Ray Crone, whose five-year major league career included the second game ever played on the West Coast, died Thursday. He was 94.
Crone signed with the Boston Braves one day after he graduated from high school in Memphis, Tennessee in 1949. Four years later, while Crone was still climbing the minor league ladder, the Braves relocated to Milwaukee — what would become a recurring theme in his career.
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After seeing his first major league spring training action in 1953, Crone made the Braves’ Opening Day roster in 1954. He faced a stressful situation in his debut in the first game of the season. Crone inherited a first-and-second, one-out jam in the sixth inning in Cincinnati, but retired the only two batters he faced on groundouts without allowing a run.
Crone went 1-0 with a 2.02 ERA in 19 games (two starts) as a rookie with Milwaukee that year.
In 1955, Crone shuttled between the Braves’ rotation and bullpen, going 10-9 with a 3.46 ERA in 33 games (15 starts). In 1956, Crone went 11-10 with a 3.87 ERA, setting a career-high in innings pitched (169.2) while starting 21 of his 35 games. Crone tossed 11 innings in a single game on May 26, 1956, a 2-1 complete-game victory over the Reds.
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Crone had a 4.24 ERA on Aug. 23 when he was demoted to the bullpen for the final month of the season. The Braves lost their 2.5-game lead over the Dodgers in September and settled for second place in the National League.
The Braves would finally reach the World Series after knocking on the door the previous three years. Crone would not be part of the team that faced the New York Yankees in the World Series, however. He was traded to the New York Giants on June 15, 1957 with Danny O’Connell and Bobby Thomson for future Hall of Famer Red Schoendienst.
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Crone went 4-8 with a 4.33 ERA for the Giants, pitching 120.2 innings in 25 games (17 starts) after the trade. The Giants would relocate to San Francisco after the season, marking MLB‘s first expansion to the West Coast.
“I didn’t respond to the trade well,” Crone said in an interview for the SABR Bio Project in 2012. “After the Braves I never felt comfortable.”
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Crone pitched 14 games for the Giants in 1958, including a relief appearance in the second game ever played on the West Coast, at San Francisco’s Seals Stadium against the Dodgers on April 16.
The last batter Crone struck out in the major leagues, coincidentally, was a friend from their days as minor league teammates: Hank Aaron.
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Crone would pitch three more seasons in the minors in the Detroit Tigers (1959) and Kansas City Athletics (1960) organizations. He retired with a 30-30 record and 3.87 ERA in 137 MLB games.
Crone began a long scouting career in 1971 with the Montreal Expos. He later became an area scout for the Baltimore Orioles and San Diego Padres, and retired in 2017.
“Looking back on it now, I am kind of proud of what I did,” Crone told BallNine.com in 2024. “I think I could have done a lot better, but I am proud of what I accomplished. It was hard to work your way up through the system because there were so many more guys back then. Plus, there were only 16 teams.”
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