Why Silence Is Golden

When you are a baseball player, what you say is something of great interest to the public. It can be a stirring speech, like Lou Gehrig's good-bye. It can be profane and hilarious, like Lee Elia's infamous rant after the Cubs got off to a 5-14 start in 1983. And quite often, it can be misinterpreted.

That is the situation Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia has found himself in today. In an interview with Boston magazine, he is quoted slagging his hometown in California.

Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia [stats] yesterday came out swinging at a Boston magazine profile that has gotten him into a heap of trouble with his hometown, which he portrayed as a “dump” and a place that every kid wants to flee.

“I’m totally crushed by this, devastated, because I didn’t mean it that way at all,” the Woodland, Calif., native told the Sacramento Bee. “The (Boston) writer doesn’t know my personality. I kid around a lot, and that’s what I was doing when I was talking about Woodland.”

Here is the quote, a response to a question about Pedroia's hometown of Woodland, CA:

“Everyone wants to get out of there. You don’t want to stay in Woodland. What do you want to stay in Woodland for? The place sucks.”

Understandable that, at first glance, the people of Woodland would be upset. But Pedroia insists he was kidding when he said those words. I'm inclined to believe him for a couple of reasons.

First, Pedroia is a wiseass. And cracking on his hometown in a joking manner fits his personality. It's exactly the kind of thing he would say. It isn't as if he is deadly serious in everything he says. Hell, this is guy joking he can't hit an inside fastball on a video game commercial.

Second, I have never seen him say a bad thing about Woodland in any other interview. Why would he do so now? Why, after almost four years of intensive interviews, would Pedroia say something negative about his hometown only now?

It'd be easy to point out that the gentleman who performed the interview is based in New York. So I won't mention that he may have felt possibly tempted to portray Pedroia's words in a certain manner.

But what Pedrioa hopefully learned from this is that you have to be careful with what you say. That, and that sarcasm doesn't come across well in print.

I just hope this doesn't adversely affect his season. The Sox need him locked in and his bat working. If he is thinking about this, and he isn't hitting, the Sox will be in a bad way.