Editor's note: Today marks the anniversary of the 1993 boat accident in Florida that claimed the lives of Indians pitchers Tim Crews and Steve Olin. This Bud Shaw piece about the accident was originally published on Sunday, March 28, 1993, on Page One of The Plain Dealer.



Clermont, Fla. -- Daylight unmasks Little Lake Nellie's innocence, revealing a bathtub whose toys temporarily drained ashore. A canoe teeters under one dock. A child's truck is wheel-deep in sand. There is a swing set, monkey bars, a baseball pitch-back in the surrounding yards.



Nothing horrible could happen here without the creative license of a movie screenwriter. Only when fierce rain swells Little Lake Nellie to adulthood, merging it with Big Lake Nellie, would she pose any challenge to the memory. Little Nellie is the girl next door.



The docks and points of access along this small private lake are as familiar to neighborhood boaters as the family names are to the local postman; the Suggs, the Wilsons, the Heinrichs and the Crewses are among a dozen or so lakeside dwellers.



Except for the occasional rise of reeds that have the appearance of whiskers missed while shaving, Nellie by day is devoid of surprises. She is a manageable 79 acres with an average depth of 10-12 feet. The water is shallow around the docks, 3 feet at the deepest.



From the Crewses' two-toned Bass and Bridle Ranch house across the lake and 60 yards up a caramel-colored dirt road, the width and length of Nellie are in full view.



"Tim knew the lake," neighbor Scott Wilson said. "It wasn't that. He knew the lake."



Neighbors liked the face lift Tim and Laurie Crews had given the expanse of land off the southwestern shore of Nellie. Bruce Kreglo, the local high school football coach, was overseas serving in Desert Storm when his wife informed him that a major-league pitcher had bought the 48 acres next door and was busy disking dead citrus into pasture. Everyone agreed that a sprawling ranch was a far better cosmetic touch for Nellie than a cookie-cutter housing division.

The deadly dock



From Crews' fenced acreage, you cannot even glance at Nellie without noticing that one dock protrudes like a tongue into water too shallow to cover the reeds.

Alan and Jetta Heinrich carved a home from the groves four years ago and added the dock in 1990. They built it long. The extra footage, designed for a handicapped family member, extends up the sand toward the modest ranch. The length over water is well within legal limits, and until last Monday night, struck no one as extraordinary.

The dock sits at 2 o'clock from Crews' ranch. Excluding the sizable catches biting in Nellie's waters, it is her most prominent feature. Nellie possesses many of a fishing hole's best attributes. She is quiet, small, convenient and she hides plentiful treasure.

Scott Wilson tells of hanging a 11-pound bass on his wall, a souvenir from Nellie. Another neighbor, Rufus Suggs, who lives on a dirt road named after his family, is the third generation of fishermen to comb the lake.

Suggs' father grew accustomed to fishing Little Lake Nellie in the morning, sometimes hooking a keeper within a half-hour. Perhaps because of his father's early-morning successes and the general annoyance of mosquitoes dancing dizzily on the lake after sunset, Suggs has never fished Nellie in the dark in his 84 years.

Neither has Suggs ever heard word of a boating accident on Little Lake Nellie. Not from his father or his father's father, not in the natural history of the spot.

***

They ate their barbecue dinner with all the trimmings early Monday evening: shoulders of ham Tim Crews had begun cooking that morning, grilled chicken, beer, corn, wine, potatoes. A typical picnic feast.

Fernando Montes, the Indians' strength and conditioning coach, had arrived around 2:30 to find the other guests already present. Crews proudly conducted the obligatory new homeowners' tour, pointing out the property line, discussing his plans for his acreage, explaining certain lake restrictions.

Then Crews showed off his stables, saddling the horses for the children to ride. After the kids, the grownups rode. Montes, Bob Ojeda. Steve Olin. Laurie Crews. Tim Crews stayed behind to keep the barbecure fires burning.

They finally sat down about 5:30, dinner coinciding with a storm that forced them into the enclosed patio and kitchen. Afterward, they lounged around trying to be heard over the jabbers and giggles of seven children. The oldest was 9, the youngest 7 months.

Bob Ojeda and his wife, Ellen, had brought 19-month-old Katherine. Nine-year-old Tricia Crews, 4-year-old Shawn and 2-year-old Travis wielded the territorial advantages that home-standing children enjoy.

Patti and Steve Olin brought their 7-month old twins, Kaylee and Garrett, and their big sister Alexa, who was one day past her third birthday.

Sometime after dinner, Patti Olin heard the men discussing a boat ride. She didn't much care for the idea. What sunlight there was on this partly cloudy afternoon had pulled a disappearing act. Sun set on Monday was 6:42.

The day had slipped toward 7 p.m. Friends expected the Olins back in Winter Haven an hour ago. There were three kids to gather up for the hour-long ride home over unfamiliar roads, miles of it as dark as the lake itself.

But the idea of an evening bout with Nellie's bass had been a day-long theme among Olin, Crews, Ojeda and Montes. The movement caught speed around 7 o' clock and quickly met resistance.

Patti Olin didn't want her husband venturing onto the lake in the dark. She made that known.

The temptation was, no doubt, strong. Night bass fishing in Florida is a passion that often produces a spectacular bounty, even on evenings such as Monday when there was no light from a new moon.

****

The gathering at Nellie's shore Monday night was a perfect example of how baseball constantly mixes and matches people, scoops them up like dice and scatters them. The talent in the game is liquid, moving from city to city, spring camp to camp, from desert Arizona to swampy Florida.

A year ago, Steve Olin couldn't have found a nearby bass lake on a day off if armed with a divining rod. From the Arizona desert, it is a two-thousand mile stretch of happenstance that reaches to Clermont, Fla., and further east to Vero Beach, where Ojeda and Crews wore Dodger blue in the spring of 1992.

But baseball brought them together, Steve Olin, Bob Ojeda and Tim Crews, in February 1993. Baseball put them elbow-to-elbow in a boat on a darkening March night.

Monday was the only off-day of spring training. Before Olin departed the clubhouse Sunday, to celebrate Alexa's birthday, Crews had walked around the clubhouse asking teammates to join his family at the ranch.

Along with Ojeda, Crews was one of the new pitchers on the roster. Olin didn't know them well or for long, but he made friends easily. As the top reliever in a closely knit bullpen fraternity that Crews was pledging this spring, Olin felt compelled to accept Crews' invitation.

Who knows, Crews and Olin might've someday become great friends. But on the night they died together, they didn't know much of each other. Tim Crews might even have known Little Lake Nellie better than he knew Steve Olin.

Crews and Olin had fishing in common and something else. Olin was a 16th-round draft choice with an awkward submarine motion that hid an average arsenal of pitches. Crews was an able pitcher relegated to the grunt work of baseball, long relief. Long relievers are the offensive linemen of baseball.

If the 1993 season unfolded in best form, Crews would build the bridge that Olin would cross to save games in the ninth inning.

On a real fishing trip, not Monday night's brief excursion into the darkness, time would've allowed for the recounting of minor-league war stories.

Olin could tell of stops in Burlington and Waterloo, of getting married when he wasn't yet out of Class A ball, of Patti delivering Alexa in 1990 when he shuttled between Cleveland and Colorado Springs, of the two big-league babies born last August in his first full season in Cleveland.

Last year, Olin saved 29 games, casting a ray of brilliance on team management for signing him to a two-year contract during spring training. He bought his first house, in Westlake, over the winter.

The '92 season, in life comfort and career progression, was a breakthrough year for the Olins. Without Dennis Eckserley's slider or Rob Dibble's fastball, Olin fashioned a 2.34 ERA in 72 games.

In perhaps the most accurate compliment paid to Olin's work, General Manager John Hart would later say, "He had the heart of a lion, the guts of a burglar. He courageously threw that fringe stuff up there and got people out."

Crews was four years older than Olin and had enjoyed earlier success. His setup work for Jay Howell in 1988 was crucial to the Dodgers' NL pennant and world championship. In his career, he'd pitched for three different organizations. He and Laurie had children born in three different cities - Tricia in El Paso, Shawn in Albuquerque and Travis in Los Angeles.

A starter while knocking around Burlington, Stockton, El Paso and Vancouver, Crews soon became a long reliever in the majors. Unlike Olin, last season was no breakthrough year for Crews. Quite the opposite. His ERA soared to 5.19 and he became a free agent after six years in the Dodger organization.

Hart had tried to trade for Crews two years ago. Hart and Crews shared hometown ties to Tampa. Working independently, Indians manager Mike Hargrove made his own calls on Crews and appreciated what he heard. Like Olin, Crews was what the scouts call "a gamer."

So Hart wasn't at all surprised when he saw Crews in his office doorway one day early in camp. Crews, who had fallen during an early training camp drill and broken three ribs, kept reading that Hart was looking for outside pitching help.

"I'm your guy," Crews told Hart that day. "You don't need to go get anybody. When I'm healthy you'll see."

A week ago, Crews was riding a wave. He'd thrown two shutout innings Saturday against Minnesota. The ribs were healing. King High School in Tampa had retired his jersey in a ceremony Friday night. Hart sat talking to someone near the clubhouse door Sunday when Crews, the last player to leave, checked the bulletin board for Tuesday's workout schedule.

Crews ran his finger down the list, stopping at the line, "9 a.m. - Dressed."

"It'll be a new day," Crews said in a cheery farewell. "And I'll be ready to go."

Mike Hargrove spent the day off golfing, then returned for dinner with his wife, Sharon. He'd mulled an offer from the Dodgers to compensate for all the lousy spring weather and play a game Monday.

For a thousand reasons, one paramount now, the Indians wish they'd never left Tucson. The weather belongs on the list. But Hargrove thought he'd have to quell a mutiny if he canceled the day off.

John Hart worked in his office until 3 p.m. and made dinner plans with his wife and daughter. Derek Lilliquist traveled home to Vero Beach. Ted Power stayed in Winter Haven. An earlier impromptu fishing trip hadn't set well with Mike Bielecki's wife, so he skipped the Crews barbecue. Several players toured Disney World.

Kevin Wickander, Olin's best friend, decided on a trip to Busch Gardens in Tampa. Olin and Wickander agreed to meet in Winter Haven for dinner at 6 p.m., at which point Wickander would present the birthday gift he'd bought for Alexa.

On the drive to Crews' ranch an hour north of training camp, Olin got lost. Returning to Winter Haven crossed his mind, but he persisted in the thought of Alexa on horseback.

A neighbor remembers seeing grownups and children riding in the pastures Monday where the citrus groves once grew. After dark, more news of the picnic reached them. The roar of a boat, followed by stillness. Then, the whirr of a life-flight helicopter.

***

On an overcast night that holds the stars and moon hostage, the lake is dressed in gray and black herringbone. The nearest outside light is 200 yards to the left of the longest dock on the lake. In the passing of minutes, the water and sky darken toward charcoal. All of the gray-black shades move toward black-gray and then finally the color of mourning.

It is 7:40 p.m., the approximate time, only three nights later, that Lake County paramedics and a firefighter received word of a grisly and deadly boating accident.

Like Monday, this night is largely overcast. A storm has passed. The moon is in hiding. Standing on the dock, it's as if a wet, black drape has been pulled across the lake.

The pitch-black sheds light on the tragedy. A fast boat griding to plane. A dark night. The coroner's report that said Crews, the driver, didn't try to duck or turn his head when the dock interrupted his trip to pick up his friend, Perry Brigmond, and Montes, who'd flashed truck lights from the shore.

"When it gets dark out here," said Scott Wilson, who lives next door to the dock owner, "it's like driving in the fog."

Bass boats are built to take an angler from one hole to another as quickly as possible. How fast Crews' bass boat was traveling when it crossed the dock, head-high, is undetermined. Kevin Wickander would later say of his best buddy, Steve Olin, that he "loved speed, fast boats and fast cars." He must've liked Crews' 18-foot Skeeter.

On plane, a 150 horsepower engine can hurtle a bass boat at speeds of 40 to 65 miles per hour. An outdoorsman friend describes such a boat as "an 18-foot ironing board with a high performance engine."

Standing on the dock in this lake, at that time of night, you make mental notes. Crews' boat was moving out of the porch lights of the Suggs home two football fields away into the murkiest center of the lake, from left to right, from life to death.

That night, Montes watched the bass boat move away from shore as he returned to the house to fetch Brigmond. When he returned, he could see the boat's running lights and the craft's silhouette. A spotlight that might've saved Steve Olin and Tim Crews was apparently tucked away in a compartment. Montes is no expert fisherman, but he insists the boat was not running full throttle.

He heard the engine burp a roar. Next he heard a thud. Then silence.

Later that night, Sharon Hargrove would hear an equally chilling sound when Patti Olin called to tell the manager and his wife what happened. In the background, Sharon Hargrove heard babies crying.