That assurance, when delivered by Dustin Pedroia in early May, appeared to just be an example of a teammate sticking up for another teammate in the media. Not many people thought Pedroia actually believed what he was saying.
Oh, but he did.
The quote, which is part of the larger one that is remembered for his "Laser Show" comment, came after David Ortiz went 0-for-4 against the Angels, bringing his average to .149. Though the Red Sox won, Ortiz had grounded into a double play with nobody out and the bases loaded in a tie game in the eighth. After the game, fans voted that Mike Lowell should be playing every day. At that point, Lowell was hitting .317 in limited action. It seemed like the logical move.
But it wasn't.
You see, there's a reason we watch the games every night, and it's the reason we watch any sport at any time: We do not know a darned thing.
If it were up to writers, fans and people who call into radio shows, Ortiz would have been shown the door and sent packing. Take your two World Series, your "Greatest Clutch Hitter in Red Sox History" plaque, your countless memories in Boston, and take it somewhere else. You're obviously washed up.
Obviously not. Ortiz hit a home run the following night — one that turned out to be a game-winner, in fact — to kick off a 20-game stretch in which he hit .391 with eight homers and 25 RBIs.
He became the Player of the Month for May, he was named an All-Star for the sixth time and on Monday, he looked like the 2006 Big Papi, the one who hit 54 home runs and drove in 137 runs, as he won the Home Run Derby crown.
If you said that you saw it coming, then you'd be lying. Unless you were Dustin Pedroia.
"A couple of years ago, I had 60 at-bats and I was hitting .170, and everybody was ready to kill me, too," Pedroia said in May. "What happened? Laser show. So, relax. … David's fine. He's one of our teammates, we believe in him. He came out of it last year, he's going to come out of it this year."
In retrospect, it couldn't have been more appropriate for Pedroia to be the one to have Ortiz's back. Long before he spent his summer evenings filming a video of his teammate in the Home Run Derby, this was a guy who was told his entire life that he had no chance, that he was too small, that he wasn't an athlete. He was also a guy that relished the opportunity to prove doubters wrong.
In his book, "Born To Play: My Life in the Game," Pedroia recounts his struggles at the beginning of his career. He'll never forget the one article that called his swing "too long," and he'll never forget the rush to judgment on him by the Boston media.
"From then on," he wrote, "I made it perfectly clear that whoever was going to crush me was going to get crushed, too. And I turned all that [stuff] people were throwing at me into motivation. I was going to prove everybody wrong."
That didn't take long, and even now, three years later, he's quick to remind you that The Laser Show soon followed.
Similarly, there's been an air of confidence around Ortiz this year. It's one that's only peeked out from time to time in past years, but now he's letting it show. He speaks freely after games, rarely editing himself. When asked if he was afraid that participating in the derby would negatively affect his swing, he just said, "It's what I do for a living — hit bombs."
Maybe Pedroia, Ortiz and other players who had been questioned in their careers knew this was coming, but the rest of us didn't. Watching him hit 32 moonshots over the fence on Monday night, you should have been surprised. But as is the case with most things in sports, you shouldn't be surprised by the fact that you were surprised. It's why we watch in the first place.
