FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Carl Crawford was well aware of the potential implications Jayson Werth's signing had. Adrian Gonzalez, on the other hand, didn't think twice when the Yankees won the bidding war for Mark Teixeira two years before.

Regardless, these moments in recent baseball history were undeniably two of the most important reasons why two of the biggest acquisitions in Red Sox history found themselves just a few lockers apart from one another at City of Palms Park late Tuesday morning.

First, the most recent round of serendipity ...

Crawford was just sitting around his Houston-area home, watching his usual round of baseball news shows leading into the Winter Meetings when something piqued the outfielder's interest.

Werth had signed with the Washington Nationals for seven years, $126 million.

Crawford's thoughts?

"Man, that was a nice deal right there," he remembered thinking. "I was impressed by that."

What it did was all-but-cement who would be manning left field at Fenway Park for the Red Sox over the next seven years.

Werth was thought to be Crawford's chief road block in regards to potentially landing with the Red Sox. There was some belief that the former Phillies outfielder was being targeted by Boston, even perhaps above and beyond the speedier, younger alternative. (Sources later indicated that the Sox valued Crawford well above Werth when analyzing the free agent market.)

But even before the Nationals went all-in with Werth, Crawford wasn't anxiety-ridden regarding any obstacles on the way to Boston. Both players were going to get theirs, some how, some way, somewhere.

"I pretty much watched everything. I didn't know what he was doing, but I saw it was happening. It was surprising though, because everybody thought Cliff Lee was going to sign first," Crawford recalled of the Werth signing. "We are two different kind of players. I just figured we were two different kind of players. He was him, and I was me. Whomever was going to like him, was going to like him. Whomever was going to like me, was going to like me.

"If [the Red Sox] liked him, they liked him. Somebody else would like me. Somebody out there must like me."

So what was Crawford's reaction when the news reached his living room regarding the 'other' high-priced free-agent outfielder?

"It definitely didn't hurt," he said. "When [Werth] got that contract I figured I would definitely get something like that. It definitely put me at ease more when I saw his contract.

"I'm not saying nothing about Jayson Werth, but he's two years older than me. I'm just looking at it from an age standpoint. He was 31 and going to be 32 and got a seven-year deal. I just turned 29."

What the Werth signing did was make Crawford's path to Boston appreciably smoother than earlier in the offseason. There would be other teams interested, most notably the Angels. ("I wanted to go play with Torii, but the way I looked at it was I can play with Torii Hunter or Jacoby Ellsbury. You can't go wrong with either one.") But the attraction of playing with the Red Sox was really starting to take root when soaking in the atmosphere during a Rays visit to Fenway Park in early Sept.

"In September I think every stop I made I was trying to picture myself there just in case," Crawford explained. "The closer I got to the end of the end of the season, the more I thought about it. The All-Star Game (when Hunter's locker was placed next to Crawford's) it was just for giggles then. I wasn't taking it too seriously."

Then Werth and the Nationals gave the momentum the ultimate push.

How another object of the Red Sox' affection, Teixeira, altered the fortunes of another momentous acquisition, Gonzalez, well, that was a bit less direct.

"I was a couple of years into my contract, and I don't even think I was into my first year of arbitration, so there was no talk of me being traded because my salary wasn't too much. So I knew I would be in San Diego," said Gonzalez regarding his way of thinking when the Yankees out-bid the Red Sox for Teixeria prior to the '09 season.

But that didn't mean the implications of the then-free agent first baseman inking his eight-year, $180 million contract with New York had on Gonzalez didn't cross the minds of followers of the Red Sox.

The math had already been done: Gonzalez was one of the few at the level of Teixeira, he would ultimately be too expensive for the Padres and he possessed the kind of age and ability the Red Sox would have no problem investing heavily in. And when word got out that the Sox made a run at the lefty slugger at the trade deadline in '09, attention only turned more toward Gonzalez and away from the one that got away.

"You know what players are signing for. I wasn't oblivious to what was going on, but it wasn't something I was paying close attention to," Gonzalez said. "I knew it was being talked about [among Red Sox fans] because our offseason trainer, Bob Foley, was from [Shrewsbury] and he would always be telling me these things. It was something I wasn't paying too much attention to."

But thanks to the increased talk, and whispers from Foley, Gonzalez started thinking about the notion he might be the cornerstone many believed Teixeira was ticketed to become before heading to New York.

"Since the moment I started getting asked about it, you start thinking about," admitted Gonzalez. "You start thinking about scenarios, and you know there is going to come the day where I became a free agent so you start thinking about those things. I can't say it was something that never crossed my mind. I talked about it with my wife, where we had five or six scenarios of good places to go, and the whole time the No. 1 place was Boston, outside of San Diego. So when it happened I was really excited about it because Boston was No. 1 on our list."

Why would Gonzalez be prioritizing the Red Sox, the team Teixeira (whose numbers haven't kept pace with the former Padres' slugger the past two years) pushed down his list?

"[Red Sox, and former Marlins, principal owner] John Henry and [Red Sox, and former Marlins, scout] Dave Finley, basically the two guys that drafted me," the first baseman explained. "When [Henry] bought the Red Sox it took an edge closer. When he had left the Marlins, it went from being a great organization to an organization I wasn't too happy with. That's why when I was traded to Texas I was really, really happy. That left a feeling in my mind that it was something that I wanted to go back to."