Rays' Carl Crawford gets back to where it all started

It was the uniform that changed Carl Crawford's life, though he didn't know it because he was only 7 the first time he saw his uncle Jack Crawford wearing one.

But those pants and the jersey and the ball cap? Whoa!

"I remember there was a lot of red," Crawford said.

And he remembers something else.

"I wanted one real bad," Crawford said.

Crawford will see Uncle Jack this weekend when the Rays begin a three-game interleague series tonight against the Astros in Crawford's hometown of Houston. Minute Maid Park is less than 2 miles from where Crawford was raised in the city's Near Northside.

Get this: Minute Maid Park sits on Crawford Street.

As Crawford would say, ain't that something.

Crawford has played in his hometown before, during three interleague games in 2003 and during the All-Star Game the following season.

Back then, he was still an unpolished talent on the worst team in baseball. Now he is a key figure on the best team in the major leagues, a three-time All-Star regarded by many as the best left fielder in the game. He will command top dollar when he becomes a free agent after this season.

Not a bad resume for a fellow to bring to his homecoming.

"It's nice to go back with those kind of things behind me," he said, "but for the most part, I just enjoy going back to the city, seeing everyone I grew up around."

Crawford grew up around sports. Football and basketball were his first loves.

He was considered one of the top quarterbacks in the country when he played at Jefferson Davis High. Nebraska, Michigan and Oklahoma wanted him to play quarterback. Texas wanted him to play receiver. Texas A&M saw him as a defensive back.

UCLA saw Crawford as a baseball player and offered him a scholarship.

Crawford was headed to Nebraska to be the Cornhuskers' next great option quarterback, straight from the Tommie Frazier mold but with a better arm.

But the Rays made Crawford the first selection of the second round of the 1999 draft after he hit .563 and stole 29 bases his senior season at Jefferson Davis. They offered him first-round money - $1.5 million - to sign and suddenly baseball, Crawford's third love, was his future.

And Crawford could trace that path back to the day he saw Uncle Jack wearing his semipro uniform.

Jack Crawford played minor-league ball in the Angels' organization, where he was the first member of the family to play for Rays manager Joe Maddon. Maddon had Jack Crawford at Idaho Falls and worked with him during a pair of instructional leagues.

"Line-drive hitter, gap-to-gap kind of guy. Good outfielder. Ran well. Didn't have Carl's speed per se. He was a right-handed hitter, too, which made him different," Maddon said. "I remember one time, I sent him on a suicide squeeze. He was the base runner. The hitter missed the sign. I thought he was going to get killed. I apologized to him profusely after that. But he was a good guy. Jackie was a good guy, nice player."

Maddon said Jack Crawford lacked that certain oomph that gets a player to the big leagues. Most minor-leaguers do.

His nephew has it, though. That's for sure.

And it started the day young Carl saw his uncle in a baseball uniform.

"Basketball and football were something that you played easily, so those were uniforms that you wore all the time," Crawford said. "To get into a baseball uniform was a big deal. I wanted to do that real bad. When you're young, you don't really know too much about the game. You just see the uniform, all the bright colors. I remember he took me to one of his games and I saw other kids in uniforms and I wanted to do it, and that's when I really wanted to play real bad."

Uncle Jack helped the nearby Salvation Army start a youth league when his nephew was 7, and Crawford found himself playing first base and pitching.

"I played everywhere," Crawford said. "When you're young, you play everywhere."

This weekend, Crawford will play left field in the major-league stadium within walking distance of his childhood home.

There won't be any red in his uniform, but it is a baseball uniform, just like the one Uncle Jack wore more than 20 years ago, the uniform that would eventually lead Crawford away from football and basketball and into the Major League Baseball record books.

"Yeah," Crawford said, "that's when it all started."