I knew for a while this column needed to be written. Dustin Pedroia was going to retire a whole lot sooner than later and it only made sense to have something ready to go. The story wasn’t going to change.
But this was one that wasn’t going to roll off the fingertips. Truth be told, the Pedroia Appreciation Column wasn't gong to come easy.
The problem was that I wasn't quite sure I could catch the spirit of the thing. From my perspective, after the last 16 years there was just too much to accurately paint this picture. Just being honest.
Sure, we can go down the road of a player who epitomized what fathers hope their kids evolve into. Or perhaps there were the signature moments in a Red Sox uniform that everybody saw, along with the behind-the-scenes shenanigans that only a few were privy to. We get it. He was short. He played hard. He was funny. He was really, really good. Anyone on social media Monday had been drenched in all those reminders, and rightfully so.
For me, it was an overload of experiences and information.
So, I didn’t write. I waited and hoped the correct message for a guy I had covered probably closer and longer than any player in my career would emerge.
Ultimately, thanks to about three seconds on a Zoom call, it did.
By the time Pedroia’s virtual press conference took place at 1:30 p.m. we had about two hours of digesting the news. The first person I called was David Ortiz, or as Pedroia religiously called him, “Big Pun”. Ortiz had already been asked by the Red Sox to offer a statement regarding his former teammate, so my seven minutes were going to serve as a test run. As it turned out, it took the former Red Sox slugger all of 20 seconds to offer be-all, end-all definition.
That was about as good as it was going to get ... and it still wasn't good enough.
I knew I wasn't alone in my analysis paralysis. Those former players with those quotes surfaced by the Red Sox -- Jonathan Papelbon, Alex Cora, Mike Lowell, Jason Varitek and Jon Lester -- were all struggling with the same issue. I guarantee you. This isn't a one paragraph guy.
I had watched all of these teammates with Pedroia. For a collection of human beings coming from so many different backgrounds, carrying such different personalities, it was amazing to see how this kid 5-foot-7 California kid -- (we had him stand back-to-back with Hall of Famer Joe Morgan to confirm his height one day in the dugout) -- seamlessly befriended each of them. And not just "I'm you're friend because I have to see you every day" type of stuff.
When the likes of Cora, Lowell and Papelbon moved on, along came guys like Nick Punto, Cody Ross, Mike Napoli, and David Ross. There were more. A lot more. Put it this way: So many players could give a lot of paragraphs Monday when it came to Pedroia. Each of them, however, probably would have fallen short, just like I feared would be the case in this space.
But then came that Zoom call.
Red Sox media relations man Justin Long: "Next question comes from Rob Bradford."
(Thirteen seconds of static.)
Me: "Can you hear me?"
Pedroia: "Yeah, I can hear you Rob. What have you got, dial-up?"
Me: "Don't worry about ... AOL. How did you tell the kids?"
To be honest, I felt a little bad because I hadn't led off my question like most everyone else: "Congratulations Dustin." Did I whiff on protocol? That feeling, however, came and went. It was replaced by something else.
That "Don't worry about it ..." was a quip Pedroia had peppered me with a million times. He had ingrained the tone and tenor in my mind. That's what 16 years of Pedroia did. The short back-and-forth had allowed me to find the foundation.
I knew there would be too many anecdotes to clearly paint the picture. For me, one of my first memories was a wide-eyed rookie turning to Cora in the Red Sox' dugout, asking "Is it always this great?" There were moments like when he ripped off his shirt at Athletes Performance after bench-pressing, ran over to taunt a collection of college football lineman. (The first story I wrote for the Boston Herald was Pedroia proudly recalling pounding ping-pong balls off the forehead of former first-round quarterback Brady Quinn.) Or the very serious off-the-record conversations we had over the past few years since the Manny Machado slide, one which included Pedroia breaking out his phone to show a folder that encompassed what seemed like 100 MRI images of his knee.
But it was the kind of back-and-forth that quick Zoom interaction offered which showed what we were leaving behind.
It is what it is. Pedroia represented something the kind of athlete we probably won't get a chance to cover ever again. He evolved, as did I. Our in-season interactions became less and less, with the second baseman seemingly becoming more wary of some liberties taken by media during his clubhouse rants, leading to fewer appearances out in the open.
Even before the injury, Pedroia's priority became his three boys, not living the majority of his days as the guy who put on his uniform on six hours before first pitch. And that also was put on display during this one question, as was evident by the words "Sorry for getting a little choked up" in the midst of is answer to my one question. This was another reason why the exercise of explaining this guy was always going to be so difficult.
But that one snippet allowed for the meat and potatoes of the Pedroia story. For the most part, it was just more enjoyable covering this guy than most. That's all.
That's the story. I guarantee I won't ever write another one like it.
