Thank you, Mr. Pedroia

With Dustin Pedroia announcing his retirement, it was time I re-shared the story of when I first met him. It was originally posted on a long-since defunct website that I maintained to convince sportswriters why they should vote for Jim Rice to get inducted into Cooperstown.  But that website was taken down about 10 years ago, so it this is a perfect time to retell this, as many of my readers will be seeing it for the first time. 

This story starts sometime in the winter of 2004, when while still basking in the afterglow of a RED SOX WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONSHIP, our family decided that we would go to Disneyland for 2005 spring break. The plan was to leave Saturday morning, spend two days driving there (about a 2 500 km/1,500 mile trip from Calgary), get a five day multi park pass, and spend the next weekend driving back home. Coincidentally (honestly – we had decided on the trip before I found this out), the Red Sox were going to play their last two spring training games in Phoenix against the Diamondbacks at their home stadium on the Thursday and Friday of the week we were planning on being in LA.

Canadians in the MLB

I saw this tweet, and it occurred to me how rare it was to see Canadians in the MLB in the 1980s

#OTD 47 years ago, the Houston Astros sign Canadian RHP Gordie Pladson (New Westminster, B.C.) as an amateur free agent.

He pitched 20 games in parts of four seasons with the Astros from 1979 to 1982. pic.twitter.com/nqzeIuf4CF

— Kevin Glew (@coopincanada) June 30, 2020

So, I decided to take a look.  I started in 1979, and these were the Canadian born players who were in the MLB:

Fergie Jenkins - Hall of famer who retired in 1983, after a long career mainly with the Cubs and Rangers (and a pit stop in Boston)
Reggie Cleveland - retired in 1981 - also one of the best Canadians to ever play for the Red Sox
Bill Atkinson - pitched his last 10 games for the Expos in 1979
Dave McKay - was with the Blue Jays, and played until retiting in Oakland in1982
Terry Puhl - 1978 all star, who played with the Astros until 1990, before retiring in KC in 1991
John Hiller - two time all star who played in Detroit his whole career, before retiring in 1980

Along with the aforementioned Gordie Pladson, that's a total of seven.  That's the most there would be until the 1990s.

In 1980, Paul Hodgson had a handful of at-bats for the Blue Jays, and with Atkinson having retired, that kept the total at seven.

Playing Pepper 2020

Since I stole this logo, check out
 https://www.chilipeppersbaseball.com/

Just realized that I didn't post this year's Playing Pepper Red Sox preview.  For those of you who don't regularly follow me, this is an annual series hosted by Cardinals blogger C70 at the bat  where he asks bloggers of all MLB teams to answer a few questions about the team they write about.  You can see all the previews here.  I wrote this back in Feburary, and, well, a few things have changed since, so he will be doing a version 2.

These are the questions I will be answering:

1) Does the shortened season work for or against your team?
2) What are you most looking forward to seeing?
3) Do you believe the season will be fully completed?  How about the playoffs?

I have some thoughts on these, but welcome any input from my readers. Comment here, or tweet at me here https://twitter.com/BaseballRuben with your thoughts.

For reference, these were the first set of questions and my answers:

The Most Exciting Inning...

....That I Witnessed Live in a Completely Meaningless Game

I meant to write about this earlier, but never got around to it. However, I believe that what happened in this particular game (which happens multiple times a year) is very relevant given some recent rule changes, so I figured it was time for my semi-once-in-a-while post.

I want to recount what I saw in a game that took place on a cool evening in the Summer of 2013 in San Francisco.  The game was meaningless in every sense of the word. There were no exciting pitchers starting, no milestones to be broken, there wasn't a no-hitter or a batter hitting for the cycle, it didn't mean a lot for the standings...

7 road wins! What are the odds? Not that bad.....

Anyone who watched the recently concluded World Series (congratulations to the Nationals), couldn't help but hear / read / see the constant barrage of media members tripping all over themselves to point out that this was the first time a road team won every game. And the World Series has been an annual (almost!) tradition for over 100 years, so how amazing was this???

Below is just one of many outlets who were already mentioning it after Game 6:

For the first time in World Series history, the road teams sweep Games 1-6.

Game 1: HOU at home; WAS wins
Game 2: HOU at home; WAS wins
Game 3: WAS at home; HOU wins
Game 4: WAS at home; HOU wins
Game 5: WAS at home; HOU wins
Game 6: HOU at home; WAS wins pic.twitter.com/Df0KhUWfjM

— CBS Sports HQ (@CBSSportsHQ) October 30, 2019

And then of course Washington won Game 7 in Houston as well.