Major League Baseball Player. Played Major League baseball as a pitcher for 11 seasons (1926 to 1936) with the Washington Senators, St. Louis Browns and Detroit Tigers. Nicknamed “General” after United States Army General Enoch Crowder, he put together a string of successful seasons in an era where he was overshadowed by figures such as Lefty Grove and Carl Hubbell. He was known in his time as a “Yankee Killer”, due to his success in beating the Bronx Bombers on a regular basis. Arriving with the Senators in 1926, he put together a decent rookie season, going 7 and 4 in 19 games. When he stumbled a bit in his next season the Senators traded him to the Browns for pitcher Tom Zachary. Although he would win only 3 games for St. Louis the rest of the year, he grew into his own the next with a stellar season that saw him win 21 games (good for 4th highest in the AL) while losing only 5. That mark brought him the League lead in Winning Percentage, and help the Browns climb out of the second division. He followed up with a 17 Win-15 Loss mark in 1929 (and served up future Hall of Famer Bill Dickey’s first career home run), but had won only 3 games by June during the 1930 season. On June 13 the Browns traded him, along with future Hall of Famer Heinie Manush, back to the Senators for another future Hall of Famer, Goose Goslin. The trade would work wonders for the Senators, with Manush hitting over .300 4 times in the next 5 years, and General Crowder winning 83 Games in the same span. In 1932 he won a League-leading 26 games (topping both Grove and Lefty Gomez), winning 15 in a row at one point. In the 1933 campaign he kept up his dominance, winning another League-Leading 24 Games. That year also saw him being selected as a member to the inaugural Baseball All-Star Game. He pitched the 4th, 5th and 6th Innings of that game, giving up the NL’s only two runs as the AL (led by Babe Ruth) took the first Mid-Summer Classic 4 to 2. By the end of the season his pitching, along with the batting of Manush and Goslin, (who had returned to the Senators) helped Washington win the American League Pennant over the New York Yankees. In the subsequent World Series against the Bill Terry-led New York Giants, he started Games 2 and 5, which were both wins by the Giants, who took the Series 4 Games to 1. It would prove to be the last Series ever by the Senators, and the franchise itself wouldn’t return to the Fall Classic until 1965, after it had become the Minnesota Twins. In 1934 he again reached the World Series, but with the Detroit Tigers, who had obtained him after he went only 4 wins and 10 losses for the Senators by mid season. Detroit had expressly picked him up for his talent in beating the Yankees, and that strategy did not fail them. Late in the season, with the Yankees neck-and-neck with the Tigers in the pennant race, he faced them in twice and beat them twice with wins that solidified Detroit’s hold on first place. Against the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series, he opened Game 1 for the Tigers, but took an 8 to 3 loss in a game marred by three Detroit errors. The Cardinals, led by Joe Medwick, Pepper Martin and Dizzy Dean, took the Series 4 Games to 3, with General Crowder only appearing in a final relief inning in Game 7, an 11-0 Cardinals Series-clinching blowout. He rebounded the next year, winning 16 Games as the Tigers repeated as AL Champs. Squaring off against the NL Champion Chicago Cubs, both General Crowder’s and Detroit’s performances would be different from the year before. He pitched a stellar 5-hit, 2 to 1 victory in Game 4 (outduelling ace Tex Carleton), which helped the Tigers take the Baseball crown 4 Games to 2. It was to be his last moment of glory, though. After a 4 and 3 record in 1936, he was released from the Tigers, and he retired from baseball. His career record was 167 Wins-115 Losses, 402 Games Pitched, 799 Strikeouts and a career 4.12 Earned Run Average.