The official ending came Monday. Unofficially, it ended long before.
Dustin Pedroia retired from the Red Sox and Major League Baseball Monday at 37 years old. The record shows his final game was a 5-3 loss to the Yankees on April 17, 2019. He flew out to right field in the top of the second inning off JA Happ, then departed before the bottom half due to “left knee soreness.”
The knee, ravaged by a dirty slide by the Orioles’ Manny Machado in April 2017, wasn’t right. It never would be again.
Pedroia’s goodbye Monday came 657 days after that final appearance, further confirmation of just how agonizing it must have been to stop fighting the internal rage against reality.