A few days after his impassioned speech, Ortiz hit a shallow pop fly to right field. He was angry, and never made it to first base. When he got back to the dugout, Pedroia began tearing into him, loudly enough that everyone else on the team could hear, telling Ortiz that “We’re not going to win anything if we do things like that. If we’re going to win, we’re going to have to play the game right every pitch of the season.”
“We were in shock,” recalls Dempster. “A lot of us looked at Farrell. He’s been managing for less than a month. Then David says, ‘Pedey, you’re right, I’m wrong, and it won’t happen again. If you think it does, you let me know. Thankfully, this is your team.’”
Middlebrooks says, “the young players on the team all looked at one another, amazed that we’re on a team where a (guy) about 5-foot-6 disciplines one of the greatest home run hitters who ever lived, because this was a team. A lot of the veterans talked about ‘we, not me.’ Well, that was what this team was all about.”
