Crim-inally underrated: Blaine Crim and his quest to be recognized
Blaine Crim was ready to move on from baseball.
He had had success during his first two seasons at Mississippi College, but the dream of playing professional baseball wasn’t there.
The Alabama native had fallen in love and was ready to start a life with his soon-to-be wife. Knowing that the engagement ring would break his bank, he started to a job search for the summer after his junior year, but something stopped his pursuit.
A little bit of luck and perfect timing.
During the Gulf South Conference tournament his junior season, Crim played like a man possessed, hitting .722 (13-for-18) in a four-game stretch with a double, a home run and 11 RBIs. As that luck would have it, there was a Rangers scout that happened to be at the tournament to watch a different player, when Crim caught his eye.
Crim built a relationship with the scout and started to see more and more scouts show up to games his senior season. The burden of performance weighed heavier as the year went on.
“It was very, very hard for me to not put pressure on myself,” Crim said. “My team and my family did a wonderful job of taking that pressure off of me and it just kind of all fell into place.”
The infielder was fighting an uphill battle at Mississippi College. He had seen so many of his teammates put up monster numbers and not even sniff the draft boards in June.
In 2016, Hunter Bolin led Mississippi College with a .380 batting average. He went undrafted.
At the end of his senior season, Crim found his name all across the Choctaw’s career records. He finished with a career slashline of .350/.404/.585 with 55 2Bs, 35 HRs, 196 RBIs over 189 games.
His .585 slugging percentage was the eighth-highest in program history and he topped all Mississippi College players in games played in program history (189), ABs (714), hits (250) and doubles (55) while placing second in multiple categories as well.
On the third day of the 2019 draft, Crim’s house held a nervous energy.
“A lot of my buddies that I know now were getting picked and I just kept saying, ‘come on, I’m ready to go, this is nerve-racking,’” Crim said while laughing.
Following a stress-filled day full of page refreshing, Crim saw his name pop up on his iPad in the 19th round of the 2019 draft. He then heard his mom scream from the back of the house as she found out the news almost simultaneously.
All that career success led to becoming just the second player ever to be drafted out of Mississippi College, following pitcher Bo Edminston — drafted in the 15th round by Astros in 2003. Edminston played only two seasons, never making it about Short Season Low-A Tri-City, before playing Independent Baseball and retiring. Having made it to Double-A, Crim has gone further than any baseball player in Mississippi College history.
The draft set off a journey from his home in Alabama to Arizona and then to Spokane, Washington, where he experienced his first taste of professional baseball.
“Right off the bat, going into the batting cages and seeing these guys hit was incredible,” Crim said. “I was like, ‘these guys are in Rookie Ball? I don’ think I can do that.’ It sounded like rifles coming off of the bat.”
Professional baseball also brought much more velocity than he ever saw in Division II play.
“I wasn’t seeing 90-plus every weekend,” Crim said while laughing. “90-plus at my college, we were in the dugout saying we better get ready for that heater. I probably only saw a handful of guys each year who were throwing that hard. At the end of the day, it was baseball.”
Though he had to make adjustments, he dominated for Spokane. Crim was named the Northwest League MVP, batting .335/.398/.528 with eight home runs and 45 RBIs over 53 games.
After the lost season of 2020, Crim is again hitting his way through the Rangers system, crushing 20 home runs in 100 games with High-A Hickory before his promotion to Frisco in 2021.
From the depths of nearly ending his career after college, to being on the precipice of the major leagues, Crim always looks back to one thing that pushed him through: his support system at Mississippi College.
“That’s just something that I think will carry me way deep into my life and raising my kids and being a husband are just the lessons that I learned at Mississippi College from the players, coaches and experiences there.
“People say everything happens for a reason and Mississippi College really hits me in the face as something that really did happen to me for a reason.”
