Willie Crawford
American baseball player (1946-2004)
Willie Murphy Crawford (September 7, 1946 – August 27, 2004) was an American professional baseball outfielder. He played in the major leagues with the Los Angeles Dodgers (1964–1975), St. Louis Cardinals (1976), Houston Astros (1977) and Oakland Athletics (1977). Crawford was born in Los Angeles, California. He batted and threw left-handed, and was the father of UCLA football player Willie Crawford who graduated from Beverly Hills High School in 1988.
At Fremont High School in Los Angeles, Crawford was All-City in both football (1963) and baseball. Able to run 100 yards in 9.7 seconds, he was highly recruited to play college football as a running back. Al Campanis signed Crawford for the Dodgers for $100,000 two days after he graduated from high school in 1964. Because of the Bonus Rule in existence at the time, Crawford had to play for the Dodgers' major league team in both 1964 and 1965.
As a major league baseball player, defensively, he played in a shallow manner, so as to cut down on potential Texas Leaguers.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Willie Crawford” is american baseball player (1946-2004). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Willie, Crawford and American, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 4, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q8021445. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1946, 2004, 1964 and 1975.
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This entry incorporates text from “Willie Crawford” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.