I was happy to see my favorite baseball player, second baseman Dustin Pedroia, win the AL MVP award.

Over the weekend, a friend of mine suggested that the Red Sox team that won the World Series in 2007 wasn’t nearly as likable as the band of idiots that won in 2004, and of course I objected and proceeded to list all of the great characters the Red Sox have acquired since 2004: Jonathan Paplebon, Josh Beckett, Jacoby Ellsbury, Mike Lowell and ... Dustin Pedroia. It’s easy to like Dustin Pedroia. For one thing, he’s really short, and I can relate to really short people, being one myself. Like me, Pedroia probably knows how frustrating it is to have tall people stand in front of you at concerts, or sit in front of you at the movie theater. He may even be aware of statistics showing that tall people earn more money. (Click here for a Slate article on this topic.) Officially listed as 5’9”, but believed to be a couple of inches shorter, Pedroia is an anomaly, a guy too short to play major league baseball. In a headline announcing his win, the Gazette called him “runt of the Red Sox litter.”

But Pedroia never let that deter him, and over the years developed a defiant, cocky attitude. In a nice piece on Yahoo MLB, Gordon Edes writes: “[Pedroia] might have been the last guy you’d pick out of a police lineup if you stood all the candidates in a row and asked which guy most looked the part. You might have reacted just like the Coors Field security guard did when he failed to recognize Pedroia at last year’s World Series until Pedroia cockily snapped, “Ask [expletive] Jeff Francis who I am. I’m the guy who hit a bomb off him.” (Click here to read more.)

One of the things that makes Dustin Pedroia so great is that he’s already proved so many people wrong. In 2007, the blogger “Philly Fanatic In Red Sox Nation” described Pedroia as “God of...the Farm Gnomes? OK. I got nuthin’. DP should be down on the farm in Pawtucket. Having a glaring hole like this on a team with a collective salary of over a gajillion dollars is bad. The Minions should be scouring the ballfields of the Dominican Republic and/or Liechtenstein, looking to upgrade here. Or at least scouring eBay and PropertyRoom.com.”) He then suggested that the Sox might be able to fix the Pedroia problem with a mid-season trade. Um, yeah. Great idea. Now, of course, the naysayers are issuing their mea culpas; in the Boston Globe, columnist Dan Shaughnessy admits he never thought Pedroia could make it in the major leagues. (Click here to read that column.)

Some writers are speculating that Pedroia’s size was actually an advantage in the MVP voting, because who could resist such a terrific story? (Click here to see Boston Globe writer’s Tony Massarotti’s musings on the topic.)

This got me thinking about the writer Malcolm Gladwell, who in a piece in the Nov. 10 issue of the New Yorker suggests that sometimes disadvantages can turn into advantages. He uses the example of Sidney Weinberg, a poor, uneducated Jewish kid from Brooklyn who rose to the top of Goldman Sachs, despite not having an Ivy League education or the proper social connections, and suggests that adverse situations, such as poverty, can help develop traits, such as guile and a quick wit, that lead to success. (Click here to read the piece.) In some ways, I suppose, you could argue that Pedroia is a bit like Weinberg, turning his disadvantages into advantages. Kevin Youkilis had great stats, too, and he didn’t get nearly as much MVP consideration. Maybe Pedroia simply seemed more award-worthy, for having overcome so much.

Or perhaps he really just deserves the award. I happen to think Gladwell’s theory is mostly bogus. Disadvantages are not really advantages, and for every rags-to-riches story, there are dozens of stories of failure — frankly, I can’t think of the last time being short helped me do anything. I mean, sometimes I have to ask tall friends to help me change light bulbs. So if being short helped Pedroia win the MVP, I really don’t care, because we’ll probably never see another MVP quite like him and, yes, he is a great story.

CONCERT ALERT: I won’t be attending this, but based on the line-up, I would recommend it. The B3nson Collective, a group of bands that includes Sgt. Dunbar and the Hobo Banned, We Are Jeneric, Scientific Maps and Swamp Baby, are sponsoring a show, the B3nson Family Funsgiving, tonight at 7:30 p.m. at Valentine’s in Albany. Many of these bands will perform (click here to see the B3nson Collective website, and tonight’s line-up), and a compilation CD will be released. These bands are always good in concert, and I heard a pretty good new We Are Jeneric song, “Creeping Jenny,” on 97.7 this morning that made me think, “Too bad I can’t go to that show.” But maybe you can.

Got a comment? Add one below, or e-mail me at sfoss@dailygazette.net.