Crawford hits power surge

You can tell quite a lot about a baseball player by his walk-out song—the music he chooses to walk to the plate with.

If you hang around the ballpark long enough, you can hear it all: heavy metal, country, rap or something just plain silly. The music is intended to get the hitter relaxed and ready to do his job.

When Mission Valley Mariners first baseman Jeremiah Crawford steps to the plate, Waylon Jennings comes on the loudspeaker.

“Just the good ol’ boys, never meaning no harm,” Jennings purrs in his Texas twang.

And that’s Jeremiah Crawford in a nutshell. Relaxed. Loose. The quintessential quiet strength every team wants in its cleanup spot.

“He’s kind of like your papa bear,” said Mariners coach Jami Hanson. “… He’s a great teammate. He’s always talking to the kids and building them up.”

In his first year with the Mariners, Crawford has been a welcome addition to the heart of the M’s order. His 10 home runs is tops on the team heading into next week’s district tournament in Eureka. The Plains native also leads the team in RBI and boasts an anything-but-ignominous .730 slugging percentage.

Crawford said Hanson’s coaching has made a world of difference in his ability to hit the baseball.

“He’s a strong kid and he makes good contact,” Hanson said. “We’ve just been focusing on him swinging down on a baseball to get that backspin on the ball.”

Apparently the coaching caught on.

Prior to this summer, Crawford played with the Babe Ruth league Mission Valley Rockies, a program that hasn’t enjoyed quite the same success as the Mariners.

“I just wanted to play for a better program,” Crawford said. “… I’ve known all these guys. I pretty much just wanted to play with my friends again.”

His move paid off in his ability to get to the next level as well. Crawford will be going to Glendive in the fall to play baseball for Dawson Community College. He hopes to study welding at Dawson.

“I wanted to go to an institution after high school where I could play baseball,” Crawford said.

Crawford went to Glendive this spring to work out for Buccaneers head coach Aaron Carroll, who was impressed with what he saw.

“He’s got good mechanics and tremendous pop,” Carroll said. “I think he’s got a lot of potential to be a really good college hitter.”

Crawford will join two former Mariners, Jack Humphreys of Ronan and Jacob Young of Polson at Dawson. Current Mariners seniors Kellen Hoyt, T.J. Olson and Bradley Pichler will be joining Crawford on the Buccaneers’ 2014 squad.

“It will be pretty sweet,” Crawford said of playing college ball with his current teammates. “We already have a bond.”

Dawson competes as a National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) Division II school in the Mon-Dak Conference. After his two years in junior college, Crawford said he would like to transfer to a four-year school if he can continue playing baseball.

Carroll said Crawford has as good a chance as anybody to start come springtime but that it’s really too early to tell.

“Everybody’s in the running in the fall,” Carroll said.

Another developing part of Crawford’s game—and one that Carroll plans to use at Dawson—is on the mound.

After some rough outings early in the year, he has picked up wins in his last two appearances.

“I just tell him to throw as hard as he can for as long as he can,” Hanson said. The skipper added that Crawford has really gotten control of his splitfinger fastball, enabling him to get a lot more groundouts than he had before.

Hanson has been impressed with Crawford as a person as well as a player.

“You see his character off the field,” Hanson said. “He’s a funny kid. He’s also somebody that will say something if there’s something wrong.”

Crawford, one of eight siblings, admires the way that Hanson generates team chemistry.

“We are a family as a team,” he said. “We do a lot of stuff as a team, and he’s always there for us.”