Certain athletes, you just know, are going to be more difficult to interview. They might be great quotes, maybe even be good guys in the end, but they’re going to make it hard on a new reporter. A withering look. A sharp comeback. A good-natured jab. It’s as if they can’t help themselves. Anyone who asks a question is going to have to pay the toll.
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Dustin Pedroia, you might suspect, could be one of those guys. Friendly and funny, sure, but he could be difficult when he wanted to be. Getting to the good stuff meant digging through layers of bravado and bluster, and sometimes, the bravado and bluster was all he wanted to show. It’s part of what made him great, part of what made him intimidating, part of what made him iconic.
But I have a confession to make. I never paid the toll.
My first year on the Red Sox beat came two weeks after the birth of my first son, and that’s the way I introduced myself to the second baseman. I was the new reporter in the clubhouse, but I was a new dad at home, and Pedroia considered only one of those to be relevant. I’m pretty sure it’s the only thing he ever remembered about me. He asked for my son’s name. He said he wanted to see pictures. He suggested a parenting book. And when he checked in from time to time, he often wondered how my wife was doing.
When another reporter one day asked why he’d never given me a hard time, Pedroia just laughed and didn’t answer, but I knew why. We had this one thing in common, and even if it were the only thing, it leveled the playing field in some way.
Or maybe he just knew I wasn’t getting much sleep.
On Monday, Pedroia announced his retirement at age 37 and showed flashes of the old Laser Show bravado. If his left knee weren’t surgically replaced, he’d have a few years left banging doubles in the gap. He’s sure of it. Pedroia’s body is broken, but his confidence is as strong as ever. After three years of failed comeback attempts, he is, it seems, at peace with the way his career ended.
When his voice did crack on Monday, it was not out of grief for the game he’s left behind, but in celebration of the life he’s discovering at home.
“I was having a tough time,” Pedroia said. “Up until my middle son, Cole, they wanted me to coach his baseball team. I think – sorry for getting a little bit choked up – that got me through the next step of understanding that, ‘Hey, there’s something else I’m going to be able to do, and I’m good at it.’ Coaching the kids and just telling them …”
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We never did learn what Pedroia’s telling them. His voice trailed off, and then he said:
“I think they were just happy that they get their dad home all the time.”
Pedroia became a father in the middle of the 2009 season when his oldest son, Dylan, was born to the reigning American League MVP. A second son, Cole, was born in 2012, and this time Pedroia had to be pulled from a game in the seventh inning because his wife, Kelli, had gone into labor. A third son, Brooks, completed the trio in 2014.
In recent years, Pedroia would sit at his locker FaceTiming his family in Arizona. If one of his kids had a game, he might watch them play on his phone. He was always hearing stories from home, like the time Kelli had been complaining about a terrible smell in the car when, finally, one of the boys confessed to having long ago hidden a sandwich beneath his car seat.
It’s always something with kids. Good, bad, happy, sad, surprising, frustrating, exhausting, challenging, exhilarating — it’s always something.
One year ago, Pedroia was still trying to come back to baseball. He’d tried twice already and ramping up to another spring training when he woke up with his knee badly swollen. That’s when he knew it was over. Doctors told him he needed a partial replacement just to walk comfortably. He was never going to play again. Accepting that took time.
“From last January on, every day I would break down,” Pedroia said. “It was tough. I didn’t try to show it with my wife or kids. I’d just go in the bathroom and chill for a little bit and break down. It’s hard when your entire life, I would get ready at 5 in the morning for a noon game. I did this my entire life.”
Life changes, though.
It’s supposed to change.
Kids, often, are what changes it.
“I just don’t want them to see me having more surgeries, not being able to walk or (not) get my oldest son’s rebounds, stuff like that,” Pedroia said. “Now, it’s good. I’m in a good place. I can move. I can get a rebound now and just pass it to him and stand there without hurting. I don’t have to ice my knee all day long to make it not look like a basketball. So, I’m in a good place.”
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And he’s going to stay in that place.
When a back injury forced Pedroia’s friend David Wright to an early retirement with the Mets, Wright stepped immediately into a front office role, but Pedroia’s not doing that with the Red Sox. Not right now. His youngest son is 6, and so there will be math homework and basketball free throws and strange smells of unknown origin for years to come. Pedroia’s going to stay home and discover all the other things that can be stuffed beneath a car seat.
“I think when all my boys are out of the house, that’s when things will change to more of a greater role with the (Red Sox),” Pedroia said, acknowledging that might be more than a decade from now. “Just right now, I want to enjoy being a dad and having fun with my boys … I want to make sure that my kids have the same upbringing that I had when I was a kid. Coaching or managing, that’s a lot of time, and I’ve just played a long time, and I was the first one on the field every single day. I want to make sure these years for my kids are the most important, and I’m there in every single way.”
Red Sox president and CEO Sam Kennedy said the team will have a job waiting for Pedroia whenever he’s ready. The organization is just waiting for Pedroia to decide what that job should be and when he wants to do it. In the meantime, there was talk Monday of a flag football practice at 4 o’clock, and the kids were waiting.
“I don’t want to miss a thing in their life,” Pedroia said. “They deserve that.”
And I hope those kids are ready, because the Laser Show doesn’t take many days off.
(Photo of Pedroia with sons Brooks, Cole and Dylan: Barry Chin/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
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