, Penders said.
Crawford’s development is still in its infancy. Penders and Crawford joked that he could count on one hand the amount of times he’s had to pitch with a runner on second; Baseball-Reference has eight total innings on the record for Crawford.
That inexperience may help in the long run, as his power left arm has hardly any miles on it.
“He’s just scratching the surface as a baseball player and as a pitcher,” Penderson said.
The experience will come for Crawford, and it’ll start at the entry-level in the Giants organization. There’s still a long road to the big leagues ahead for Crawford. But he’s built to have the inside track.