Tim Crews and Bob Ojeda and the Bitter End

“I certainly went through the why am I here? phase. Certainly. That’s a given. I left the country for a while. I had a lot of money in my pocket and I wasn’t gonna come back.” Bob Ojeda, discussing the boating accident that killed his Cleveland Indians teammates Tim Crews and Steve Olin

Crews (LAD 1987-1992, CLE 1993) 11 W - 13 L, 3.44 ERA, 293 Ks, 15 SVs

Ojeda (BOS 1980-1985, NYM 1986-1990, LAD 1991-1992, CLE 1993, NYY 1994), 115 W - 98 L, 3.65 ERA, 1128 Ks, 41 CGs, 16 SHOs

Relief pitcher Steve Olin, who died with 48 saves and a 3.10 ERA to his name, looms large over all of this. Olin, who died in the same boat crash that also killed Tim Crews, was the one who still had something to prove: 1992, his last year, was also his best year, his breakout year. He was a Nice Guy, a Good Kid, One of the Good Ones. If he lives, does Jose “Joe Table” Mesa ever get a chance?

Crews, whose ‘89 Topps card has to be among the most iconic in the series1, was at the wheel and under the influence, so it was almost like in the eyes of the media he didn’t die at all. No, the Sports Illustrated/Sporting News/ESPN coverage, which seemed to be 24/7 at a time when nothing was, focused on deceased passenger Olin and Ojeda: Bobby O, the Mets badboy, the reluctant survivor.2

It was just supposed to be a good time, I guess. Crews, Olin, Ojeda, and Indians strength coach Fernando Montes had gathered at Crews’ lake house for some preseason bonding, which quite understandably entailed some preseason partying. With Montes remaining on shore, the three ballplayers took Crews’ 18-foot boat for a spin around Lake Nellie. During their second lap around the lake, the vehicle smashed into a neighbor’s unlighted wooden pier, killing Olin instantly, inflicting severe brain trauma on Crews, and seriously injuring Ojeda, who attributed his survival to the fact that he was slouching in his seat.

In the curious interstitial period between the cocaine “epidemic” and the steroid “epidemic”–both in quotes because such made-up benighted epochs matter only to the jock-sniffing Skip Baylesses and Jay Mariottis of the world–this was Big Freakin’ News. Death had claimed two youngish baseballers still in their near-primes for the first time in over a decade.3 Ojeda’s eventual comeback wasn’t really a comeback but was still covered like the Big Freakin’ News it was; he pitched a couple more innings for the Indians in '93, even fewer for the Yankees in '94, then retired and left the country for a while.

The 1993 season was one of the best in MLB history, and not just because parity (and the Phillies/Blue Jays) reigned: the game, it seemed, was perfectly balanced between pitchers and hitters for this one spectacular year. It was an ideal campaign to enshrine in EA Sports’ MLBPA Baseball, a game I never tired of playing and thus will never tire of referencing. But the Olin story, which was also the Crews story yet never quite as much, followed Ojeda and the Indians throughout the year. It had to–Ojeda’s mound catharsis was “needed,” if only to complete the Big Freakin’ News Cycle–but it obscured the fact that the Indians were themselves about to become the Next Big Freakin’ Thing. The pieces were there: Paul Sorrento, Kenny Lofton, Carlos Baerga, Joey Belle, Sandy Alomar, Manny Being Manny, Candy Maldonado, Reggie Jefferson. Well, not so much those last two, but the others, yes, you betcha. Yet '93 for them wasn’t about the still-missing pieces–slick-fielding Omar Vizquel would come over from Seattle next year, in a trade for Felix Fermin–as it was about the forever-gone pieces.

1993 was also when I started noticing death, like really noticing.4 Both of my grandfathers would pass a year later. Celebrities I recognized and appreciated were starting to drop like flies: Bill Bixby, Vincent Price, Audrey Hepburn, André the Giant (we hardly knew ye). But Olin and Crews went before their time! They had so much left! There but for the grace of G-d go I! &c. Now 32, I’m older than both of these men were when they shuffled off this mortal coil. They had 27 major league wins and 63 major league saves between. What do I have, pray tell? Well, Oscar Berkman’s harshest critic, I have my health. Glass half full, people, glass half full.5

It’s just this huge close-up of his big welcoming face and perfect moustache, framed by the Dodger blue that’s so synonymous with the era (Orel’s streak, Lasorda’s weight loss endorsements, Kirk Gibson’s Eckersley-felling home run).
Crews’ brother Jim Crews hated how his brother was portrayed as the villain, the enabler: “Just believing a rich ball player out there not paying attention to what he was doing was over the – drunk, just to use the word, which really infuriated me when I rea d it.” (http://espn.go.com/page2/tvlistings/show155_transcript.htm) Ojeda, for his part, also didn’t blame Crews: “I know Crewser. I know he could have done brain surgery, if he was a brain surgeon. Certainly we’re not choir boys…everybody does things, then something bad happens, and we all look for reasons–why did that happen?” (http://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/26/sports/baseball-ojeda-discusses-the-crash.html)
Yankees catcher Thurman Munson, arguably a Hall of Famer with a .292/.346/.410 slash line, 1500 hits, and an MVP award to his credit, had died in 1979 while attempting to land his Cessna Citation at the Akron-Canton Airport.
Actually, the first death I really, really remember was Mel Blanc in '89, but I was obsessed with Bugs Bunny during that period, especially those episodes when he dressed in drag and seduced his would-be captors.
Or, as G.K. Chesterton put it in his gnomic little essay about Sir Walter Scott: “The center of every man’s existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel.” What this has to do with Walter Scott I’m still trying to determine, but yeah, cogitate on that, brohams.