Frankie Crosetti

Frank Peter Joseph Crosetti (October 4, 1910 – February 11, 2002) was an American baseball shortstop. Nicknamed "The Crow", he spent his entire seventeen-year Major League Baseball career with the New York Yankees before becoming a coach with the franchise for an additional twenty seasons. As a player and third base coach for the Yankees, Crosetti was part of seventeen World Championship teams and 23 World Series participants overall, from 1932 to 1964, the most of any individual.

Early years

Crosetti was born in San Francisco, California, and grew up in North Beach, which was something of a hotbed of Italian-American talent on the baseball field during the 1920s & 1930s (Tony Lazzeri, Charlie Silvera & the DiMaggio brothers also hail from the same neighborhood). Before joining the Yankees, Crosetti played four seasons with the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League.

New York Yankees

Crosetti joined the Yankees in 1932, and batted .241 with five home runs and 57 runs batted in at the bottom of the Yankees' batting order. He was part of a World Series Championship his first year in the big leagues as the Yankees completed a four-game sweep of the Chicago Cubs in the 1932 World Series two days shy of Crosetti's 22nd birthday.