He steps up to the plate with his hat tugged low on a line that meets his eyebrows.
He is shorter than the home plate umpire but he gives the impression he could care less.
His square, defined, jaw juts out a little as he digs into the dirt to face the 6’2” 206-pound South Korean. Chan Ho Park is smiling slightly as he dangles his right arm and leans in to read the pitch.
They stand a mere 60 feet six inches away from one another...it’s so close that Park can see the dark stubble that covers Dustin Pedroia’s chin and he smiles, slightly.
Pedroia doesn’t look like a ballplayer. He looks like your neighborhood butcher, that is, if your neighborhood still had a local butcher, but that’s beside the point. Sure, he had given up a single to that pesky little shortstop. But he struck out the left fielder with ease, and this short and stocky second baseman didn’t look like he could rake it out of the infield, much less do anything damaging.
He gets a strike by him. Ball one. Then, ball two.
No matter, a fastball up and in. He won’t catch up.
There is a tomahawk chop, a flash of black, a crack.
The ball soars through the air, high up into the savory Boston nightlife, and it deposits itself over the green monster in a roar of cheers.
Tie game.
I love when these things fit.
Two weeks ago when I was looking over potential story lines to profile in my first TMI column I singled out Dustin Pedroia, the Boston Red Sox MVP second baseman, not only because of his character traits or his compelling past, but because I couldn’t bare subject myself to write another burnt out story featuring Alex Rodriguez or Derek Jeter.
And last night, after he struck out miserably in the first inning against 6’7”, 290-pound fiend, C.C. Sabathia, and followed that up by rolling a weak ground ball to first in the fourth, I began a somewhat reluctant search through my backup plans to decide who to write about.
Then he started the rally in the bottom of the sixth, hit the game changing two-run homer in the seventh and even tacked onto it by tomahawking in another run in the bottom of the eight against Joba Chamberlain, the final blow to their collective New York neck. Boston won 9-7.
Games like this are what define the 25-year-old Woodland, Calif., native as a player. They have ever since he broke into the league in 2007, won the World Series, and took home the Rookie of the Year award (following it up with AL MVP honors in 2008).
But they also follow a solid resemblance to his life outside baseball, which last year literally imploded on him from every angle that could.
His older brother, Brett, went to prison for a sex crime, and he was sentenced to one year in jail and eight years’ probation.
Almost without fail it seemed, the papers identified the perpetrator as "Dustin Pedroia's brother.”
Then, Pedroia’s father, Guy, received death threats at the family's tire store after an interview his son gave in which he was quoted as saying his hometown was "a dump."
"I dealt with a lot of [stuff] last year.” Pedroia said this spring. “My biggest thing was, you just got to find a way to get through it. When I got to the yard, I tried to concentrate on baseball. When I got home, I had to do all I could to keep everything under control, or at least make it seem like it was under control."
On the field he was an All-Star, a clubhouse galvanizer, a cutup, a leader. However, off the field he held his head high and he didn’t take anything or anyone seriously. He didn’t care or understand what would happen if he said certain things, certain ways.
After Brett Pedroia was arrested local papers in Woodland printed the story that referred to Brett as “Dustin Pedroia’s Brother.”
"It hurt when they wrote all that stuff and put my name in the paper," he said about the publicity. "It upset me, especially when my hometown paper started it up. I learned from it...I'm not responsible for anyone else's actions. I think everyone knows what type of guy I am. But that part was tough."
Then, last spring, not long after Brett’s arrest, Pedroia was the subject of a profile in Boston Magazine that was largely flattering but contained this nugget about his hometown: "It's a dump," Pedroia said in the piece. "You can quote me on that."
And they did.
To this day, Pedroia insists he was joking with the author of the story. It makes sense. He’s hardly the first ballplayer who desired to leave his hometown to find success.
But the quote created an uproar in Woodland, where local police eventually arrested a man for telephoning threats to the Pedroias' tire store, and Pedroia was forced to take on extra security when the Red Sox were in Oakland to play the Athletics.
"I love my hometown, but for people who don't know me, they look at this guy who was crushing his hometown," Pedroia said. "The people who knew me called and said, 'Hey, we know how you really feel.' I love my hometown; I grew up there; I know everybody there.
In January of 2010, Pedroia returned to Woodland for a fundraiser for Clark Field, the ballpark in which he'd played as a child.
More than 500 people showed up, and the former sports editor of the local paper introduced him by saying, "We are proud to say Dustin is from Woodland," the emcee said. "Welcome back, Dustin Pedroia."
That experience opened Pedroia’s eyes fairly quickly.
"I guess that was like the first step of having to deal with being a professional athlete," he said. "People, they target you.”
As they target anyone with any sort of power or influence or success.
He had struck out horribly, twice in a row. But he got back up and faced his music. He returned to his hometown with his head held high, but without the bravado, the ego, the superiority.
He still deals with everything that is thrown at him the same way, he lets it knock him down once, maybe twice, then he gets up, squares his jaw, sets his feet and tomahawks anything that comes at him over the left field fence if not to at least tie things up, to make things right.
Other Noteworthy Opening Night Performance
When C.C. Sabathia threw his first pitch as a New York Yankee in 2009 he didn’t imagine begin pummeled by the youthful Baltimore Orioles for six earned runs in just over four innings worth of work.
Even more unsuspecting was the fact that he, New York’s newest seven-year $161 million man, did not strike out a batter and walked five.
Oh, the New York Post had a field day in the April 7 edition.
So when Sabathia entered the bottom of the sixth inning Sunday night leading 5-2 it looked as if he had gotten the opening day jitters off his back for good. He was cruising with four strikeouts and only one walk.
Then that pesky Dustin Pedroia showed up and ruined everything.
Final stat line:
|
Pitchers |
IP |
H |
R |
ER |
BB |
SO |
HR |
PC |
ERA |
|
5.1 |
6 |
5 |
5 |
2 |
4 |
0 |
104 |
8.44 |
Fun But Pointless
• Joe Morgan called Red Sox manager Terry Francona “Tito” more than once. This happened last year too.
• Game time was 3:46 minutes. That’s nearly four hours of baseball.
• The Yankees and Pirates began the day tied for the best record in baseball. Now the Yankees have the worst.
Meaningful Moments
• Ryan Westmoreland was seen sitting in Theo Epstein's box not even three weeks removed from brain surgery.
Stats, Bats, Gnats
• Granderson can hit the long ball alright. His first hit as a Yankee was such. But when he came up to the plate with a man on third base and less that two outs what did he do but ground out weakly to first. There are reasons that apparent impact players bat seventh (yes, he even did last year on the Tigers so it’s not just the Yankees lineup) and this is one of those reasons, i.e. failure to advance runners.
• Kevin Youkilis hit a triple. The last time he did that was June 27 against Atlanta last year and the last one before that was July 8 of 2008. Ironically he had four that year. Two in July and two in April.
• Jorge Posada had three hits. The last time he had three hits on opening day was 2001. That year he hit .277 with 22 HR and 95 RBI in 484 at-bats. A repeat performance for the 38 year old would not be ignored.
• The back-to-back homers by Posada and Granderson were the first by the Yankees on Opening Day since Dave Winfield and Steve Kemp did it on April 5, 1983, at Seattle.
Games To Watch
• All of them. It’s opening day .
• Phillies at Nationals, 1:05 p.m.
• Marlins at Mets, 1:10 p.m.
• Cardinals at Reds, 1:10 p.m.
• Dodgers at Pirates, 1:35 p.m.
• Blue Jays at Rangers, 2:05 p.m.
• Indians at White Sox, 2:05 p.m.
• Rockies at Brewers, 2:10 p.m.
• Cubs at Braves, 4:10 p.m.
• Tigers at Royals, 4:10 p.m.
• Padres at D-backs, 5:10 p.m.
• Giants at Astros, 7:05 p.m.
• Twins at Angels, 10:05 p.m.
• Mariners at Athletics, 10:05 p.m.
Play Tuesday
• Orioles at Rays, 7:10 p.m.
Joshua Worn publishes “The Most Interesting…” column every Monday and Friday on his website, Two On One Out . If you would like to follow his bi-weekly collection you can subscribe through the website or by e-mailing him at thebaseballglutton@comcast.net .
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