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Fred Crane (baseball)

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Fred Crane
First baseman
Born: November 4, 1840
Old Saybrook, Connecticut
Died: April 27, 1925(1925-04-27) (aged 84)
Brooklyn, New York
Batted: Unknown
Threw: Unknown
MLB debut
May 26, 1873, for the Elizabeth Resolutes
Last MLB appearance
June 23, 1875, for the Brooklyn Atlantics
MLB statistics
Batting average.212
Hits18
RBIs5
Teams
  National Association of Base Ball Players
Enterprise of Brooklyn (1861)
Brooklyn Atlantics (1862–1869)
Excelsior of Brooklyn (1866)
Alpha of Brooklyn (1870)
  National Association of Professional BBP
Elizabeth Resolutes (1873)
Brooklyn Atlantics (1875)

Frederic William Hotchkiss Crane (November 4, 1840 – April 27, 1925) played in Major League Baseball. Joining the Brooklyn Atlantics club in 1862 with teammates Joe Start and Jack Chapman from the Enterprise club, his best season was in 1865 when he scored 71 runs in 18 games (second, behind Start) for the undefeated champions. There is some indication that this Fred Crane was actually an entirely different person than the Fred Crane who played for Elizabeth and Brooklyn from 1873-75. At the time of his MLB debut in 1873, many people were excited thinking that it was the veteran Crane from the NABBP making a comeback however the Philadelphia Sunday Dispatch stated that it was "Not Fred Crane." The book Baseball Fever: Early Baseball in Michigan says that Crane was rumored to be heading to play for a club in Detroit, but it was later confirmed that he had retired in 1870. [1]

Sources[edit]


  1. ^ "Not Fred Crane", in Bill Carle, ed.: Biographical Research Committee Report, SABR, March/April 2024, pp. 1-2.