ST. LOUIS — Doug Glanville has played center field. He has played for the Cubs. As one of the most thoughtful observers of baseball, he can offer an insider’s perspective on what it is to be Pete Crow-Armstrong.
‘‘I’ve had a lot of chances to talk to him,’’ Glanville said, sitting in the visitors’ dugout Sunday afternoon at Busch Stadium, while in town to serve as an analyst on ESPN’s radio broadcast of the Cubs-Cardinals game.
‘‘I’m always very impressed and blown away by his perspective that is well beyond his years. He just feels like somebody who has been around the block.
‘‘There’s a thoughtfulness to him, although he got in trouble recently because he’s also really emotional and plays that way. But even the way he described [the incident in Rate Field] on the back end, like how he has to be better, I’m more amazed at that.’’
Glanville was four years older than Crow-Armstrong when he made his big-league debut with the Cubs in 1996. Glanville was 25; Crow-Armstrong was 21 when he debuted in 2023.
Like Crow-Armstrong, Glanville was a first-round draft pick. He was taken 12th overall by the Cubs in 1991. Crow-Armstrong was taken by the Mets with the 19th pick overall in 2020. The comparisons end there, at least relative to their time with the Cubs. Glanville played one full season with the Cubs in 1997, then was traded that December to the Phillies for infielder Mickey Morandini.
It was only after he was traded to Philadelphia that Glanville became an everyday center fielder, where he was regarded as one of the best defenders in the league. But he never won a Gold Glove or was named to an All-Star team.
Crow-Armstrong, meanwhile, is already in his third full season with the Cubs after coming to Chicago in the Javy Baez deal. He has been an All-Star. He has won a Gold Glove. After signing a six-year, $115 million contract this spring, he already has lifetime financial security.
He is the face of the franchise.
‘‘I see why he’s the Pied Piper,’’ Glanville said, ‘‘because I think kids love him and he has that generational transcendent personality.
‘‘The passion, right? He could be anywhere, on the sandlots. He just wants to play. That’s like Prince going to a dive bar just to play.
‘‘When you become an oldhead, you want to see examples that the game you played is still here. There is an old-school to him that makes it feel like the game is still in good hands. There’s a purity to that. He deserves everything that people are saying about him.’’
Several days after the incident at the Rate, for which Crow-Armstrong was fined $5,000 for the vulgar language he directed at a woman who was taunting him from a ground-level section in the outfield, PCA made errors in consecutive games. Glanville has little doubt PCA’s mind was elsewhere.
‘‘Sure, and because of the standard he set by how he responded to it later, it should be,’’ Glanville said. ‘‘It will be because he cares about it. He knows that was not how he wanted to portray himself, and sometimes, yes, it carries out to the field.
‘‘Sometimes you just have bad days, for sure. But he knows the interconnection between what you call distraction or frustration or trying to balance this intensity with not going so far that you can’t focus. So that comes with the territory of someone who is outwardly passionate, and so you’re going to be outwardly upset, too.
‘‘I remember my dad had a stroke in 2000, and I was completely distracted. Like, I forgot how many outs there were. I was totally in another place. I get it.’’
On Saturday night, we all might have witnessed another way PCA can employ to respond to the vitriol he faces. He hit the longest home run of his career, a 444-foot blast, directly into the shirtless ‘‘Tarps Off’’ crowd chanting ‘‘Overrated’’ at him.
‘‘He’s freelancing, improvising; it’s just sort of the notes to play into the scene because that fires him up,’’ Glanville said. ‘‘To me, yesterday was a game that he kind of said, ‘OK, that’s another way to deal with it. There’s another way to challenge.’ ’’
That’s only one side of Glanville’s deep appreciation for Crow-Armstrong. There is also the kind of understanding that can exist between one master craftsman and another.
‘‘Talking center field with him is a joy,’’ Glanville said. ‘‘Like, how he thinks about his strengths and where he wants to start and comfort and jumps. How he understands what information to gather and what information to kind of discard or test.
‘‘I found his aptitude is off the charts, and then just watch his skill: the precision of his angles, his fearlessness at the wall, how he takes charge and how he’s gotten better.
‘‘The thing that I appreciate is, sometimes with metrics and analytics or data, people are like, ‘Give him the Gold Glove,’ before they even play 10 games. He’s leading those categories, but I feel like his excellence transcends the numbers.
‘‘I mean, those are measurable, for sure. But there’s something else, and I think that, to me, sustains him.’’