Dustin Pedroia: Short and Hard-Working

My grandma and I have a playful relationship when it comes to baseball. She's been a Tampa Bay Rays fan since the beginning (back when they were bad and called the Devil Rays). You can see Tropicana Field from their apartment in St. Petersburg, and, if you really wanted to, you could walk to and from the games. She also has season tickets. I, as you may know, am a Red Sox fan. Watching the games is a bit less convenient and attending games is nearly out of the question since I moved from Boston to Portland. The nearest American League stadium is Safeco Field in Seattle. Hell, we don't even have a Minor League team anymore. I bought MLB TV just to keep up with the Sox this past year, something I have to do because I know my grandma is going to be talking smack to me throughout the year (and, to be fair, just as much smack about her own team who I frequently have to defend against her attacks).

Last year she sent me Dustin Pedroia's autobiography because she really likes the guy she thought I might be interested. Of course, she couldn't resist sending a few items along with it:

 

To be honest, I probably never would have read Born to Play if someone hadn't bought it for me (as I previously mentioned, I can't ignore things loved ones gave me). I love autobiographies/biographies, but I have little interest in reading about someone's life who is my age. It feels like the only thing I'm going to get out of it is yet another "struggled against adversity to become successful" story, the idea of which bores me to dry heaves. Somehow, though, Pedroia's book is much worse than that.

Before I go on, I should make it clear that I love Pedroia as a ballplayer and am very happy he's playing for the Red Sox. He's fun to watch and is solid all around. I don't think I've ever been annoyed, exasperated, or angry watching him play. But dear god, he sounds like an insufferable person to be around in his book! The overall impression of him from the book is a relaxed, considerate, and friendly person, reading about how competitive he's been his whole life and how much he hates losing strikes me as a total lack of perspective on life in general. Thinking about being around that type of attitude puts me on edge.

But all that only points to a larger issue: the man has a MASSIVE Napoleon complex. Seriously, this seems to be the only reason the book was written. The adversity in Pedroia's life is that he's short and that feeds into everything in his life. At every stage, someone tells him "you're too short to be a ballplayer" (except, for some reason, his high school football coach put him in at starting quarterback). I get that he doesn't fit the mold for a professional baseball player, but about half of the pro ball players don't fit that mold. I love baseball to death, but there aren't many sports that have more variance in body types. So, Pedroia literally makes a list of all the people who doubted him so that he can rub his success in their faces. That's not really healthy behavior or a very good lesson to inspire with. He spends much of the book discussing how he trash talks to everyone (even coaches when he first meets them) like we're supposed to view that as an admirable trait. 

Pedroia says in the Acknowledgments that "I want to share my story because I know a lot of fans will be able to relate to it in a positive way," but really, his story boils down to "I'm short and I worked hard." Sure, I guess there's a good message in there, but it's boring and totally unnecessary. Do you know how many pro-athletes worked hard to get there that didn't write books? Me either, but I do know it's lots. The short angle is really the hook for the whole book. His family was loving and supportive (which is awesome, for real) and his only struggles were broken bones that he obtained playing sports. Even his wife's battle with cancer seems artificial (I may got to hell for this). She spent her life baking in the sun and in tanning beds without proper protection. In a time when we know very well the danger of that, it feels like she knowingly brought on her struggles herself. Also, it just pushes forward the fallacy that if you work hard, you will be rewarded. That's the sort of mindset you can have when you're already successful (whatever your definition of success is). Many people work their asses off just to stay afloat.

Finally, because it's an autobiography, it has to detail his life to the point of writing except that the story was the same each step of the way so the book is incredibly redundant. I can't believe his co-writer, Edward J. Delaney didn't edit the text accordingly. Things will be repeated three times on the same page, even. Born to Play is a chore to read and kind of makes Pedroia seem a little insufferable. Fortunately, I only have to watch him play.

Baseball Bits and Pieces

It's halfway through November and I'm in some serious baseball withdrawal. I love the Hot Stove action, but the problem is that news comes in fits and starts. Many of the big moves haven't happened yet and anything else (like Dale Sveum going to the Cubs instead of the Red Sox... more or that later) is worth only about an hour of discussion. However, there are a few things worth talking about and my reaction to them varies.

One article deals with two of these issues (it's how I found out about both. I swear I'm not just poaching someone else's blog post. I SWEAR!). First on the chopping block: The Astros are moving to the A.L. West! Periodically in the past, I'd wonder why one division only has four teams while another has six. It didn't make sense to me. Then I'd remember that there are thirty teams and if they were split down the middle, that would leave two teams in each league dangling without a matchup. Of course, interleague play has been around for a while, so having those teams face each other isn't such a big deal, but having two leagues with fifteen teams doesn't do much to help balance the already unbalanced schedules. A team like the Orioles has to play the Yankees, Red Sox, and Rays (all with 90+ wins) over 50 times during the season wheres there was only one 90+ win team in the A.L. Central. Throw in some unlucky interleague pairings and some teams are going to get screwed big time. On the flip side, though I'm not much of a fan of interleague play, I like the idea of having it occur with two teams randomly throughout the year instead of as big chunks of space with forced "rivalry" games.

My solution to all of this is some good, old-fashioned English Football-style relegation. Since it would be asine to add six more teams so each division broke down into six teams each, let's chop it down to 24 teams. The six bottom teams get relegated to the minors while six top minor league teams can join the pros. There's stuff that would need to be worked out to make the system work, but not only does it bring each division to an even four teams, it adds a lot of incentive for the bad teams to keep playing hard. Those end of season Royals-Twins games would be a lot more exciting. Which brings me to...

...The revamped playoff system. I've ranted about this before (ignore all of the stuff about the Red Sox and Braves, if you could) and I still think adding teams to the playoffs is a bad idea. Even at ten teams, MLB would still have the smallest percentage of teams making the playoffs of the four major sports, but having a one game playoff to between to Wild Card teams to see who moves on to the Division Series seems pretty pointless and a recipe for more confusion and additional one-off games. The point of the playoffs is for the elite teams to fight it out for supremacy. The more teams added to the mix, the more mediocrity has a chance to infiltrate the system. But that's not really the big issue. Look how close we came this year to having two ties for the Wild Card spot. Expanding the playoff pool into the pack means that you start getting to that cluster of teams with similar records. Is it that hard to imagine that there could be a tie for the second Wild Card spot? Or even a three-way tie? Now it's not just a on-game playoff, but a one-game playoff to get into the one-game playoff to get into the playoffs. And all of this flies right in the face of having a 162-game season. Why play that many games and get that large of a sample size to have the season literally come down to one game for certain teams? That's the whole point of having a 7-game series (or even a 5-game series). I like this approach to expanding the playoff better than letting four additional teams in, but it doesn't seem in line with the spirit of the game.

Finally, a personal and specific complaint. I don't know what I'll do if the Red Sox hire Bobby Valentine as their manager. He may have had two good seasons with the Mets, but his record doesn't inspire confidence. Plus, his ESPN work shows him to be an idiot and he's volatile presence and we don't need one of those in the clubhouse. Plus, I don't want to have to root for this guy:

Red Sox... please don't do this to me.

How Long Until Next Season?

I never really thought that the season would get worse than the first two weeks. And through the summer, I was confident it wouldn't (also, sorry Braves). But a shit-storm came in September and the pitching, hitting, and defense all shut down. 7 - 20 record. It wouldn't even matter that much right now if the Yankees hold on to their 7-0 lead through seven whole innings (I'm convinced the Yankees tanked on purpose because they didn't want to risk playing the Sox in the playoffs. That's what I'm telling myself, anyway). We'd be going to a playoff, not that my confidence is that high that the Sox would turn things around for that game, or the playoffs had they made it. And that's gets to the crux of what I want to talk about.

Blowing a 9-game Wild Card lead (and losing any hope in taking the division) sucks, but that's not what's making me sad. In Boston, most people are moving on to the Patriots (many probably did a few weeks ago), then the Celtics, then the Bruins. The only sport I care about is baseball. Instead of getting another month of passion and watching my team try to win a championship, I have to wait until next April to watch them play a game that matters. Watching the Rays and their fans celebrate after the walk-off homerun in the 12th, sure I was depressed, but how can that sort of unbridled enthusiasm not make you a little happy? And that's the exact thing that I'll be missing. I'll watch the playoffs and enjoy them. I have teams I'm pulling for (Rays, Tigers, Brewers, and Phillies, in that order). But I won't be emotionally invested in the games.

I'm also not going to get too upset about the whole thing. I could be a Cubs fan. The oldest person in the world (115 years old) might remember the last time they won a World Series, but few others do. Or I could be a Pirates fan who haven't had a winning record since 1992 and, before that, lost three consecutive National League Championship Series. At least the Sox give me something to root for late in the season.

I'm sad that I won't have the chance to watch the games with my friends who are fans of other playoff bound teams. I'm sad that I don't get to listen to Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy goof off in the booth. But mostly, I'm sad that I won't be able to watch the team I love play until next year.