On the trade: "I want to be a Red Sox my whole career," Pedroia said. "I want to be here during the World Series times, during the September collapse, the biggest trade, and I want to be here when we're world champs again. I want that. I've been through times when not a writer said a bad thing about me, or the talk show hadn't said a bad thing about me, and I want to be here when they say a bad thing about me. I look in the mirror every day and at the end of the season I'm going to look back and say I did everything I could to help us win. Were there parts I regret? Yeah, without question. There were a lot more than in the past, but I learned from those things. It's going to make me better, I believe that. Yeah, I have to believe that. It's going to."
On the Youkilis-Bobby V controversy: "Basically I was trying to get Youk's back and just say, basically, if someone had a problem with somebody just come to them and talk to them about it. It came out wrong. I messed that up. No question about it. Obviously I don't want to call out our manager by any means. I've never been put in that situation before and I didn't know how to respond. I regret that all that happened. I probably should have looked and saw what was going on and tried to check the pulse of how the fans and everyone was reacting to our team. I had no idea."
On the July 26 meeting: "Obviously we weren't playing very good and this meeting was of bigger magnitude because we're all trying to figure out why we're not playing well. Why are we losing ballgames, and how come we're not like we were last year before September? Basically everybody spoke, everybody gave their opinions on why we weren't winning. My intentions when I spoke was to talk about how we can improve and be better. It had nothing to do with Bobby. How many pitches has Bobby thrown this year? How many hits has he got? When that thing came out … Obviously I understand two of the bigger players, it's a bigger story if you name the two. I get it. My intentions in speaking in that meeting was to try and help everybody get on the same page because you can't win if everybody is not pulling together. It doesn't matter if it's the No. 1 guy on the roster, the 25th guy on the roster, Billy, our video guy. Everybody needs to be pulling in the right direction to help us go where we want to go and that's to compete for a World Series every single year. I had no idea that that nonsense would come out and it was like a big deal to try and get Bobby fired. That's not the case."
On the thumbs up photo: "We were in Oakland and Bobby passed out, he was sleeping, taking a nap. We were all tired. We were grinding. David was right there and I took a picture, put two thumbs up, smiled and took a picture. I was trying to keep the guys … We weren't playing very well, trying to keep a loose atmosphere. That was it. You have to enjoy your life. It was funny. I'm not trying to be disrespectful. I had no idea … First off, I don't know how, maybe somebody was just joking around with somebody and told them, 'Hey man, this was hilarious,' and this guy thought it was a story I was disrespecting the manager. That was basically it. I was just trying to keep the guys loose, having fun, playing the game right. That's it. Listen, when you have a different manager, it's a different environment. I was basically thinking, 'This is fine.' Me and Bobby have built a relationship that's pretty darn good. The other night I led off the inning, struck out, and we ended up four or five, and Bobby looked at me and said, 'Hey, way to start it.' I'm laughing. It's normal as a team and normal when you have a good relationship to do things like that, because we're around each every day. We're in the fight together. When times are tough people would view that, 'Oh, can you believe he said this, or did this.' All of our intentions are good. We all want to win the game. Everybody wants to have fun doing it. It's not to disrespect anybody. I've never disrespected anybody."
On Johnny Pesky's funeral: "Johnny meant the world to me, just like he did to everybody. That's something I'm going to have to live with, not being at his funeral. It was just a tough situation. Then I got my wife out for a couple of hours at Josh's thing, she was starving and we went out to dinner real quick and went back to the event. When you look back, yeah, it looks bad, but I had no intentions of disrespecting anybody. That's all I can say."
On his injuries: "I learned sometimes you've got to be smart waiting a few extra days could mean a lot more to your team than sacrificing a whole month. I learned a ton about that. I learned a lot about trying to be a leader the right way. I watched Jason Varitek for so long, and he led by example so well you had to follow him. He never had to say anything to anybody because we were always demanded to play a certain way. There were some parts where I was vocal, but I think leading by example is the most important thing. I've always played as hard as I can, and people know that. I think just putting your head down and just grinding through it means more than mentioning things to guys and they see that."
Pedroia definitely said what he needed to say. I love him that much more. Put the C on his chest already!
Glad he was upfront and honest about everything. Still wish he'd gone to the funeral. But, time to move forward. Hope he is a Red Sox player his whole career, too!
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