Outfielder Coco Crisp played in Major League Baseball for 15 years, beginning in the early 2000s. He was electric, and Cleveland Guardians fans remember him fondly, as the organization helped develop him and he played there in parts of five campaigns.
Crisp had an important role in the 2016 Cleveland team that went all the way to the World Series. He had a .885 OPS there, with two doubles and two runs scored.
In a piece for The Athletic, Crisp discussed the four most impressive leaders he had in his baseball career. As it turns out, three of them were tied in some way to the Guardians (then Indians, during his playing days): Jim Thome, Terry Francona, and Francisco Lindor.
He was emphatic in his praise for Thome, whom he considered a leader by example.
“It wasn’t so much about our interactions and conversations. It was more about watching how [Jim Thome] went about being a superstar. It was just watching him be himself. For me, I wanted to try to have that kind of effect with others later on because it really resonated with me. That really helped me develop my mentality early in my career. Carrying yourself the right way takes you a longer distance than your ability can even take you,” Crisp wrote.
Crisp always carried himself with pride and dignity. He played the game the right way, and that’s a fantastic way to show how the path to stardom is supposed to be for young, up-and-coming players in the league.
Thome was, in those early 2000s days, one of the most feared power hitters in the game, something that Crisp clearly wasn’t, despite his ability to hit 15-20 balls out of the park in a good year. However, you don’t need to have the same traits and skills as your mentor or your protegee to show him how he’s supposed to carry himself on and off the field, or to learn how it’s done.
Francona is perhaps the best and most successful skipper in Cleveland history, but his impact on Crisp happened during their days together in the mid-2000s Boston Red Sox, where they won the 2007 World Series. About Lindor, he wrote good things about how he embraced analytics.
“I watched Lindor in particular. I listened to the way he talked about analytics and the changes. He always had a smile on his face. He went about his business the right way. But it was really about the analytics part. It was new and confusing to me. Spin rate and all of that. So listening to how he talked about that stuff allowed me to be like: I still don’t like it, but I’m starting to understand it,” Crisp said.
It’s amazing how a talented, productive guy like Crisp can learn things from a slugger who had most of his success in the 90s and early 2000s and also from an all-around star still in his prime these days.
Baseball is, indeed, a beautiful game.
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