Crawford: Yankees Never Contacted Me

Carl Crawford said the Yankees were never an option:

I never talked to New York. They never offered me a contract. I never had any kind of communication with New York, so it was never an option to go to New York. Cliff Lee was their first choice. I didn't want to be somebody's backup plan. I wanted to go to a place where they wanted me just as bad as I wanted to go there.

Crawford also downplayed the news that the Red Sox monitored his off-field activities:

I understand why they did it, and it wasn't like anything negative. That's just the way I felt. That's pretty much it. I never had anything like that happen before. It's a process. They explained to me that they do that to all the guys. It's just something they have to do. It wasn't a big deal at all. It just was different.