March 25, 1993: Cleveland Indians return to baseball after deaths of Steve Olin, Tim Crews

Managers do not ordinarily vehemently protest an umpire’s decision during a spring training game, but when Cleveland Indians manager Mike Hargrove disagreed with a foul-ball call in the third inning on March 25, 1993, he strode toward umpire Durwood Merrill with purpose.

Leading a roster of emotionally taxed players returning to action three days after closer Steve Olin and middle reliever Tim Crews were killed and starting pitcher Bob Ojeda was seriously injured in a boating accident, Hargrove launched into a tirade over a line drive he thought was clearly fair. He kicked dirt, waved his arms, and pleaded his case to Merrill for about a minute.

As Hargrove became more animated and teetered on the edge of ejection, the 4,402 fans1 at Chain O’ Lakes Park in Winter Haven, Florida, began to rouse.2

Finally, the understandably somber atmosphere that had settled over the ballpark lifted.

“I showed [Merrill] where the ball was, but he didn’t like that,” Hargrove said. “He told me to get out, or he’d run me. I said, ‘Either do it or don’t do it, but don’t warn me.’”3

“We’ve got a job to do. It’s what we all love to do, what we all live to do,” Hargrove added. “It’s been a very welcome relief to be able to just get on the field and do things.”4

Hargrove’s arguing seemed to give players and fans permission to settle in for baseball instead of mourning, even as raw emotion and intense grief ran through both teams as the Indians met the Baltimore Orioles and honored the memory of Olin and Crews.5 Playing for the first time in six days, the Indians were expectedly rusty, and the game ended in a 2-2 tie after 11 innings because the Orioles used all their pitchers.

Three days earlier, Cleveland’s players had their only scheduled full day off during spring training.6 Crews – a nonroster invitee who had spent six seasons with the Los Angeles Dodgers7 – invited Olin, Ojeda, and many other teammates to a gathering at his new home on the shore of Little Lake Nellie, about an hour north of Winter Haven, for barbecuing, horseback riding, and fun.

Most invitees skipped the outing for various reasons,8 but around nightfall, Crews, Olin, and Ojeda climbed into an 18-foot bass boat. As Crews jetted them around the private lake, his friend, Perry Brigmond, and the Indians’ strength and conditioning coach, Fernando Montes, were waiting to board the vessel. Crews decided to take one more lap before picking them up.

He never made it back to shore.

As Crews accelerated, the front of the boat nosed up, and by the time he would have had a clear sightline again, he had already rammed into a neighbor’s unlit private dock that extended about 50 yards into the water. Olin, 27, died instantly, and Crews, 31, died from head injuries the next morning. Ojeda, 35, survived and underwent surgery for severe scalp wounds. He was hospitalized until the morning of the game against the Orioles.9 (Coincidentally, Ojeda’s first appearance of the regular season came in Baltimore on August 7.)

Olin – who had saved 29 games using his submarine-style delivery in 1992 – and Crews became the first active major leaguers to die in an accident since 1979, when 32-year-old Thurman Munson died in a plane crash.10

Cleveland canceled games against the Orioles and the New York Mets in the days after the accident,11 and players attended a private memorial for the pitchers the night before returning to the field.12 But with only 10 days until Opening Day in the final season of baseball at Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium, the Indians had to quickly regroup, and getting back to action was the next of many painful steps.

All four of the game’s runs were scored in the fifth inning. Baltimore tagged Cleveland starter José Mesa, a former Oriole,13 with Brady Anderson’s single, Mark McLemore’s triple, and Mike Devereaux’s single, while Cleveland scored against Orioles starter Arthur Rhodes14 after Mark Whiten walked, Sandy Alomar Jr. hit an RBI double, and Félix Fermín hit a two-out RBI single.

Late in the game, thoughts of a walk-off home run ran through Hargrove’s mind, but they were quickly replaced by grief when he looked at the American flag beyond left field to see which way the wind was blowing.

“It was near the end of the game, and I wanted to check the wind; maybe we could end it with a home run,” Hargrove said. “So I look at the flag, and it’s at half mast.

“That kind of thing hits you right in the face.”15

Reminders of the tragedy also crept into Baltimore manager Johnny Oates’s mind as the game wound down.

Oates had some idea of what the sudden deaths had done to Cleveland’s clubhouse, as his Orioles had to rally around Tim Hulett in 1992 after Hulett’s 6-year-old son was struck by a car and died in the middle of the season.

“[A]round the ninth or 10th inning, it went through my mind as I was sitting there,” Oates said. “I said, ‘Wow, this game’s going to end in a few minutes, and those families – the game’s over, so they don’t have the game to keep their minds pacified now.’”16

From a baseball perspective, both managers were pleased with what they saw from several players as final roster decisions loomed.

One of the biggest battles in Baltimore’s camp was for the final rotation spot. Anthony Telford followed Rhodes – who allowed four hits and walked two – with three scoreless relief innings to lower his spring ERA to 2.19 in his battle against veterans Fernando Valenzuela and Mark Williamson.17 Relievers Gregg Olson and Tim Drummond held the Indians off the board in the final three innings, and Devereaux broke out of an offensive funk with three hits that lifted his spring average from .176 to .237.

For Cleveland, Alomar had three hits to pace the offense, while Mesa surrendered seven hits and three walks over six innings in one of his final spring tune-ups. He entered the season as the fourth starter but ended the campaign as Cleveland’s most durable option, making twice as many starts as anyone else and winning 10 games. Two years later, he was converted to a closer and became the dominant stopper Cleveland had hoped Olin would become.18

Cliff Young – who died after the 1993 season at age 29 when he lost control of his truck and drove into a tree – pitched three scoreless innings, and rookie Tom Kramer handled the 10th and 11th innings. Players realized that the late-inning tie was the kind of situation in which Olin might have pitched.

“It wasn’t really mind-boggling this time,” Indians center fielder Kenny Lofton said after the game. “It wasn’t really a save situation because we didn’t have the lead. I think it will hit us the first time a pitcher comes in in the ninth inning with a lead, and it isn’t Olie. I’m sure it’s going to get to the pitcher, too, but I think he’ll say, ‘I know I’m doing what Olie should be doing, but he did a good job and I’m going to try to do the same.’”19

As Indians players began to heal emotionally over the final week of spring training, the front office went to work solving the pitching crisis.20 At the onset of camp, not many positions were up for grabs, but injuries and the accident changed the narrative for a team hoping to improve on a promising 76-86 season in 1992.21

Pitchers Scott Scudder, Alan Embree, and Dave Mlicki would have been viable replacements had they been healthy.22 The Indians instead went with a seven-man bullpen to start the season, shifting left-handed starter Dennis Cook to Crews’ long-relief role and turning to a closer-by-committee approach.23 Cleveland traded for Mark Clark to take Ojeda’s rotation spot,24 and rookie Jeff Mutis entered the rotation as the only left-hander.25 Kramer and rookie Mike Christopher – who saved 26 games in Triple A in 1992 – also started the season in the bullpen.26

But even as the roster came together on paper, the baseball on the field would never be the same.

“I’m not dealing with it very well at all,” said reliever Kevin Wickander, who took Olin’s personal counsel while battling injuries and alcohol abuse in 1990 and 1991. “He was my best friend. He was the best man in my wedding. The reason I am where I am is because of him. He taught me as much about life off the field as he did on the field.”27

“It’s just not fair,” Wickander added. “He’s not going to come to the park and play anymore.”28

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Mike Huber and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Steve Olin, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted the Baseball-Reference.com, Stathead.com, and Retrosheet.org websites for pertinent statistics. He also used information obtained from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Akron Beacon Journal, Baltimore Sun, USA Today, New York Times, and The Sporting News.

Box score: https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-plain-dealer-cleveland-indiansbalti/164038505/

Notes

1 The crowd included Olin’s widow, Patti, who sat behind home plate for the first two innings.

2 This marked Cleveland’s first spring training in Winter Haven. The Indians had planned to move to Homestead, Florida, after spending their springs in Tucson, Arizona, from 1947 to 1992, but Hurricane Andrew damaged the Homestead complex in August 1992. The Winter Haven site was available because the Boston Red Sox moved from there to Fort Myers, and Cleveland stayed in Winter Haven through 2008. No team ever used the Homestead Sports Complex for spring training. After the facility was damaged again during Hurricane Irma in 2017, Homestead officials opted to demolish the stadium.

3 Sheldon Ocker, “Back to Baseball for Tribe,” Akron Beacon Journal, March 26, 1993: B5.

4 Associated Press, “Ojeda Leaves Hospital,” New York Newsday, March 26, 1993: 167.

5 Paul Hoynes, “The Game Lives on Amid Empty Places and Sad Faces,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 26, 1993: 1-A.

6 The Indians had considered scheduling a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers at LA manager Tom Lasorda’s request but ultimately declined.

7 Crews had confidence he would make the team after compiling an 11-13 record with a 3.44 ERA in 281 appearances for the Dodgers from 1987 to 1992, though he had struggled in 1992 (0-3, 5.19 ERA). Early in spring training, he had slipped during a drill and broke three ribs, so he had been limited to one appearance. Crews struck out a batter in two scoreless relief innings against the Minnesota Twins on March 20. Upon leaving Cleveland’s facility the day before the accident, Crews saw a clubhouse notice for players that read: “Tuesday, 9 o’clock, dressed.” Crews then looked at general manager John Hart before walking out and said: “It’s a new day. I’ll be there.” Claire Smith, “A Touch of Normalcy, a Courageous Appearance,” New York Times, March 26, 1993: B10.

8 Fellow relievers Ted Power, Kevin Wickander, Derek Lilliquist, and Eric Plunk were all invited. Power said he almost went to the picnic but decided to stay in Winter Haven and relax. Wickander took his family to Busch Gardens, Lilliquist returned to his home in Vero Beach, and Plunk had other plans. Another pitcher, starter Mike Bielecki, wanted to attend, but he had angered his wife when he took her vehicle to go fishing the week before, so he decided to stay in Winter Haven. Many other players took their families to Disney World or Sea World.

9 An official investigation determined that speed, darkness, the length of the legal but unlit dock, and alcohol all factored into the accident. Crews had a blood-alcohol content of 0.14 percent, higher than Florida’s legal limit at the time, 0.10 percent.

10 Steve Macko, a young Chicago Cubs infielder, was the last major leaguer to die during his career after losing a battle with testicular cancer at age 27 in 1981. Other former major leaguers playing professionally elsewhere who had recently died during their careers included Bo Diaz (1990), Joe DeSa (1986), and Francisco Barrios (1982).

11 Each team played an intrasquad game due to the cancellations on March 23 and 24. Several of Ojeda’s former teammates with the Mets drove three hours from their spring-training site in Port St. Lucie to visit him in the hospital in Clermont. Ojeda had pitched in New York from 1986 to 1990.

12 The hourlong memorial service was held at the Chain O’ Lakes Convention Center. Former Indians slugger Andre Thornton flew from Cleveland to Florida to preside. Thornton reflected on his own story of sudden loss. After his first season in Cleveland in 1977, his wife, Gertrude, and 2-year-old daughter, Theresa, died in a single-vehicle crash on the Pennsylvania turnpike. Thornton and his 4-year-old son, Andre Jr., survived the crash. Other speakers included Dodgers manager Tom Lasorda, who recalled the pain of losing his son, Tom Jr., at age 33, Indians manager Mike Hargrove, Cleveland general manager John Hart, and Indians owner Dick Jacobs. Two buses of Dodgers players, coaches, and personnel attended, as did several former teammates of Olin and Crews now with other teams. A handful of managers, National League President Bill White, and AL President Bobby Brown were also there. Reports estimate between 400 and 500 people attended the service, with latecomers standing in aisles and a three-deep row behind the theater-style seating in the convention center.

13 Baltimore traded Mesa to Cleveland in a midseason deal in 1992. Mesa had gone 13-24 with a 5.41 ERA as a starter for the Orioles, who never used him on a consistent basis.

14 Rhodes had been struck in the shin by a line drive in the second inning of his previous start, but he showed no ill effects during his five innings in this game. The 23-year-old made the Opening Day roster as a starter, a role he filled early in his career. He made two starts in April 1996 but appeared strictly as a reliever from then until his retirement after the 2011 season.

15 Ocker, “Back to Baseball For Tribe.”

16 Joe Kay (Associated Press), “Indians Get Back to Business at Hand – Baseball,” Hanover (Pennsylvania) Evening Sun, March 26, 1993: A-11.

17 Valenzuela ultimately became Baltimore’s fifth starter, while Telford made only three midseason relief appearances. Williamson made 48 appearances as a reliable reliever. The Los Angeles Dodgers had released Valenzuela at the end of spring training in 1991. He signed with the California Angels but made only two major-league appearances. Valenzuela returned to his native Mexico in 1992 and won 17 games between the summer and winter leagues there, helping him earn a chance with Baltimore in 1993.

18 Mesa’s 46 saves led the American League in 1995 as the Indians won their first pennant since 1954. When Cleveland clinched the AL Central Division title, manager Hargrove had “The Dance” by Garth Brooks, one of Olin’s favorite songs, played over the loudspeakers as a tribute.

19 Hoynes.

20 Cleveland’s first call went to free agent Mike Schooler, but he had already committed to the Texas Rangers. General manager John Hart said several executives around the league called him to try to help. He recalled a conversation he had with the Toronto Blue Jays general manager: “Pat Gillick called and asked how he could help. I told him he could send me Juan Guzmán. He said, ‘Well, John, I love you, but I don’t love you that much.” The 26-year-old Guzmán was named an All-Star and had won 16 games for the Blue Jays on their way to the World Series title in 1992. Benjamin Gleisser, “A Tough Balancing Act,” The Sporting News, May 31, 1993: 9.

21 That marked a 19-game improvement over Cleveland’s dismal 57-105 record in 1991, which as of 2025 remained the record for the most losses in franchise history. The Indians repeated their 76-86 record in 1993. Baltimore also hoped to continue a resurgence in 1993 after winning 89 games in 1992. The Orioles had improved 22 games after going 67-95 in 1991 and finished 1993 with a solid 85-77 mark.

22 Scudder missed the second half of 1992 with an arm injury that flared back up at the start of camp. Embree injured his left elbow before spring training started, and Mlicki had a recurrence of shoulder soreness that had plagued him at the end of 1992.

23 Derek Lilliquist earned the first save in the second game of the season. Four pitchers had at least eight saves for the Indians – Eric Plunk (15), Jerry DiPoto (11), Lilliquist (10), and midseason acquisition Jeremy Hernandez (8).

24 Clark came from the St. Louis Cardinals on March 31. Cleveland gave up promising outfielder Mark Whiten in the deal.

25 Other starters were Charles Nagy, Mike Bielecki, and José Mesa.

26 Shortly after Opening Day, Cleveland signed veterans Bob Milacki, Matt Young, and Jason Grimsley to minor-league contracts to help replenish the Triple-A Charlotte Knights’ roster. All three eventually pitched for the Indians. In total, Cleveland used 26 pitchers throughout the season.

27 Ken Rosenthal, “Playing With Pain: Indians Move On,” Baltimore Sun, March 25, 1993: 1D.

28 Associated Press, “Indians Picking Up Pieces,” Fremont (Ohio) News-Messenger, March 25, 1993: B1.