Red Sox Rule (15 page)

T
he expression on his face would have to do, because this wasn’t the forum for his honest opinion. Dustin Pedroia was just 21 years old, the Red Sox’s most recent top draft pick, so he would have to find a diplomatic way to take the edge off his thoughts.
Is this guy a clown? What game has he been watching?
After all, the man sitting across from him, Ben Cherington, was his boss.

It was 2005, and Pedroia was making his first spring training appearance since being drafted, 65th overall, in 2004. This was part of the drill. Cherington was in charge of player development, and one of his jobs was to meet individually with 150 minor league prospects and give them a plan for the year. Pedroia didn’t need much. He had left Arizona State and immediately become an impact player in the low minors. He’d hit .336 in Sarasota and .400 in Augusta. Without anyone asking or telling him to do it, he had approached all of his teammates and told them that he liked to have as much fun as anyone, but he was in pro baseball to win.

He usually said whatever crossed his mind, but this time he toned down his language when Cherington said, “We haven’t
decided if you’re going to go back to Sarasota [Single-A] or move on to Portland [AA].” Pedroia waited—
Idiots!
—and tried as hard as he could to play it down the middle: “I can’t begin to imagine why you guys would even think of sending me to Sarasota.” He looked around the room, stunned at the mere possibility of A ball, and kept that gaze until it was time for him to go. After Pedroia left, Cherington turned to coworkers Peter Woodfork and Rob Leary. “Well,” the boss said. “I don’t think we’ll have to worry about staying on him.”

Not unless they wanted to put their hands in an engine that was already running. Baseball evaluators talk a lot about pluses—a “plus” fastball, a “plus” arm—but Pedroia was a player of excess. It began with his self-confidence, which was so excessive that he had enough to heal the insecurities of all those in his social circle. The safe, buttoned-down crowd could look at him and see their opposite; Dustin Pedroia was the bold alter ego that they were too timid to embrace. He was a little man, 5 feet 8 inches on his tiptoes, with the exaggerated swing of a bopper. From afar, he looked like a bat boy doing a right-handed impersonation of Reggie Jackson.

Yes, the height. It always circled back to the height. His was the type of height that caused scouting department arguments. The Red Sox took him in the second round, and some of their scouts still believed that was a round or two too high. He was too short and too small to be a team’s first selection. Jason McLeod, who was still a year away from becoming the Red Sox’s scouting director, disagreed with them. McLeod kept coming back to the point—this kid is a definite big-leaguer—that should have been the greatest one of all. If you have a definite in a field known for being inexact, you go with the definite—even if it’s a barely 5-foot-8-inch definite.

Whether it was Sarasota, Augusta, Portland, or Pawtucket, Pedroia wasn’t going to be there long. His talent was going to take
him to Boston, and his words would ensure that he wouldn’t be forgotten once he arrived.

In 2007, Pedroia got hot at the same time the Red Sox did. The April expectations were low for the rookie second baseman, and he still didn’t meet them. He hit .182 for the month and, for a while, split time with veteran infielder Alex Cora. But as the season moved toward the back end of May, both Boston’s divisional lead and Pedroia’s batting average began to grow. What the Red Sox were doing to the American League East bordered on embarrassing. Going into a game against the Rangers on a pleasant Sunday afternoon in Texas, Boston had an 11-game advantage over second-place…Toronto. The Yankees were in third place, 121/2 games behind. As for Pedroia, May would be about, naturally, excess. He was on his way to hitting .415 for the month, and for the game against the Rangers on the 27th, his season average was .271.

Pedroia had already proven that he could manage the most difficult of dances: showing enough modesty to satisfy the veterans, but also entertaining them with his material, which only landed on modesty by accident. They teased him, mostly about his height, but they liked him and his stuff. Even on the days when Cora played over him, the veteran would make a point to pull Pedroia aside. “I’m playing today, but this job is yours.”

The rookie started the game against the Rangers on the 27th, and when he stepped in the box in the ninth inning, he was looking to get his second hit of the day. It was going to be tough, because he was facing a closer, Eric Gagne, who hadn’t given up a run all season. It was popular to say that Gagne wasn’t what he used to be, which was true, but the whole story was that he was the king of National League closers for 3 years running. He had one Cy Young Award sandwiched between two Top 10 finishes. He was a Stan Lee comic book character come to life: oversized goggles, body of
an NFL blocking back, and possessor of a fastball-changeup combination that allowed him to convert a major league record 84 consecutive saves. No, he was not what he used to be, but he was still very good.

The Rangers were trailing 5 to 4, and Gagne’s job was to wipe out the number-nine hitter, Pedroia, and the top of the order. The easiest pitch he threw to Pedroia was the first one, a strike. Then it was time for a one-on-one version of Texas Hold ’Em, with Gagne throwing every pitch he had, and Pedroia fouling them all off. Pitch 5 fouled off, Pitch 6, Pitch 7, Pitch 8, all fouled off. Once Gagne backed off the mound and shrugged at the Red Sox dugout.
Where in hell did you get this little dude?
Pitch 9, fouled off. Pitch 10, my God, fouled off—and fouled off with that oversized swing. On Pitch 11, someone would have to crack. This was the showdown, right? This was baseball. Damn. This stubborn little…He fouled it off again.

Finally, on Pitch 12, with the count forever frozen at 2–2, it was time to see who had the best hand. Forget about being cute. It was Eric Gagne versus a number-nine hitter named Pedroia. Let the best man win with his go-to goods: Gagne threw a fastball right down the middle, and Pedroia swung for the fences, a swing offensive to those who have automatic quotes prepared for the 5-8-and-under set: “Son, you have to choke up on the bat…” Uh-uh. No choke-ups. This was Pedroia’s pitch, and he got enough of it to send it over the left-field wall for a home run.

He rounded the bases, and that was the exciting part for the Red Sox in the dugout; they knew he would come back with something outrageous to say, and he didn’t disappoint. As he gave out high-fives and received taps on the head, he told his teammates, “That motherfucker had better develop another pitch!”

They rolled.

He was the best kind of comedian in that it was always funnier coming from him; extra-large bravado from a bigger man who looked the part would have been expected, but Pedroia made it ironic. And like those great comics, you got the sense that some of the best lines were borne from slights that produced frustration before laughter.

None of that mattered in June, because Pedroia had a manager who was a fan of his. For Terry Francona and anyone else leading a team, the highest compliment you can pay a player is saying that you trust him: trust him to prepare to win; trust him to have the ability to do the job; and trust him to make the necessary corrections to issues that might arise. Francona trusted Pedroia, so much so that by early June, his days at the bottom of the lineup were over.

Pedroia had hated the first month of the season, when he felt held back by the combination of his average and one fewer at bat per game, which prevented him from getting into a rhythm. His opportunity came, and it came because half of the news was good: he was crushing the baseball. On June 15, after a five-hit game against the Giants, his average sparkled at .331 and his on-base percentage was .406. In that game, he caught up to one of Barry Zito’s curveballs and hit his first home run since the showdown in Texas.

“All right, fellas,” he said as he entered the dugout. “I’m taking cash, checks, and credit cards.”

He
was
a money player. He didn’t walk a lot, but he didn’t strike out a lot, either. He could hit, which meant a lot of doubles would come off that bat of his at Fenway Park. He was able to play at a high level, take verbal abuse from his teammates, and still maintain his own personality. Francona would search for him daily, making sure that he wasn’t avoiding those cribbage games. They’d
sit and talk about everything, things that happened on the field included.

“Why are you running for me in games?” Pedroia asked.

“Because you’re slow,” Francona answered.

Pedroia would shake his head—he didn’t think he was
that
slow—and the manager would smile. He always knew that Pedroia was fuming when he ran for him, as he had at the end of June in another game against Texas. That time, at Fenway, Pedroia had gotten an eighth-inning double off Gagne’s setup man, Akinori Otsuka. The Red Sox were trailing 5 to 4 with two outs, and Kevin Youkilis was at the plate. Francona motioned for Julio Lugo to run for Pedroia.
What game has he been watching?
Lugo came in, tried to steal third, and was caught stealing. On that night, Gagne was spared from facing Pedroia in the ninth. He got his save the “easy” way, striking out David Ortiz and getting Manny Ramirez to ground out.

On the morning after the loss, July 1, the Red Sox were 101/2 games ahead of the Yankees. And everybody in New England knew it. For the handful of people who went to bed without Red Sox information, the top three morning questions were: “How did the Sox do last night?…Okay, what about the Yankees?…So, I know the traffic on 128 is ridiculous; how bad is it?”

It was at least a misdemeanor in Boston to suggest that the East race was over, and that the New Yorkers were too old and slow to make it competitive. Too many people remembered the Collapse of ’78, and they talked about it the same way old-timers discussed Black Tuesday and the stock market crash of ’29. If they didn’t remember ’78, they’d had it recited to them many times over family dinners and at family reunions. It was part of that running dialogue that Theo Epstein knew so well. It truly was Leslie Epstein and family’s introduction to Boston: the Rhodes Scholar novelist
and professor took a teaching position at Boston University—he had lived in New York—and settled in Brookline in 1978.

History aside, the Yankees were playing a lot better. It was foolish to dismiss a team with their talent and ability to acquire more of it. With that said, the Yankees were still a week away from having more wins than losses, and they hadn’t been in that position since being swept by the Red Sox in April.

But remember, just half of the news was good. There had been a reason Pedroia was able to slide into a top-of-the-lineup opening. Two of the players that the Red Sox paid with cash, checks, and credit cards, Lugo and J.D. Drew, were not performing as well as expected.

Lugo’s slump had begun the season before in Los Angeles, where he had been traded from Tampa Bay. He didn’t produce in the second half of 2006, and the drought followed him into 2007. He was a good player, but his average on July 1 was .190 and there were some minor adjustment issues that needed to be worked out. As is his style, Francona talked with Lugo at a moment when the shortstop was in the best environment to receive the information. One day during batting practice, he draped his arm around Lugo’s shoulder, and it was like two old buddies talking. It was actually brilliant; the conversation was about Lugo doing everything he could to learn the team’s signs. It was a casual setting with a very specific message. The manager’s arm was draped there, a few inches from being a headlock, and it wasn’t moving until the message had been delivered.

Drew was not a player in need of a talking-to. He knew where he was supposed to be and he was usually there, not an hour early, mind you, but never late, either. He came from a family that should be considered one of Georgia’s natural baseball resources: three baseball-playing Drew boys, all of them first-round picks,
and all of them able to say that they made it to the big leagues. J.D. was jazz-DJ smooth in everything he did on the field. He had an easy swing at the plate, a swing that had infinitely more power than it appeared to have. He was fast, running with just-right strides and no wasted motion. He had the skills to play center field if you asked or he could shift over to right at Fenway, which was the largest and trickiest right field in baseball.

So what was the problem? Nothing. Actually, it was nothing that you could touch and say, “Aha!” He had smoked that ball against the Yankees in April, the four-homer game, but on July 1, that home run represented the last one Drew had struck against an American League team. That span of soft lineouts, walks, and strikeouts, and no homers, had reached 52 games. He had been brought in to provide protection for Ortiz and Ramirez, and he was protecting them; he was protecting them from seeing good pitches. He wasn’t hurt. He didn’t limp. He didn’t throw his bat. He went up, he walked or struck out, and he sat down.

That was the part of Drew that Bob Ryan was sighing over, with most of the region sighing along with him. It had been a long time since Boston was the Boston of the high-mannered Brahmins. This was no polite society that sat on strong opinions until the “appropriate” time. Any time at the ballpark was the appropriate time. Drew wasn’t producing and he wasn’t emoting the way passionate Boston fans wanted. They occasionally let him know about it, but even the way he absorbed criticism was smooth. He’d strike out, tuck his bat under his arm, and coolly put it into the bat rack.

Francona had to juggle the lineup, and he let Lugo and Drew know before he did it. It was perceived as a touchy-feely approach, especially by the old-school managers, but Francona saw it differently and more simply. He believed that both of them were good
players who would eventually get hot. But, more important, like most managers, he was looking ahead. Several innings ahead—like to September and October. The Collapse of ’78 wasn’t part of his childhood or adult life—his “running dialogue” was the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers—so he was confident that his team was going to win the division and be in the playoffs.