Crane's fascination with billiards started at age 11, sparked by play on a toy pool table his brother received as a Christmas gift. When he showed interest and ability, his father Scott Crane, a trial lawyer and sportsman, and his mother, a high school teacher, soon replaced their dining room table with a 4' by 8' pool table. He soon ventured out of the home to practice a couple days each week at Olympic Billiards, a room that was part of a bowling alley in Scottsville, a suburb of Rochester, New York. Crane stated in 1998: "Other kids, you know they'd play for twenty minutes or half an hour and they'd say, 'let's do something else.' I could play all day and never get enough. I couldn't wait to get home from school to play."