St. Louis Cardinals head coach award Brandon Crawford for his good hard work.

St. Louis Cardinals head coach award Brandon Crawford for his good hard work.

An snippet of this tale appeared in John Denton’s Cardinals Beat newsletter. Go here to view the newsletter in its entirety. And sign up to receive it in your inbox on a regular basis.

Jupiter, Florida — Some 13 years ago, Brandon Crawford, a promising shortstop, was slapped with some heavy expectations that he had to commit to live up to for the duration of his MLB career, before he was permitted to don his first MLB uniform and the No. 35.

As a rising Minor Leaguer, Mike Murphy, the legendary longtime equipment manager for the San Francisco Giants, was a fixture of that team for almost 50 years and liked Crawford’s rugged, workmanlike style of play.

Murphy chose No. 35 for Crawford as his first and only MLB number since those were the digits. Rich Aurilia and Chris Speier

had on black and orange Giants apparel. Throughout his ten years with the Giants, Speier was scarcely a household name, but he was a model professional and a shortstop who could take a hit from an aging catcher’s mitt. Aurilia received a lot of the same accolades for maximizing his potential during his 1,292 games as a shortstop for San Francisco, the majority of which he played with the No. 35 jersey.

Born and raised in the heart of Giants Country in Mountain View, California, Crawford was already familiar with Speier’s tales and developed an intense admiration for Aurilia when the latter helped the Giants win the 2002 World Series. Murphy forced Crawford to swear that he would wear the No. 35 with pride and with honor at all times.

 

“In my opinion, it Crawford said of receiving the number last week, “It was the biggest compliment to me,” as he stood next to a No. 35 Cardinals jersey.

Crawford is still No. 35 and wants to honor the only number he has ever worn in Major League Baseball even if he is no longer a Giant. In his 13 seasons with the Giants, he made three All-Star teams, was a member of two World Series winning teams, and earned four Gold Gloves, making him perhaps the finest shortstop in franchise history. After an injury-plagued 2023, San Francisco parted ways with the 37-year-old Crawford this offseason, but he is keen to prove to the Cardinals that he still has a lot of game left in him.

Crawford claimed to have gotten “about a thousand” texts from rivals and former teammates after joining the Redbirds. Three were from former shortstops for the Cardinals and Giants, Ryan Theriot, Royce Clayton, and Shawon Dunston. Their overarching theme is this: Crawford will adore St. Louis because the city’s baseball fervor matches his own.

Crawford is keen to be a part of a St. Louis comeback narrative even if he is probably past the eighth inning of his career. He is with the Cardinals to try to help them move past a poor 2023, along with former NLCS foes Matt Carpenter and Lance Lynn. Crawford experienced a similar decline in both his offensive and defensive effectiveness the previous season. The former

A smooth-fielding shortstop ranked 140th out of 142 qualified shortstops in 2023 with -14 defensive runs saved, according to Fielding Bible.

Crawford claimed that the falloff was the result of his body betraying him after years of being so resilient. From 2012 to 2019, he participated in at least 140 games eight times in a row. As recently as 2021, he made an appearance in 138 games, hitting 24 home runs and placing fourth in the NL MVP voting.

The year 2023 saw him sidelined by a right calf strain, left knee inflammation, left forearm strain, and right hamstring strain.

He remarked, “I felt fine when spring arrived for a week, but then my knee started to hurt, so I had to take a two-week break.”

“I attempted to discover the groove in the final three or four spring games, and on Opening Day, it was Gerrit Cole.

“My calf injury occurred right after I felt better. Because there were so many injuries, I can’t even recall the order in which they occurred.”