Dustin Pedroia returns
Xander Bogaerts will never forget that first time he walked into Fenway Park. Aug. 23, 2009.
"It was so loud," he told WEEI.com.
For the then-16-year-old who had just traveled from Bangor, Maine - where he and his brother completed their Senior League World Series run - the whole scene was awe-inspiring. Signing a contract with his new organization and then stepping into Fenway, where the first thing he saw was Derek Jeter hit the very first pitch of the game for a home run off Sox stater Josh Beckett.
"We liked it so much we asked my mother if we could stay another day," remembered Bogaerts.
It turned out he stuck around he home of the Red Sox for quite a long while. Thirteen years, to be exact. Now, Bogaerts is facing the prospect of leaving once again, staring at the prospect of no longer calling Fenway his home park.
With the trade deadline eight days away, and the shortstop possessing the opportunity to become a free agent at season's end, the place he fell in love with during that Red Sox vs. Yankees Sunday night game could be soon put in his rearview mirror.
So, is he making a point of soaking in what could be his days as a home player at Fenway?
"So far it hasn’t kicked in like that yet. Maybe it’s just me trying to be in the moment and not have distractions," he said. "When you get closer to the wire, closer to the finish line maybe that will start creeping a little bit more. Right now we have so much going on it’s hard to think of that."
But, the problem is that we don't know where that finish line exactly exists. Aug. 2? The end of the season? We just have no idea.
"That’s a good point," Bogaerts admitted, acknowledging "the wire" seems to be a fluid thing.
"One day at a time and hopefully the wire … We’ll get to the end of the year and see what happens. Everyone knows I want to be here but you don’t know how that’s going to play out," said Bogaerts, who has played a combined 623 regular season and postseason games at Fenway. "But I haven’t had that thought yet. Not yet. I did I would have told you, but I haven’t yet.
The way our season has been it’s really hard for me to think of that in the midst of everything we have going on right now as a team. It’s kind of hard."
For Bogaerts. For everybody involved. Welcome to the week before the 2022 trade deadline.