The Red Sox and Stalking

Recently, Red Sox GM Theo Epstein revealed that the Red Sox did a very thorough background check on free agent outfielder Carl Crawford, before signing him to a contract over 7 years for $142 million.

Epstein (courtesy of Full Count @ WEEI):

The more we dug on him, and we covered him as if we were privately investigating him … We had a scout on him literally the last three, four months of the season at the ballpark, away from the ballpark.

Personally, I think the notion of anybody tailing you at all times over the course of several months is jarring, but I would suspect the feeling is even greater when you are in the public eye and make several million dollars per year. That said, its hard to actually blame the Red Sox for doing this, as I have no doubt that it's a practice employed by many other teams in baseball. Any business conducts all the background research possible when making a significant financial investment, and baseball teams are a business, after all.

I do think the next time Epstein conducts an interview about a player he just signed, he may want to leave out a few of the more intimate details.