Crawford talks about how Cardinal’s life suits him after Giant’s departure originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
OAKLAND – When Brandon Crawford’s Giants tenure officially came to an end, he let Logan Webb know it was finally time to take over as clubhouse DJ. But Crawford hasn’t quite hung up the Spotify playlist yet.
After 13 seasons in Giants orange and black, Crawford now wears St. Louis Cardinals red. It took some getting used to for Crawford, who is a backup shortstop for the first time in his big league life, but it didn’t take too many games for the old playlist to come out. His new teammates asked early on about his passion for music.
“It actually didn’t take that long,” he told NBC Sports Bay Area. “I don’t think there was a lot of music being played here in the clubhouse, so it was pretty easy for me to grab on and take over.”
So while Crawford’s role hasn’t changed after the game, his view of the nine-inning game is now very different, and not just because he calls Busch Stadium, not Oracle Park, home. Crawford is the backup to 22-year-old Masyn Winn, the shortstop of the present and future in St. Louis.
It’s a position Crawford signed for immediately after the Giants declined to bring him back to mentor the young Giants in a smaller role, but it was an adjustment. On Sunday night, Crawford arrived back in the Bay Area for a series against the Oakland A’s, and on Monday afternoon he was one of the first Cardinals on the Coliseum field, taking grounders and working on his footwork well before the start of batting practice. .
That’s always been a passion for Crawford, but now it’s also a necessity. He has had just thirteen at-bats in the Cardinals’ first sixteen games. The Cardinals don’t mix and match as much as the Giants did in Crawford’s final years, so finding new ways to stay sharp is crucial.
“I try to do as many things on the field as possible,” he said. “I know in the past, especially as I got older, I would definitely take BP on the first day of a series or something like that, and take my groundballs and do all that kind of stuff, but then I would just save my legs for the most part. The rest of the series I would hit in the cage or [use] the little red machine for my groundball work.
“Now I get on the field as much as possible. It’s just to keep my legs under me and make sure my footwork is good. I’m trying to make batting practice more game-like than I might have in the past.”
This would always be the agreement in a new home. But Crawford, now 37, wasn’t ready to give it up after 13 seasons and 1,654 appearances for his home side. He seemed to have the perfect career — more than 13,000 innings as a shortstop for the Giants and one as a pitcher — but he still felt a pull in the offseason.
‘It was a lot [because] my kids wanted me to play,” he said. “But it just felt a little bit incomplete, I think, the last few years, performance-wise and being injured and being on the IL four times last year. It just didn’t feel like a great way to go out.
“It was definitely in the air during the offseason, and we were looking at interest from teams all offseason. The Cardinals came in kind of late and I thought it was the right fit for what I wanted to do as kind of a mentor type to a young shortstop [on] a team that has a real chance of winning with some great players.”
Crawford signed a one-year, $2 million contract with the Cardinals in late February. They’re always a team that expects to compete, which was part of the appeal, and they also have a roster full of players that Crawford has often seen from the other side, like Nolan Arenado, Paul Goldschmidt and Lance Lynn. That was comforting, though Crawford admitted he saw photos of himself in a new jersey in the spring and thought it was photoshopped.
It’s been almost two months and normality is now setting in. The Cardinals visited the Arizona Diamondbacks this weekend, so Crawford spent some time at home, and during this series his parents will visit from the East Bay, as they did so many times during his 13 years in San Francisco.
The Cardinals won’t visit Oracle Park until late September, but Crawford will see old Giants teammates when the teams face off in Birmingham, Alabama, in late June for a game in honor of Willie Mays. That series continues this weekend in St. Louis, where Crawford will catch up with many old friends.
Upon returning to the Bay, Crawford said he still follows the Giants and keeps in touch with former teammates such as Mike Yastrzemski, LaMonte Wade Jr. and Webb, who is now the clubhouse leader and DJ.
“He had a high standard to live up to, I think,” Crawford said with a smile.
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