Sports Reference Blog

Thanks to the work of the SABR Biographical Research Committee (and specifically to the efforts of Justin McKinney) we have added a net of one new player to major league baseball in the 1870s.

In the May/June newsletter, SABR noted

We had listed Fred William Hotchkiss Crane as playing for the Elizabeth Resolutes in 1873 and the woebegone Brooklyn Atlantics in 1875. Justin McKinney determined that these were two different players. The Elizabeth newspapers said that this player was William Crane. He had played with Elizabeth in 1872 and was called into service when Frank Fleet missed the train. For the 1875 Brooklyn games, the New York Clipper specifically stated that this was not Fred. It was Thomas Crane who had previously played with the Silver Stars. In summary, Fred Crane loses his major league status with William Crane as the 1873 Elizabeth player and Thomas Crane as the 1875 Brooklyn player. The good news about all this is that Justin was able to find William Crane. There was a William Crane of appropriate age who lived in Elizabeth and died in 1897. His obituary said that he was “an enthusiastic baseball player.” It is pretty nice to get confirmation that he was a ballplayer when he only played one game in 1873. A family tree on Ancestry provided the details of his birth.

Accordingly, we no longer list Fred Crane as a major league player and we now have pages for William Crane (1873 Elizabeth Resolutes) and Thomas Crane (1875 Brooklyn Atlantics)

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