My Little Pedroia

And speaking of ponies…

Boston Sports Media Watch posted yesterday on an interesting observation from Wednesday night’s game broadcast on TBS- Chip Carey referring to Dustin Pedroia’s nickname as being “Caballito”.

Of course, no one around here can remember anyone ever referring to Pedroia as “Caballito,” so it has been speculated that someone pulled a fast one on Carey during his preparation for the game, perhaps a Red Sox player, or that maybe even this was an “Anchorman” moment, where Carey was just fed something and he repeated it.

And of course the Herald jumped all over that (without, of course, citing to BSMW as the source of the idea, even though they cribbed even the Anchorman reference straight from BSMW’s post):

According to Caray’s broadcast partner, Buck Martinez, slugger David Ortiz told him earlier this year that the team’s Latin players bestowed the nickname on Pedroia for reasons beyond his size.

“David Ortiz told me that specifically,” Martinez said yesterday from his hotel in Anaheim. “He said we call him the little pony because he’s got spirit and heart and all of that. He thinks he can do everything. David told me he always tries to beat him to the ballpark and he could never do it. Every time he got there, Pedroia had already eaten breakfast, worked out, read the newspaper, played cards, and was ready to play.

“I love the kid,” Martinez added. “He’s the epitome of a baseball player. He doesn’t take a backseat to anybody. He’s a marvelously spirited kid and a hell of a ballplayer. Caballito.”

Considering Carlos Lee’s nickname is “El Caballo”, and David Ortiz has a wicked sense of humor, it’s entirely probable – nay, an almost certain probability – that he was pulling Buck Martinez’s leg with that faux tidbit. Especially considering the “nickname” (or fauxname) had Dustin and Alex Cora cracking up at the ridiculousness of it all.

But Buck Martinez isn’t going to even consider the possibility that he was duped:

Pedroia seemed extremely good natured about it, whether or not it’s true. For his part, Martinez did not believe Ortiz had lied to him.

“Pedroia’s a horse, there’s no question about that,” Martinez said. “We take a lot of pride in the way we present games. We want to tell the fans something they don’t know about their hometown team and we did that last night.”

One: Papi didn’t “lie” to Buck, he was joking with him. The fact that Buck is unable to tell when someone is joking, and doesn’t bother to fact-check stuff like that before announcing it on air is his own fault.

And two: well isn’t someone awfully full of themself? “We want to tell the fans something they don’t know about their hometown team and we did that last night.” Doesn’t the smarm and arrogance just ooze off the page with that quote?

Edit: because commenter Liza is a genius.