Talkin’ Baseball<\/a>. “He was 12, I was 11. We didn’t race again. I wanted that race when we got a little older.”<\/p>\nCrawford was a four-time MLB All-Star and is regarded as one of the greatest players in Tampa Bay Rays history. In addition to his baseball achievements, he excelled as a football and basketball star at Jefferson Davis High School (now Northside High School). He was a dual recruit for both the Nebraska Cornhuskers football program and the UCLA Bruins basketball team.<\/p>\n
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Carl Crawford is widely regarded as one of the greatest athletes in Houston sports history. Crawford held scholarship offers to play for major colleges across three sports, including football, basketball and baseball. Crawford would end up drafted by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in the second round of the 1999 Major League Baseball draft.<\/p>\n
Houston Chronicle<\/p>\n
Crawford claims he was like Michael Vick before Vick became famous on the football field. Bourn notes that Crawford had a shooting style similar to that of a left-handed Kobe Bryant. However, baseball was Crawford\u2019s true passion and first love. Bourn and his family played a significant role in shaping Crawford’s journey.<\/p>\n
Crawford’s earliest sports memories come from the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Houston’s Irvington Street location, where he spent countless hours on summer days playing with a soccer ball, a football, and a baseball bat.<\/p>\n
“I just love staying busy,” Crawford said. “I kind of went from soccer one year to basketball the next year and football and baseball and so on and so on.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Baseball quickly became Crawford’s preferred sport, and he played his first organized games as a youth player on a Salvation Army team. Crawford’s talent was superb. His support was lacking. The shirt and pants of Crawford’s jersey didn’t match. His glove was thin and old, and his cleats didn’t always fit. Crawford, in many ways, began as a diamond in the rough. He was found, then polished by Raymond Bourn, Michael’s father. The rest is baseball history.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“My daddy actually saw him play cause he came over to play in our Little League, but his team, he played with, was the Salvation Army,” Michael Bourn said. “He said he liked the sound of the ball off [Crawford’s] bat and made sure he got in touch with him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“So one day my daddy pulled up in a GMC truck, red truck, a little pickup truck, and we picked up Carl. He was with us all the time from there.”<\/p>\n
Crawford was moved from the Salvation Army team to a club managed by\u00a0Raymond\u00a0shortly after their first meeting. Michael and Carl quickly became inseparable, dominating the local Little League circuit as two outstanding talents. They were not only skilled players but also disciplined and focused youngsters eager to reach their full potential, with Raymond serving as an emotional support system. Michael explains that his dad became something of a “second father” to Crawford, who grew up in a single-parent home. Life lessons were imparted on the practice field, in the car, and at the dinner table.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Raymond instilled habits that allowed Crawford’s talent to shine. His teachings stayed with Crawford throughout his career, and decades later, his commitment to excellence impressed Bourn.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Carl Crawford was a four-time All-Star while playing 15 seasons with the Tampa Bay Rays, Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers. Crawford was induced into the Rays Hall of Fame in 2023.<\/p>\n
“He would go to sleep at 8 [p.m.] every night and wake up at 5 [a.m.] every morning, and make this juice. Some kind of vegetable juice. And if you weren’t awake yet, you’d hear that grinder and you’d get awake.” Bourn said, recalling Crawford’s offseason training regimen. “I think I’ve seen him go to the club like twice, and that was when we were Arizona. And Arizona is a party place, you know? He was just very, very disciplined. Offseasons, weekends, whatever. I never seen him going out like that.”<\/p>\n
Crawford’s playing career ended in 2016. He’s remained a public face in Houston in subsequent years, most notably as the founder of music label 1501 Certified\u00a0Entertainment (which initially signed rapper Megan Thee Stallion in 2021). Crawford, who says he “wants to always keep moving,” is proud of the music career he’s built from the ground up. He’s even prouder of another milestone.<\/p>\n
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Crawford’s son, Justin Crawford, is now an MLB outfielder himself, an emerging young talent for the Philadelphia Phillies. Carl rose from a shaky foundation as a youth to become a Major League Star. He worked tirelessly to provide a stronger footing for his son, a left-handed-hitting speedster just like his dad. Crawford has a stacked career trophy case. He says a March day in Philadelphia was his greatest achievement yet.<\/p>\n
![\"Justin]()
<\/p>\n
Justin Crawford poses with his father Carl after he was picked 17th by the Philadelphia Phillies during the 2022 MLB Draft.<\/p>\n
Kevork Djansezian\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
“As a Black player coming up, we all know about Ken Griffey Jr. and his daddy’s story,” Crawford said. “We all have kids when we’re young in the Major Leagues, and that was something always in my mind, like, ‘man, I’d love to have that, too. That bloodline story in baseball.<\/p>\n
“So being there, [Opening Day] for the Phillies this year, it’s a cool thing. I now to see the stuff I saw as a youngster.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The Crawford name is now famous across Major League Baseball. Carl is a retired Rays legend. His son is a rising outfielder in Philadelphia, and Carl’s cousin,\u00a0J.P. Crawford, is a shortstop for the Seattle Mariners. The family’s legacy is secure, with the Crawford name expected to remain in Major League Baseball into the 2030s. That legacy wouldn’t begin without the guidance and friendship of the Bourn family, and the grass fields in the Fifth Ward where Carl and Michael raced a generation ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a summer day in the 1990s, two future MLB All-Stars lined up side by side on a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265904,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[90778,16469,1704,85744,99423,56,58,57],"class_list":{"0":"post-265903","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-chronhighschool","9":"tag-chronsports","10":"tag-chronstaff","11":"tag-chrontexas","12":"tag-chrontexaslegends","13":"tag-houston","14":"tag-houston-headlines","15":"tag-houston-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}