This A's coach raised not one, but two pros

June 16th, 2022

This story was excerpted from Martin Gallegos' Athletics Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

With Father’s Day coming up, we checked in with A’s assistant hitting coach Chris Cron, whose two sons, C.J. and Kevin, are both professional ballplayers. C.J. is a slugging first baseman with the Rockies whose strong numbers so far this season could land him his first career All-Star selection. Kevin, who plays for the SSG Landers of the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO), was drafted by the D-backs in 2014 and received the news of his first Major League callup from his father, who managed him with the Triple-A Reno Aces in '19.

On his baseball memories of C.J. and Kevin:
I was blessed because I was in the game already. I was playing before they were born. Once they were old enough, they were able to come to the ballpark with me as a Minor League manager and that's just what job they came into. I was a baseball guy. And as it turns out, I've never not been a baseball guy. So that's all they ever knew. I think it's one of the best things you could ever have happen to you if this is the field you want to be part of, and they got an early indoctrination into what it's like to be a professional baseball player. It's invaluable experience. I always say it's through osmosis that they learned all these things, whether I'm talking to a kid about hitting the cutoff man or something about hitting or managing. They were just there soaking up all the information.

On delivering Kevin the news of his big league callup in 2019:
It was the best feeling a father could ever have. I was fortunate enough to get offered that job. I was a hitting coordinator prior to that and they came to me with this opportunity to manage again. I knew it was a job that I was going to take because of Kevin's situation. He was on the verge of possibly being called up. As a hitting coordinator, you go in there for five days and you watch your kid because he's in the organization. But when you're there day in and day out and you see his love and joy for the game and how he prepares for the game, it's like you're seeing some of your teachings that you established a long time ago earlier in his life that he's applying and using on a day-to-day basis. When you see firsthand how they conduct themselves as a professional, it is a very gratifying time, and that year was unbelievable. It was a dream come true. It was the best dream for me. I played in the big leagues. That's a dream come true. But when you can have that opportunity to call your own son up to the big leagues, that's almost another level above that. I had thoughts on how I was going to present this to him. But it happened so quickly that I had no preparation. He needed to be on the plane in a half-hour. We were on the road in El Paso. It was just a big hug and a lot of tears. They gave me a couple of days off to go watch him play. I was able to see his first at-bats in the big leagues, which was really cool.

On watching his two sons follow in his footsteps:
Watching my own kid fulfill a dream of playing in the big leagues and doing all these positive things, I can't explain it to anybody. All I know is I do know how my father felt when I got to the big leagues and then those 44 days or however many days, the 25 at-bats I got in the big leagues, now I know how proud he felt of me. There's not a day that goes by where I don't feel the proudness of being C.J. and Kevin Cron’s dad. Because they're not just good baseball players, they're actually better human beings. And that's all you can ask for as a dad, to have that comment made to you from other people to you about your own kids.