Excuse Brandon Crawford if he's a little overbearing and over the top at the next family gathering with his brother-in-law, Gerrit Cole. Crawford will have a lot to talk about, and with good reason.
On Tuesday in the fifth inning of the Giants' 11-2 loss to the Astros, the red-hot San Francisco shortstop took Houston's Cole deep into, of all places, the Crawford Boxes in left field at Minute Maid Park.
"We don't talk about [facing each other] a whole lot, especially our at-bats." Crawford said. "We'll talk about baseball plenty, but we don't talk about our at-bats a lot."
Crawford's opposite-field two-run home run, his fifth of the season, cut the Houston lead to 5-2. In the second inning, Crawford's single off Cole extended his hitting streak to nine games. Crawford is 18-for-32 (.563) during his streak.
This was Crawford's first home run against Cole in 20 career plate appearances, although Cole said Crawford should have had one when Cole was pitching for the Pirates.
"He hit one really good in Pittsburgh, I'm not sure how many years ago it was, [to] really deep left-center, which is a hard place to hit it out, and [Starling] Marte robbed him, so he was already kind of in the red minus one," Cole said.
Cole is married to Crawford's sister, Amy, a former softball player whom he met on his first day of college at UCLA.
"I always get nervous watching," Amy Cole told the Houston Chronicle. "Even when Brandon was in Little League, I would get butterflies watching him at the plate, so I think just because I care a lot about both of them, I think I take it harder than either of them sometimes."
"It's fitting that he took a good pitch, put a good swing on it and got the home run. Obviously not thrilled about it but not terribly disappointed, either," Gerrit Cole said.
RIP Miss Babe Ruth
Minor League Baseball lost one of its most beloved individuals on Friday. Miss Babe Ruth, bat dog for the Greensboro Grasshoppers, died four months after receiving a cancer diagnosis. She was 12.
The Grasshoppers -- Class A affiliate of the Miami Marlins-- estimate that Babe "delivered more than 3,500 baseballs to umpires and retrieved approximately 4,600 baseball bats from Greensboro hitters." Babe, a black Labrador retriever, made her debut on August 2, 2006, and went on to work 649 games before retiring at the end of the 2015 season.
"This is a heart-breaking loss for our organization, our fans, and the Greensboro community," said Grasshoppers President and General Manager Donald Moore, in a news release announcing Miss Babe Ruth's death. "Babe has been a fan-favorite for well over a decade. We are deeply saddened by her death."
Upon retiring as bat dog, Babe spent the 2016 and 2017 campaigns as a roving team ambassador. She would greet fans on the concourse during games.
Miss Babe Ruth's ball bucket, which she used to deliver balls to umpires, was donated to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., following her retirement.
Sports on 05/24/2018