It has been just under 15 months since the Los Angeles Dodgers cut Carl Crawford, ending his Major League career, and it seems the four-time All-Star outfielder is at peace with how everything went down.
In an interview with Bleacher Report’s Scott Miller, Crawford said after being released by L.A. he turned down advances from the Phillies and Orioles because he was ready to hang up his spikes. And he made clear that he does not need anyone’s sympathy.
“Lonely? Nah,” Crawford, who turned 36 last month, says from behind that wall. He gets that question a lot, and it’s easy to see why. To go from the raucous atmosphere of packed stadiums to days as quiet and wide open as the Texas prairie…well, it’s no wonder that last week, a cousin he hadn’t spoken with in quite a while phoned with the same assumption. Talk to me, Carl, she said. Really, now, tell me how you’re doing…
“It’s so funny, man,” he says. “I’d really like to get it on record: Everybody thinks I’m sad and lonely, and it’s just not the case. It’s not the case at all.
“I did my best. I got rewarded for it. I’m at my crib. I did everything I could. So you come home and enjoy your life. People never see me, so they take that as, ‘Oh, he’s so depressed and lonely.’ No. I’m in the comfort of my own home, and I’m not worried about the outside. Trust me, I’m not depressed at all.”
After becoming one of the best players in baseball with the Tampa Bay Rays in the late 2000s, Crawford signed with the Red Sox in December 2010 and immediately fell off. He was traded to the Dodgers in August 2012 but never recovered his early-career form. Here are his yearly averages from 2004-10 with Tampa compared to his numbers over his six seasons with the Red Sox and Dodgers.
2004-10 — 146 games, .301/.344/.461, 113 OPS+, 27 doubles, 13 triples, 14 homers, 49 stolen bases, 4.6 WAR
2011-16 — 80 games, .271/.310/.407, 97 OPS+, 16, three triples, five homers, 12 stolen bases, 0.6 WAR
In the Bleacher Report article, Crawford blames the sudden drop-off on his hamstrings, which “started hurting one day and never stopped.” He said his hammys would act up every year when he hit 15 stolen bases.
Of course, any disappointment Crawford harbors about the end of his career might be softened by the checks he still receives twice a month from the Dodgers, who are still paying off the end of his seven-year, $142 million deal.
Crawford said he will root for Los Angeles in the postseason and regrets that he didn’t give the Dodgers some better output during his four years there. Still, he’s clearly not that torn up about it.
“I wish I could have performed better there, because I really liked L.A.,” Crawford says. “I just wish I could have played some of my prime years there. I gave them what I had, but it’s still just frustrating when you can’t do what you want to do. That’s why it was no problem when the Dodgers called me into the house, because I already knew I couldn’t play the way I wanted to play.
“At the end of the day, I’m going to sleep good at night because I knew that I gave it my best effort.”
And hey, good for Crawford for being happy and at peace. He had a great career and has little reason to sulk.
I have a friend who’s EXTREMELY lonely. His parents died between 2015 and ’16, and as soon as his remaining family dispose of/sell off/whatever the things they had, he’ll be kicked out of their house so it can reportedly be flipped. Visit this web site to contact him. He needs special people to come into his life so his family won’t need to put him (back) into a psychiatric facility. dL