Carl Crawford: Boston media 'worst thing' ever

Carl Crawford continues to struggle to get on the field with the Dodgers, while continuing to complain about his experience with his former team. On Thursday, he took some shots at the Boston media.

“That smile turned upside down quick,” Crawford told Danny Knobler of CBSSports.com of his time in Boston. “I think they want to see that in Boston. They love it when you’re miserable.

“Burying people in the media, they think that makes a person play better. That media was the worst thing I’ve ever experienced in my life.”

Crawford, traded to Los Angeles last August, said he’s still hoping to play Opening Day, but he’s still limited as he recovers from Tommy John surgery last season.

Meanwhile, talking about his time in Boston, he said that he realizes signing with the Red Sox was a mistake.

“It just wasn’t the right place for me at the end of my day,” he said. “I didn’t do my homework. Maybe they didn’t, either.

“At the end of the day, it just wasn’t the place for me.”

Crawford’s numbers took a dramatic decline during his injury-plagued 1½ seasons in Boston, but he’s convinced he can bounce back now that he has “that free-spirit feel” he used to have when he played for the Rays.

“I feel like I’ve got a lot of baseball left,” he said. “But over there [in Boston] I felt like my career was almost over.”

Crawford acknowledged that his performance was worthy of criticism in Boston.

“I get it, I didn’t perform,” he said. “I got the money. I didn’t perform. I gave them every reason.”

That said, he complained that the criticism was too much.

“I took so much of a beating in Boston, I don’t think anything could bother me anymore,” he said. “They can say what they want — that I’m the worst free agent ever — and it won’t get to me. But it bothered me the whole time there.

“Look how they treat [John] Lackey. Adrian [Gonzalez] hit 30 home runs [actually 27], and they talked about him not hitting home runs.”