The Guszkowski/Pedroia Era

It's a great day for me as a Red Sox fan. It's a great day for you, too, because you get to read a brand-new blog on your favorite team. If you are a Red Sox fan like I'm a Red Sox fan, these blogs, articles and similar sorts of thing are really interesting and take a long long time to get old, and you love reading or hearing some fresh insights and opinions on the greatest game in the world.

For me, the go-ahead on starting this blog came at a cosmic-tumblers-clicking-into-place sort of time. This very day, I received, via Fed-Ex, a pair of tickets for my first official Red Sox game at Fenway- for this coming Saturday's game against the Angels. I attended roughly a half-inning of a game at Fenway back in approximately 1985, but that's a really long story and I won't get too autobiographical on you just yet. That can wait until tomorrow. Pile all of this together with a very solid 7-3 win over the A's at the Al Davis Memorial Base-Foot Reconfigurable Abomination Park last night, and things are going all right.

There were three Sox homers last night (and only one given up by Josh Beckett, which is a very good thing). They were hit by the big three: Manny, Papi, and...Alex Gonzalez. Although I must admit I've been really slow on jumping on this bandwagon, I'm becoming an Alex Gonzalez fan. Last night was his eighth home run. He's slugging .416, which isn't fantastic, but it's pretty solid for a middle infielder- and don't look now, but he's actually out-slugging Varitek. He's no longer the easy out, the sucking hole at the bottom of the lineup that he was the first two months of the season. That's really all you can ask from a shortstop, offensively. Sure, we were spoiled for a while with Nomar in his prime, and seeing Jeter, Tejada, and A-Rod knocking the snot out of the ball. What I think the Sox are realizing, and what I'm realizing (several months after the Sox realized it, of course) is that nearly impeccable defense and adequate offense from your SS is really quite good.

The point of my change of heart about Alex Gonzalez is that it has other major implications for me as a Sox fan. For more than a year now, I've been banging a tiny drum in my heart for Dustin Pedroia. He's the shortstop of the diminutive physique and the Kevin Youkilis pechant for the base on balls. He's currently in Pawtucket. Last year, when we signed Renteria to the 4-year deal, Pedroia was shuffled over to second base, on the assumption that Renteria was our shortstop of the future. That didn't quite work out to plan, did it? So the Sox returned Pedroia to short and basically rented a year of Alex Gonzalez until Dustin hit the starting lineup in 2007. But now, Gonzalez is becoming a revelation at short. Is it time to shuffle Big Dustin back across the second base bag? I'd say yes. For one thing, it'll save us from all of the tiresome references to David Eckstein when Dustin plays short. For another, he's built more like a second baseman. For a third, he's got the potential to be both an upgrade on Loretta (who's only signed for this year) and also a major stabilizing presence at second. If you haven't noticed, second base for the Red Sox has been a bit like being Murphy Brown's secretary. We've seen, in recent years, Loretta, Bellhorn, Walker, Reese, Lansing, Offerman, Frye, Remy (am I going too far back?). Maybe not since Marty Barrett have the Sox had a solid player at second for more than a year or two- and Barrett wasn't exactly Ryne Sandberg. Every other position has had both more stability and bigger stars. I'll go out on my first limb of this blog and proclaim that Dustin Pedroia could be the greatest Red Sox second baseman since Bobby Doerr. Let's give the kid that chance. The Pedroia Era is ready to begin!

(incidentally, I heard on the telecast last night Don and Jerry refer to part of the outfield bleachers- the part where they have Eck's number retired- as "Mt. Davis." I can't even come up with a response for that. unreal.)