Tomase: A year after retirement, it's clear Pedroia deserved so much better

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Of all the what-ifs in Boston sports, the final third of Dustin Pedroia's Red Sox career belongs near the top of the list.

Almost exactly a year ago, Pedroia announced his official retirement from the game he loved and briefly dominated. What should've been the final season of an eight-year, $110 million extension was instead reduced to a farewell Zoom from the Arizona desert where Pedroia makes his home.

Because we knew the end was coming for a good three years, the moment brought more relief than sadness. But now that enough time has passed to reflect on a truly great career, it's fair to feel cheated.

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Pedroia is still only 38 and might've had another year or two in him as a beloved elder statesman. Think Derek Jeter or David Ortiz or Chipper Jones or Mariano Rivera or any of the other aging stars who linked generations, to universal acclaim, and conducted farewell tours to match.

Pedroia deserved a similar sendoff. That's how much he meant to the Red Sox and the game as the personification of ability and instincts over tools and raw athleticism. He played a timeless style that could've seen him spiked by Ty Cobb, setting the table for Ted Williams, or diving head first into home like Pete Rose.

That his career would effectively end in the line of fire, absorbing a dirty slide from Manny Machado, belongs in the Ulf Samuelsson pantheon of shame. But it's also fitting, because Pedroia never shied from contact or confrontation. Of course he'd sacrifice his body to make a play. There was no other way.

That 2017 slide permanently altered Pedroia's career, but the end didn't come immediately. He instead spent the next three years imprisoned in his own body, undergoing multiple knee surgeries in a series of painfully futile attempts to retake the field. The fact that he could only play nine games between 2018 and 2019 may have cruelly dropped his lifetime average from an even .300 to .299, but it also left no doubt that he had exhausted every possibility. By the time he officially hung them up, he had nothing left to give.

And that's the ultimate shame, because in another sense, he still had so much to give. In 2016, he had just delivered his best season in years, batting .318 with 15 home runs. Machado would spike him high and late the following April, but it's easy to forget that Pedroia wasn't even sidelined a week before returning to hit .329 over the next three months.

He finally broke down in late July, returning for one game in August and then most of September. He went 3 for 36 to end that season, however, and started dropping hints that not only was his knee not right, but it might never be. That prediction proved prophetic.

Pedroia still retired with a hell of a resume, but the lack of longevity will probably cost him a spot in the Hall of Fame. A four-time All-Star and Gold Glover, he also owns Rookie of the Year and MVP awards. Former Red Sox great Jim Rice eked out just long enough a career for his dominating 1978 MVP to put him over the top in his final year of balloting. With three more years like 2016, Pedroia would've put himself in a similar position while finishing with over 2,000 hits and maybe adding another Gold Glove.

Instead, he's coaching his sons in Arizona while learning to live with the limited mobility of a partial knee replacement. It's not the finish Pedroia deserved after playing like such a force of nature, the little kid picked last who ended up being the best player on the field, but it's probably the one he earned after more than a decade spent proudly and stubbornly standing his ground.

The Red Sox honored him with a day last June, allowing Pedroia one last chance to wave goodbye to the adoring Fenway fans. The fact that he did so in dress pants instead of a uniform felt wrong then, and even more so now.

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