Dustin Pedroia Is Pure Grit

Back during the Red Sox' playoff run, we told you to be wary of the silly ways the average baseball pundit would describe Dustin Pedroia. Because Pedroia is small and white, he attracted nonsensical comparisons to Darin Erstad and especially David Eckstein, even though Pedroia is a considerably better hitter than both of those players, and has a ton more upside.

Thus, it feels nice to be able to credit Pedroia for being gritacular without feeling stupid about it; he actually did grit out the final games of the 2007 season with no less than a broken bone in his hand:

Pedroia admitted yesterday that he played the final two months of the season with a cracked hamate bone in his left hand.

The second baseman doesn't know when he suffered the injury, but it was discovered during an MRI and bone scan on Sept. 10. He didn't undergo surgery until Tuesday. He is wearing a soft cast and is restricted from using the hand until late November or early December.

"Some days I would wake up and it would be hard to grip a bat," Pedroia said. "I changed my grip a little bit on the bat and went from there. It was just one of those things you know you have to take care of after the season, but you have to play through. A lot of guys have done that. You definitely don't want to shut it down and have surgery during the whole thing. We just had to find a way to fight through it."

Who knows how much pain Pedroia actually went through; it could have been minimal, given the bone involved, or it could have been suffocating. Given the slight increase in Pedroia's power numbers during the injury, though, I'm betting it wasn't too limiting. Still, Pedroia deserves credit for putting the team before his own significantly bright future.