CC's Fiesty: Crawford tells Young to Shut Up and Play baseball

The weather is not the only thing thats heating up here. It seems that we have a war of words brewing between former teammates Delmon Young and Carl Crawford. Earlier this week Crawford was a little critical of Young and also former Rays OF Elijah Dukes. In an article ran by the St. Pete Times Crawford said:

"They're both just young players who've got some growing up and maturing to do," Crawford, 26, said. "I just don't think the maturing part would have happened over here. It might happen somewhere else, but at the pace they were going I don't think they would have matured over here because they had too much free range to do whatever they wanted to. ... It was just one of them things where they just needed to grow up a little bit.

"They could do whatever they wanted to do and they did whatever they wanted to do. Being loud, talking too much, saying whatever they wanted to whoever they wanted to say it to. There weren't no rules for those guys. Now they're going to somewhere where they have rules, so I don't know what's going to happen then."

"They'd been getting in trouble and they got rewarded for it every year," he said. "So you couldn't expect them to come here and think that they were going to do something different and they were going to be good all of a sudden. That doesn't happen. It can only get worse. They've been doing that since Day 1. It didn't surprise me at all."

The Times then ran follow up stories with both Dukes and Young. Dukes agreed with the comments saying "I was a real hard-headed guy," "It was at times hard for me to listen. I needed to be able to admit that I do things wrong and it's okay to do things wrong, but to make good after that." Delmon Young on the other hand did not:

"You always see people over there, when they're in uniform saying stuff, but as soon as they leave start talking bad about Tampa," Young, 22, told reporters in Fort Myers. "It is what it is, that's why I'm not too much worried about it.

"I was called out by Toby (Hall, former Rays catcher), called out by a couple of guys, but as soon as they left, they were talking bad about the organization. So you really can't take it for what you see there."

"If they're trying to blame us for the way they weren't winning, if it was us two, we weren't there from '98 to '06, so ... "

Crawford, the Rays Left Fielder and seemingly new clubhouse leader, shot back at Delmon Young this morning as told here in the heater:

"Nobody even mentioned the word losing, losing games. We know we've been a losing franchise. He just wanted to say something back like he's always running his mouth. That's what he does. He runs his mouth all the time. Nobody was blaming him for anything. For him to come back at me was a personal attack. I feel that if there is anything that he is unsure about, tell him I would be more than happy to say it in his face, or any kind of other way, that would make him understand."

"These are exactly the the kind of distractions we were talking about with the Rays, a young guy popping off at the mouth, talking too much,'' Crawford said. "He needs to just shut up and play baseball.''

The Rays Report from TBO.com added this from Crawford

"For him to say we want to wait until he leaves to say something—who is he? Nobody’s afraid of him. You know? We’ll say it to his face. I’ll be more than happy to say it to his face or any kind of other way that’ll make him understand what we mean."

“For him to say that like that, that really pissed me off, you know what I’m saying? It is what it is. I want to let him know that nobody’s saying nothing because he’s not here—I’ll tell him the exact same thing to his face, and I’m pretty sure he’s going to make the trip over here, too, so he’ll know.”

Woooo them's fighting words where I come from. I love the new attitude from Carl Crawford, the Rays finally have their leader.