Meet the Red Sox Leaders
Just Kidding, The Red Sox Have No Leaders
And Yes, Dustin 'No C for You' Pedroia Is Part of the Problem
Big Schill Rips the Sons of Colonel Sanders: "They clearly don�t [have any leaders]. None of this goes long enough to become news if there�s a leader in the clubhouse or more than one. There are different kinds of leaders. This team needs a statistical agnostic leader. They need a guy who it doesn�t matter if he plays or not. Or it doesn�t matter what he�s hitting or not. He will talk to anybody on the team about them doing something wrong.
"I�ve said it a couple times. That was Doug Mirabelli. That was Mike Lowell. That was what those guys did. That was Gabe Kapler. None of those guys were leading the team in home runs or RBIs or batting average. The guys in those clubhouses had an immense amount of respect for them. Orlando Cabrera marching back to Manny [Ramirez]�s locker and demanding that Manny put himself back in the line-up. Guys like that. This team doesn�t have them.
"This team has a couple of guys like a [Dustin] Pedroia who is going to play his [expletive] off and expect everyone to do the same. I don�t see him as a kid who stands up in front of the locker room and says, �This has got to change.� I�m not seeing that yet...
"Jason [Varitek] was one of those guys who would ask me to have a meeting. Here�s what, we need to do this. He was not comfortable for the most part standing up and talking every night. And it�s not a bad thing. He just figured, I�d play hard and everybody would follow suit. And if not, I�d have to talk with the person that didn�t.
"David�s not that guy. David is a guy in the clubhouse with some leaders that can help. David, he�s a designated hitter. God bless him. I love him to death. But David is an emotional guy. He tends to swing way high or way low based on how he�s swinging the bat. And guys want to be led by guys who it doesn�t matter what you�re hitting."
Pedroia's weak effort to sell leadership and spin into a non-story: "The leadership was there. We had guys that cared. We didn't play well in the end. That's it. We didn't play well. That's the bottom line. It's not [ex-manager Terry Francona]�s fault. It's not anybody's fault. We didn't play well. It's our whole team's fault. We didn't play well and we didn't perform well and we didn't win games when we needed to. That's why we didn't make the playoffs and that's why our season ended....
"We have a lot of leaders on our team. That's the thing, when I read, that kind of gets to me. Tek's the type that leads by example but when you get out of line he's going to say a couple of things to you and there's no questions asked and there's no barking back, you do it. That's how Tek runs his ship and it's very effective. He's pretty scary. You guys all see him.
"I get to the field at 1 and I go to work. That's what I do. I'm hitting all the time. I'm taking groundballs. I don't ever have a chance to sit down and think about what I'm doing. It's always, whatever I have to do today to help us win, that's what I have to do. � The way I lead I think is more by example but I'm always talking to the guys in situations and stuff like that. Obviously I'm approachable. I'm always talking. I think guys probably want me to shut up but there's a lot of different types of leaders on our team that do it a certain way."
Mike Giardi sheds some light on the cribbage kid: "Pedroia became more and more like an island unto himself, isolated by veterans who believed that, because of his relationship with former manager Terry Francona, he couldn't be trusted. It was often joked that Francona was Pedroia's father, but that joking apparently led to the point where Pedroia found his influence on the clubhouse minimized."
Aaron Hernandez Wants In On
The Red Sox Chicken Club
File Under: He's Not a Belichicken
