George Crable

George Elmer Crable
also known as George Odis Crandel

• Bats Left, Throws Left
• Height 6' 1", Weight 190 lb.

• Debut August 3, 1910
• Final Game August 20, 1910
• Born January 9, 1885 in Kearney, NE USA
• Died August 8, 1965 in Lake Worth, FL USA

BR page

Biographical Information

George Crable pitched two games in the majors in 1910, appearing with the Brooklyn Superbas. In 7 1/3 innings, he allowed four runs for a 4.91 ERA. One source says he won 20 games and lost 20 games in different seasons in the Texas League, although Baseball Reference does not list a 20 win season. He appeared in 7 games for the 1918 Toronto Maple Leafs.

For the longest time, his date of death was unknown. What was known was that after baseball, he had a career in vaudeville, appearing alongside his wife until disappearing from public records. The mystery was solved by researcher Bill Carle in 2016. The first mystery concerned his wife, whose name was sometimes listed as Musette and other times as Madeline, with no last name and no marriage record being found, although it was known the wedding had taken place around 1907. He appeared in census records in different parts of the country. In 1920, he was living in Oklahoma City and working with a vaudeville troupe called The Baseball Four. In 1931, he had moved back to Nebraska, where he opened a cigar store. The business burned to the ground in 1930 and no trace of the couple was found in the 1940 census.

Carle's breakthrough came when he surmised Crable may have changed his name at one point, and through trial and error, he was able to zero in on one George Crandel, living in Dania, Florida in 1940, who was also born in Nebraska and married to a woman named Madeline. While the man was listed as 9 years younger than Crable's known birth year of 1885, he had the same birthday and was also a former entertainer. Information about his wife also matched what was known, with a birth in Des Moines, IA. Her last name was "Deford", and indeed there was a Musetta Deford in the 1895 Iowa state census, which was another fact that was unlikely to be a simple coincidence. Madeline had also fibbed about her age around the time of her move to Florida, shaving 12 years off her birthday. This information allowed Carle to find the couple's marriage record, on November 26, 1907, in Colorado. Musette had been divorced at the time, and eventually changed her name to Madeline.

Further Reading

• "George Crable Found", in Bill Carle, ed.: Biographical Research Committee Report, SABR, November/December 2016, pp. 1-2.

Related Sites

• George Crable at the SABR Bio Project