Tragedy in Winter Haven — 10 Years Later

I hon­estly can’t believe it’s been 10 years already. Ten years ago today, Cleve­land Indi­ans pitch­ers Steve Olin and Tim Crews were killed in a boat­ing acci­dent in Win­ter Haven, Florida, on an off day for the play­ers at Spring Train­ing. Olin was a 27 year old submarine-style closer for the Indi­ans, who was com­ing off a very good sea­son for them. Crews had come over from the Los Ange­les Dodgers as a free agent who was invited to camp. The two of them, along with Bobby Ojeda, were in a boat that slammed into an unlit dock, killing Olin and Crews, and nearly killing Ojeda.

It was near the end of my fresh­man year at Hof­s­tra, and I was writ­ing for the Hof­s­tra Chron­i­cle then. I was cov­er­ing men’s lacrosse, but we had these “View­point” things; lit­tle edi­to­ri­als that the sports depart­ment mem­bers could write about what­ever they had a strong feel­ing about. The Indians/Winter Haven inci­dent was one of two I did that year, and prob­a­bly the one I was most pas­sion­ate about. It’s prob­a­bly crap (I’ll have to search around to see if I can find the arti­cle around my mom’s house), but if I can find it, I’ll post it on here. For now, check out Jayson Stark’s reflec­tion at ESPN.com.