Dustin Pedroia wins the weekend

As I type this, on my husband's wheezing old laptop in a cottage deep in the wilds of extreme Western Massachusetts, the Red Sox are, justly, dominating the bottom-feeding Astros 9-3 in the ninth. The Adrian / Papi combo seems to have kicked in nicely, just in time for interleague to be over, but let's not dwell on that. What's truly important at this point is that no matter what else happens from here, Dustin Pedroia has put his stamp of ownership on this weekend, with both authority and finality. You see, last night's home plate umpire, Laz Diaz (who looks as if umpiring is his second career after a stint as a left tackle in the NFL somewhere) was having some, er, difficulty when it came to the outside, lower part of the strike zone to right-handed hitters. Players on both sides complained, but Dustin Pedroia, as always, took it to another level. The bases were loaded in the seventh with the Sox trailing 5-3 and one out. The at-bat went routinely enough, until the...