Baseball! We've been watching the Sox a lot this summer. Following the same team through so many games, you really start to get to know the personalities and quirks of all the different players. This year, nobody but nobody is working harder in every single game than Dustin Pedroia, better known (at least to Chip Caray) as "El Caballito". Last night, he carried the team to victory, going 5 for 5 and hitting 3 home runs. Wow!
I think he's one of those players that kids can really look up to, because physically, he's not the archetype of a professional athlete. Being smaller and lighter than all his peers, his success is built on playing harder than everybody else. It's one of those great sport tropes.
I think the best thing I ever heard about Dustin Pedroia was this:
"Dustin was QB of his Freshman Football team. He so severely broke his leg on the gridiron, he joined Frosh Baseball late and played hobbled. Even hobbled, it took just 2 games for Rob Rinaldi to realize that Pedroia was best among many good ball players."
HOBBLED!
EDIT: He broke his foot over the weekend! Hobbled all over again!
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Pedroia had his first walk-off hit last week, only days before another one of my favorite short-statured baseball players, Jimmy Rollins, hit his first walk-off home run. Both are 5'8''. Pretty cool.
ReplyDeleteHowever, not as cool as this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Gaedel