Dustin Pedroia Wants to Find Bigfoot

As a New Yorker, I often make fun of the Boston Red Sox. I mean, how could I not? They’re making the Mets look respectable these days. But I digress, and this post is not about offending Red Sox fans. If I wanted to do that, I could just talk about how Kevin Youklis is just the latest Sox player to trade up and go to the Yankees. But I digress again…No, in this post, I want to talk about Dustin Pedroia, and his interest in Bigfoot. Finally, a Red Sox player I can kinda like! I initially learned of his interest through Loren Coleman, who tweeted about Pedroia’s Sasquatch love. And today I came across this story, so I guess it’s getting more mainstream attention…

FORT MYERS ­— Today is a Red Sox off day. Some players will fish. Others play golf.

Dustin Pedroia has a hobby that falls a little outside the box — the search for Bigfoot.

You probably knew that if you follow Pedroia on Twitter (@15Lasershow), where a “Sasquatch Crossing” sign serves as his avatar. This spring, he walks around, a lot, in a light blue T-shirt with a Bigfoot drawing on it.

His next-door neighbor in the clubhouse, Will Middlebrooks, says Bigfoot is all Pedroia talks about, not only the TV show about the search but Bigfoot himself.

Middlebrooks is convinced that Pedroia believes in Bigfoot “120 percent.”

Pedroia is noncommittal. A little like Carl Everett was when it came to the subject of dinosaurs, he hasn’t seen foolproof evidence with his own eyes yet.

The search for Bigfoot, though, that matters.

Pedroia believes in the search for Bigfoot. Bigfeet, actually.

“There’s gotta be” more than one, he said yesterday. “I don’t know, I haven’t seen them. Keep looking for them.”

Pedroia does not miss episodes of Animal Planet’s “Finding Bigfoot.”

“It’s good, man, it’s good stuff,” he said.

Pedroia is up to date on all the claims, old and new, of the tall, lumbering creature known for its putrid stench, humongous footprints, ape-like noises and extremely reclusive habits. He said the Les Trout-Sasquatch YouTube videos are “pretty cool.” He is not into the Loch Ness monster, but Yeti (the Abominable Snowman, believed to be roaming the Himalayan Mountains) is “probably from the same family, probably from the same origin.”

The idea that all the Sasquatches must be breeding brings up the idea that there are baby Sasquatches sequestered in the woods somewhere.

“They call them juvenile Sasquatches,” Pedroia informs a newcomer to the search.

The conversation makes Pedroia a bit wary.

“It’s not a big deal, it’s normal stuff,” he said.

It’s not new, either. He heard about them growing up in central Sacramento.

“It’s Northern California, they’re everywhere, man. You see them at Wal-Mart,” he said.

So, he’s got a sense of humor about them. His wife, Kelli, is not on the same page about Bigfoot.

“She has no imagination,” he said. He agrees that there have been some Bigfoot hoaxes.

“For sure, we had one coming out of our bullpen until he got a haircut,” he said, referring to reliever Andrew Miller. He said he’d be willing to join the hunt one offseason, be on the TV show if it came around to that.

“I don’t know how many there are but the search continues,” Pedroia said. “Gotta find one. I’ll go look.”

He still would like to know more.

“There’s not much research on it,” he said. “We’ve got to find one first, then we’ll know.”

He keeps looking over at Middlebrooks. The third baseman finally can’t help himself.

“Where do they look? Everywhere?”’ he asks.

Pedroia acts annoyed.

“I don’t know, I’m not the founder of the show, I just watch it,” he said. “You’re not going to go in CVS and see one.”

Middlebrooks knows he has no shot at turning Pedroia into a skeptic.

So the search continues.

And when the searchers find him, or her, juvenile or not juvenile, Pedroia understands that’s not the end of the story.

“Then they’d go find more,” he said. “There’s more than one.”

It’s great to see more mainstream celebrities and scientists getting into Bigfoot and paranormal phenomena in general, and hopefully it opens the eyes and minds of more skeptics out there.