Boston Red Sox second basemen Dustin Pedroia won the AL MVP Award Tuesday and as Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy writes, he might be the most unlikely MVP winner ever.

Dustin Pedroia is the Most Valuable Player of the American League. This is simply one of the amazing sports stories of our time.

He is a miracle. He is a hardball mutant. He is the most unlikely man to win this award in the history of major league baseball.

Think about all the great Red Sox players who never won the award. Manny Ramírez was never MVP. Neither was Carlton Fisk. Nor Wade Boggs.

Fisk and Boggs are in the Hall of Fame and Manny is going to Cooperstown. None of them won an MVP.
And now the little big man has an American League MVP trophy – just like Jimmie Foxx, Ted, Jackie Jensen, Yaz, Freddie Lynn, Jim Rice, Roger Clemens, and Mo Vaughn.

Pedroia did it by hitting .326 – same as Yaz in ’67. He made himself the first second baseman to win the AL MVP since Nellie Fox of the Chicago White Sox in 1959. Guru Gammons points out that, in August, Pedroia had more extra-base hits than Ramírez.

Pedroia is no Manny Ramírez. But he’s MVP of the American League. Just Dustin being Dustin.

Pedroia is the poster child for every kid that is told he’s too small to play and that he’ll never make it. He was a nobody before last year, but hard work allowed him to rise to the top and once he got there, he never stopped working. He does all the little things right and he competes on a nightly a basis. This truly is one of the better sports stories in some time.