For geographical reasons, Carl Crawford was one of my favorite baseball players. This past weekend he betrayed all that is good and noble about the world to join the Boston Red Sox from the Tampa Bay Rays.
In some weird way, the baseball and book worlds met this week, when a Kansas City Royals blogger got creative with a piece that claimed Carl Crawford was going to open an antiquarian bookstore with the 10th largest contract in baseball history.
“Ultimately, I'm a businessman, which people don't always understand. I have my personal collection and then I have the store. Yes, I'll pour over this 1711 almanac for a few days, but that doesn't mean I won't sell it for a 5% profit.” Crawford is quoted as saying in the piece.
I'm sure Carl is a smart and intense guy, but the old books idea was a piece of fabrication.
But what's funny to baseball fans is no joke to rare book collectors. News of Crawford's new venture filled up Twitter with at least one book centric site posting about it. The Royals blogger admitted it was false (he did make up some nice quotes), but he may have convinced Crawford that some type of bookstore could work.
Crawford tweeted that he is going to open a bookstore “with details to come.”
Of course, he probably was joking. Too bad he wasn't joking about that whole Red Sox contract.
