This story was excerpted from Jordan Bastian’s Cubs Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox. Perla Paredes pinch-hit for this edition of the newsletter.
MIAMI -- In the Cubs' series opener against the Marlins on Friday, center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong was taking batting practice when 11-year-old Crew Klein held up a sign proposing a trade.
The sign read: “Hey Pete! I’m your biggest fan from the Smokies! I have a Javi Báez auto 1/1, I want to give it to you. Want to trade ‘4’ a bat? GO CUBS GO.”
It was a win-win deal. One that Crow-Armstrong couldn't walk away from.
Klein, a Tennessee native, met the NL MVP frontrunner when the outfielder played with the Knoxville Smokies, the Double-A affiliate of the Cubs, in 2023. Klein started playing baseball when he was 3 years old. Now, he plays center field and wears No. 4 for his travel team, Yard, modeling parts of his game after Crow-Armstrong.
“When I first watched him, I chased him down in a parking lot to get his autograph,” Klein recalled from when he was 8. “I do some things with my swing that he does, and I watch clips of him. [On defense, I try to re-create] the way he starts his prep steps and everything.”
Klein reached into his pocket for the card and gave it to Crow-Armstrong, along with a laminated picture of the two from 2023, before Crow-Armstrong disappeared into the dugout.
Crow-Armstrong came back with a light-colored maple Victus bat with a black bottom that also had his full name burned above the barrel. He wrote “To Crew!” along with his signature in silver Sharpie before finishing off the trade.
“I'm sure we met a couple times in Tennessee,” Crow-Armstrong said. “It was a pretty intimate setting there. Like, fans had some pretty close access to us, so yeah, we crossed paths.”
The card was an autographed 1st Bowman Chrome card of Javier Báez from when he played with the Cubs for more than seven years, first getting called up in 2014. It sat in the middle of Crow-Armstrong’s locker in the visiting clubhouse at loanDepot park for the rest of the series.
“[Báez] was my favorite player growing up,” Crow-Armstrong said. “I was a Cubs fan, and I was just at that age where I was super interested in baseball when [Báez] got called up. I remember him and [Jorge Soler] getting called up very vividly.”
It was also special for Crow-Armstrong to hear that Klein plays center field, wears No. 4 and tries to play like him.
“That's the goal,” Crow-Armstrong said. “We try and make an impact however we can, but if you're doing that by kids just appreciating how you play, that hits home. That's how I ended up loving people that I loved growing up as well, like Javy and Andrew McCutchen and Ronald Acuña Jr.”
Knowing the Cubs were going to be in Miami for Labor Day Weekend, Klein and his father, Todd, traveled to Miami so Klein could watch his favorite player in action again.
“My wife was gracious enough to let us do a little boys’ trip, so here we are,” Todd said.
It has been so much fun for Klein to watch Crow-Armstrong since he has followed his career for a while.
“He turned into such a good baseball player that I like him so much,” Klein said. “And [that’s why] we came down here tonight.”
Crow-Armstrong has put on a show for Klein and the rest of the baseball world this season, as the 2026 All-Star owns a .280/.374/.572 slash line with a .946 OPS. Entering Monday with 33 stolen bases and 40 homers, the outfielder has the chance to record just the seventh 40-40 season in MLB history with 18 games left in the regular season.
That type of performance has come with Klein’s favorite player making adjustments that are reminiscent of when he was young. This year he stopped hitting off the machine and has focused on doing tee flips, which is a batting practice routine that combines static tee work and flip toss from a coach.
It has been reassuring for Crow-Armstrong to figure out what works.
“There's something that is super easy about just trying to take the perfect swing over and over again, nothing super high effort,” Crow-Armstrong said. “I get to kind of save all the energy I need for the game.”
And that approach has helped put Crow-Armstrong in what his manager described as a special place.
“When you get to these places,” Craig Counsell said pregame on Friday. “You're just in flow, and [Crow-Armstrong] is probably experiencing it in a different way than we would experience it or we think about it.
“When you're there, it's just different. He's in a different place right now. It's a great place to be as an athlete. That's a really fun place.”