Dustin Pedroia calls his hometown (Woodland) "a dump"

[king07]

http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/story/1766927.html

I thought it was pretty classeless, i mean you don't say something like that about your hometown where you grew up and started your baseball career. Eventhough i despise the red sox, i wanted to see him do well but not anymore.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Well, maybe you do, if you don't like it there...

Even as someone who hates the way that free agency has ruined sports, and always wants to see players stick with the team that drafted them, I don't get the whole "home town" deal. Maybe it's because I (still) have only ever lived in one spot for longer than four years, but I'm certainly not beholden to any of the places that I "grew up." Although, to be fair, I didn't really live anywhere long enough as a kid to pass sentence on it as a dump but, still, just because he apparently broke the unwritten rule doesn't mean that he's wrong.

 

[BritishColumbia]

You do not say bad things about your family, home city etc. This is part of your life. You might not tell great things about it but you do not trash it. Before you say something, you should think what other people will think and how they feel. Small places do not have a glamorous life and so on but he was taught to play baseball there, you went to school there, your parents are from there. I've met so many people from very poor countries and they are so proud of them. If you do not like it, just be polite and respectful. It is not like you live in Paris now either.

 

[Oprostaj]

Short of any of us living there, not sure how we could comment on it. I grew up in one of those small broken down towns and I loved it - the people, the lifestyle, everything suited me. Maybe it doesn't suit Pedroia. It's not like he said he didn't like it because it was full of white people, or black people, or whoever. How this passes for news defies any logic.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

I think its kind of sad since as a huge Sox fan I was glad a guy with NorCal roots had become one of my favorite players. But big deal, lots of people don't like where they lived or grew up.

Anyhow, reading the article it sounds like he has a reason he's ticked off whether it be his brother's legal troubles or some feud with the local paper. I don't know the details of either so I won't speculate, but it sounds like he was just venting over some personal issues.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Like I said, I probably can't relate because of my military background, both my own and my parents; I moved around a ton as a kid, and moved around more as an adult. I don't consider any place that I lived during my childhood as home: not where I was born, not where I went to elementary school, not where I went to middle school, and not where I went to high school. I don't have family in any of the four places, except for where I was born, and I don't actually live there, and I'm not close to that side of my family, anyway. The only people I that I would have considered friends in all of the other places all had the good sense to move, so there's nothing holding me to any of those places, and I suppose that the idea of having a romanticized sense of where you "grew up" is a foreign concept to me.

Hell, I don't like where I'm living right now, and I'm only staying here so that I can see my son on the weekends, and provide him some kind of stability with both of his parents living relatively closely together. As soon as he's old enough to start college and/or live on his own, though, I'm probably going haul *** for wherever I can find the highest-paying job. If my experiences have taught me anything, it's that places are just places.

 

[VF21]

I cannot believe what's passing for "news" nowadays. I'm more impressed with the comment of the longtime Woodland resident who shrugs it off.