Sam Crane (19th century baseball player)

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Samuel Newhall Crane (January 2, 1854 - June 26, 1925) was a 19th-century major league baseball player and manager born in Springfield, Massachusetts. Sam played second base, for eight different teams, during his seven year career that spanned from 1880 to 1890.^[1] During two of those seasons, he acted as a player-manager, for the 1880 Buffalo Bisons of the American Association and the 1884 Cincinnati Outlaw Reds of the short-lived Union Association.^[2]

After his playing days, Sam had a long and distinguished career as a sportswriter. In 1895, when he was writing for the New York Advertiser, he had become the center of a controversy when he wrote an article that harshly criticized the owner of the New York Giants, Andrew Freedman. Freedman, upon learning of existence of the article, barred Sam from entering the Polo Grounds. When Crane showed up for the August 16 game, he learned that his season pass was taken and his efforts to purchase a ticket were foiled.^[3]

It was his connection to baseball as a player, manager, and sportswriter that lent credibility to his assertion that Cooperstown, New York be the location for a "memorial" to the great players from the past. Cooperstown was, at the time, many people believed that it was there that baseball was invented by Abner Doubleday. It was this idea of a memorial that eventually led to the creation of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939.^[4]

Sam died at the age of 71 of pneumonia^[5] in New York, New York, and is buried at the Lutheran All Faith Cemetery in Middle Village, New York.^[6]

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