PEDEY MUST DO MORE THAN TALK LEADERSHIP
By example is best way to lead, Pedey
FORT MYERS — Dustin Pedroia was a big part of the clubhouse mess that was the 2017 Red Sox. As a veteran player with two World Series rings and a Most Valuable Player award, he should have done something, anything, to make things right.
But the Dustin Pedroia of 2017 was also a fast-aging second baseman with a crunched-up left knee who played hurt and played hard but could not make himself the everyday presence the Red Sox needed him to be. He appeared in just 17 games in June, only one game in August.
So when Pedroia says the Red Sox need a “core” of leaders, as they had back in the days of David Ortiz, Jason Varitek, Mike Lowell and incoming manager Alex Cora, perhaps the veteran second baseman should listen to his own words.
If the Red Sox are to have leadership in 2018 — real leadership, not just quotes from some manual — it’ll have to come from Mookie Betts, Jackie Bradley Jr., Xander Bogaerts and even Andrew Benintendi and Christian Vazquez. Whether anyone cares to admit it or not, it’s their team now.
But Pedroia can help, and in a major way. There’s a very old cliche that works here, one I believe dates back to the Civil War when Gen. Ulysses S. Grant wandered the front lines wearing an old coat and hat: It’s called leading by example.
It’s a cliche almost never used correctly. Instead, it simply gets tossed at personality-challenged players who put up great numbers.
But it applies to Pedroia in an important way: If he returns (presumably in May) from a surgically repaired left knee and is able to play with the panache and aggressiveness that always have been trademarks of his, it just makes sense that the younger players are going to notice. Pedroia turns 35 in August, and he plays a grueling position of busy pivots and jarring takeout slides. I’m guessing there aren’t many spots on his body that haven’t been dented and dinged over the years.
Pedroia was asked yesterday if he can still be that player.
“Yeah, I should have brought you to my doctor’s appointment — those were all the questions I asked the doctor before the surgery,” he said. “I said, ‘Listen man, I don’t know if you’ve seen me play, I’m kind of . . . I land on my legs about 100 times a game.’ He goes, ‘Oh, I understand. What we’re going to do is, it’s going to basically give you tread on your tire and you can go crazy again.’ ”
If Pedroia is referring to Dr. Riley Williams III of the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, the man who performed the work, then I nominate Williams for a seat in the NESN broadcast booth with Dave O’Brien, Jerry Remy and Dennis Eckersley.
Go crazy again. Yes, that’s what Dustin Pedroia needs to do. We’re not talking going crazy again as in doing those lame headfirst slides into first base. That assignment seems to have been passed on to Bogaerts, which reminds me that I need to ask Cora if he has a plan in place to send Bogey to bed without his postgame spread the first time he pulls his sliding-head-first-into-first stunt under new management.
A bigger challenge for Cora will be to help save Pedroia from himself. Cora famously mentored Pedroia when they were Red Sox teammates in 2007; now, as manager, Cora can help out by knowing when to say no when it comes to sitting his second baseman. Cora struck a hopeful chord yesterday when he said, “He’s one of those guys we need to pay attention to.”
As a preview of things to come, Cora, addressing the issue of day games after night games, said, “It’s not a question of how he feels. It’s a question of how we feel. Not only me as a manager, but our medical department. Rest for him is gonna be a plus. And rest for him will not be DHing.”
Pedroia believes having the surgery “was the best decision I could have made. My knee doesn’t hurt. Last year, waking up and walking around was painful. It’s not fun to live your life like that.”
Once the rehab is over, once he’s back in the lineup, that’s when we’ll see if Dustin Pedroia can return to being a veteran ballplayer that younger players can aspire to emulate.
Betts, Bogaerts, Bradley, etc., can set the mood and choose the clubhouse music. Hanley Ramirez can be in charge of dumping Gatorade on teammates during postgame TV interviews.
Pedroia can just go out and play the way he used to.
That would be a splendid example.
That would be leadership.