Ted Williams and Carl Crawford

From
http://sports.espn.go.com/boston/mlb/columns/story?columnist=edes_gordon&id=6366474

"In his first dozen games with the Boston Red Sox, Crawford has been paid more ($1.5 million) than Ted Williams is said to have been paid his entire career ($1.45 million, according to baseball-reference.com)."

Full article:
Friday, April 15, 2011
Updated: April 16, 3:01 AM ET
For Carl Crawford, now come the boos
By Gordon Edes
ESPNBoston.com

BOSTON -- He is not alone, of course. Not on a team that is 2-10, is collectively batting .224 and has five players in Friday night's starting lineup batting at the Mendoza Line (.200) or worse.
But Carl Crawford was the one advertised as the game-changer, the left fielder being paid on average more than any of his illustrious predecessors in Fenway Park, including Manny Ramirez. More? In his first dozen games with the Boston Red Sox, Crawford has been paid more ($1.5 million) than Ted Williams is said to have been paid his entire career ($1.45 million, according to baseball-reference.com).
So, Crawford is the biggest target and the player at whom Red Sox fans are now directing boos, a sound foreign to him during the nine seasons he spent with the Tampa Bay Rays.

Carl Crawford's .137 BA is not what fans were expecting. He has only seven hits in 51 at-bats.
"They have to boo," he said after Friday night's 7-6 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays, in which he went hitless in five at-bats, including a three-strike punchout in the ninth that ended with him swinging at a pitch that bounced in front of the plate.
"I'm playing real bad; we're playing real bad," Crawford said. "You definitely understand. You can't be upset about that. You kind of feel their frustration a little, but we're frustrated, too."
So far, Crawford's Red Sox experience has been The Nightmare on Lansdowne Street. He now is 51 at-bats into his Sox career and he has seven hits. One has gone for extra bases. The average is .137. He has scored three runs and knocked in one. He couldn't look more uncomfortable at the plate. The ump cost him an infield hit in his first at-bat Friday, but with Jacoby Ellsbury on third and one out in the seventh, Crawford managed just a shallow fly to left.
He also came up short on Travis Snider's game-tying double in the sixth, a ball that hit above him on the left-field scoreboard. He admitted afterward he might have been able to catch it.
At the plate, he is so at sea, he might as well be the USS Crawford.
Manager Terry Francona said he looked "a little bit jumpy," which is kinder than saying he looks painfully and totally out of sync.
"I thought he beat out that ball in the first inning," Francona said of Crawford's bid for an infield hit, which replays appeared to show he had won in a photo-finish race with pitcher Brett Cecil to the bag at first.
"I know he didn't hit it good," Francona continued, "but it's amazing how something like that [helps]. You go out to left field and you're 1-for-1 and you're feeling OK about yourself."
“
They have to boo. I'm playing real bad; we're playing real bad. You definitely understand. You can't be upset about that. You kind of feel their frustration a little, but we're frustrated, too.

” -- Red Sox left fielder Carl Crawford
Instead, it's impossible to imagine Crawford feeling anything but miserable. The Sox had essentially two days off, with a rainout Wednesday and a scheduled off day Thursday. Crawford was asked whether he thought about baseball during that time or tried to avoid thinking about it.
"You think about baseball a little bit," Crawford said. "You get your mind off it a little bit, try to relax as much as you can."
But at the plate, Crawford looks like he's mainlining Red Bull, swinging at pitches far out of the zone, fouling off pitches that he should be hitting off the wall, rolling over on way too many pitches and beating them into the ground.
"I'm still battling right now," he said. "Obviously I'm not getting the results I want, but I got to keep battling."
The Sox caught a break Friday night when umpires overruled a home run call on Adam Lind's first-inning drive that veered just right of the Pesky Pole and called it foul. Had the call stood, the Jays would have led 3-0. Instead, the Sox built a 3-0 lead on home runs by Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis, who has 15 walks but had not yet gone deep until he deposited one in the center-field camera well.
But Clay Buchholz walked five batters in just five-innings plus, and the Jays pulled off a hit-and-run and a double steal in a four-run seventh inning, the runs all coming at the expense of Bobby Jenks, who heard boos, too.