Inside those lines

If Robert Louis Stevenson were writing today, the Mission Valley Mariners could be easily convinced that the plot from the “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” came straight from one of their own.

Off the mound, pitcher Nick Crawford is a soft-spoken, shy, almost introverted, young man.

On the mound, though, Crawford is a whole different animal.

“He’s got he mental capacity to go up against anybody,” said Mariners manager Jami Hanson. “What he’s going to try and do is strike you out.”

Crawford, has an explanation for that.

“There’s this feeling I get when I strike somebody out and walk off the field,” Crawford said. “[Assistant coach] John [Rausch] always tells me to hustle, but I walk off the field. I walk off not because I’m lazy but because it’s an adrenaline rush I don’t get anywhere else. That’s the reason I pitch. That’s the reason I play baseball.”

Crawford will be heading to Columbia Basin College in Pasco, Wash. this fall to continue a career that has developed splendidly during his past three summers in a Mariners uniform.

“They have pretty nice facilities and they’ve won a lot,” Crawford said of the two-year school. It also happens that the Hawks’ program has been a consistent feeder for major college baseball programs.

They have even sent players to perennial powers like North Carolina State, Washington State and Oregon State, and seen numerous alumni get drafted into pro baseball. Hanson thinks Crawford’s potential is on par with those players.

“He has that mentality,” Hanson said. “You get him throwing consistently at 90 to 91, why wouldn’t you take him? He’s consistent. He’s all around the zone. He’s able to spot up a couple pitch locations that I really want him to work on, and if he can do that, I think he can be untouchable.”

Untouchable.

“I nicknamed him ‘the toolshed’ a long time ago, and everybody thought that was funny,” Hanson continued. “But that wasn’t what I meant. The reason why is the kid has all the tools that are needed to play at the next level. ... He has the tools needed to get the job done.”

That sort of confidence is something Crawford said he’s learned from Hanson, especially in the coach’s confidence to give him the ball for last summer’s regional championship game in Burley, Idaho.

“For me to pitch that championship game, being a year younger than everybody on the team [that started seven seniors], made me feel like he had confidence in me,” Crawford said. “That gave me confidence in myself.”

The Mariners won the regional by a score of 6-2 thanks to a sparkling performance from the right-hander. He took a shutout into the ninth inning and earned the complete-game victory.

That was last season, though. This year, Crawford added a cut fastball to his already potent arsenal of four-seam and two-seam heaters that clock in the mid-to-high 80s and a 12-to-6 curve.

He compiled a 6-2 record and an earned run average under two in 52 1/3 innings pitched.

“I feel like I’ve got a lot better control,” he said. “I’ve walked a lot less people and hit a lot less batters. Back when you’re younger, you can just throw it hard down the middle. This year I feel like I’ve learned how to pitch.”

Crawford credits not only the coaching staff but some former Mariners players with helping him hone his skills and mentality. The most helpful advice he received was from former Mariner and Northern Oklahoma pitcher Eric Locke.

“Eric Locke taught me …to think that nobody can beat you,” Crawford said. “Thinking, ‘This guy can’t touch me,’ even if it’s not true, it’s helpful.”

His strikeout mentality came from that particular bit of advice.

“I do try and strike everybody out,” he added. “It seems like if you’re trying to strike them out, even if they do hit it, they’ll just ground out or something.”

Another part of the game Crawford has come to appreciate was the off-the-field camaraderie that the Mariners’ program infuses. Being the only Arlee guy on the A-team was trying at first, he said, but he got over it.

“The Mariners made me friends with some kids that I used to not like [in little league],” he said. “… All the seniors last year, I didn’t like any of those kids, but then I came up here, and they had changed, and I had changed, and we all got along.

“The season is so long and you play so many games that you kind of have to be a team by the end of the season. If you don’t get along, you kind of have to get over it.”

Prior to joining up with the Mariners program, Crawford’s father, who played one year of baseball at Oregon State, had been his primary coach.

“He taught me how to throw when I was, like, three years old,” Crawford said. “He always worked with me on pitching. If something worked to help me pitch better then we worked on it.”

Like any right-minded baseball player, Crawford hopes that his time at Columbia Basin helps him to advance his career above and beyond the Hawks’ program.

“I hope that Columbia Basin helps me mature as a pitcher,” Crawford said. “We’ll see what it’s like to pitch against college hitters.”

Outside of baseball, Crawford hopes that he’ll find out what he wants to do for a career when he goes off to school.

Then, perhaps, he will have a backup plan if the whole pitching-for-a-living thing doesn’t quite pan out. And if it doesn’t, well, that’s just another thing he will take in stride.

“I figure I’m either as good as I think I am or I’m not. We’ll find out when I go there.”