Dustin Pedroia missed Monday night's game to be with his wife Kelli, who went into premature labor with their first child.

Journal photo / Ruben W. Perez

BOSTON — Dustin Pedroia went through something far worse Monday than a three-error game, or a four-strikeout night.

He had to sit by panicked while his wife Kelli, seven months pregnant with the couple's first child, went into early labor.

The doctors were able to halt the labor, and she was doing well Tuesday night.

"She's good. She's a lot tougher than I am, I'll tell you that. But she'll be all right," Pedroia said.

The MVP was back in the lineup Tuesday night, but said the experience was difficult, as is knowing that his wife will be in the hospital a while.

"It was tough," he said. "This is our first child. I didn't really know what to do. I'm learning on the fly. It kind of happened real fast. I'm just glad she's OK and the baby seems to be OK so we'll wait and see. She's probably going to be in there a while, but we'll get through it."

He still isn't sure, medically, what exactly happened with his unborn son.

"They're giving her all this medicine, they gave her some shots to help the baby out so we're trying to keep him in there for as long as possible. He probably wants a Red Bull or something," Pedroia said.

Pedroia was torn between duty and family Monday, not wanting to leave the park. Manager Terry Francona told him to be with his wife.

"He needed to be with Kelli, and she needed him," Francona said. "He needed to not be here last night."

Anybody who's been around him for any length of time knows how bad he wants to play," Francona said.

The manager felt that times like these are an unrecognized, but important, part of his job.

"I guess I feel like my job entails more than putting a hit-and-run on. It's caring about them and their families. I hope they know that. I think they do."

And certainly, Pedroia has earned the leeway when he needs it

"If you think about it, how lucky am I to be the manager of a guy like him? They don't come around too often," Francona said.

Now, Kelli Pedroia's family is here, and she told her husband to come to the ballpark. Francona said he can leave at any time if he needs to.

"My wife told me to come back here and play the game so I came back here. I kind of do what I'm told. Tito said, hey, you've got to get out of here, man. You have to take care of your family. I headed back there and stayed the night. It's good I'm small. I slept in some little bed in there. Hopefully she'll be all right," Pedroia said.

He played a nervous second base tonight, thinking about his wife constantly.

"I'll be all right. Obviously I'm thinking about her, calling every five minutes but I'll be all right," Pedroia said.

* * * *

Twenty years ago, and even ten years ago, Pedroia might not have been allowed to leave the team to tend to his ailing wife, as he did Monday.

The culture in baseball probably wouldn't have supported it, Francona mused when thinking back on his days as a child growing up with a major-league father, and then as a major-league player himself through the 1980s. Things certainly have changed.

"I know that for a fact," he said. "It never really made sense to me. When I was born, my dad didn't get to see me for a couple weeks because that was their next off day. When I was playing, I missed one of my kid's births. My wife's still mad at me. It's 22 years later.

"That's just how it was."

As time has gone on, and organizations have taken better care of their players in general — perhaps reflecting their higher pay and the larger investments teams have made in them — the culture of strictness and indifference to the world outside the diamond has been largely torn down.

Francona started to truly grasp that players needed a manager who would help them out a little in life when he was managing in the minor leagues in the early 1990s.

"When you become a minor-league manager, you feel a little differently about what those kids are going through," Francona said.

He recalled a Double-A player named Luis Andujar, who needed help getting his first car. Francona walked him through the process — and then some.

"We got him a used car. It broke down that very day," Francona chuckled. "I was the guy who helped him get his first car, and then I was the guy who picked him up when his first car didn't work."

Pedroia said that kind of understanding contributes to making the Red Sox a quality team on the field as well as off.

"[Francona's] the best," he said. "The Red Sox organization, [general manager Theo Epstein] texted me late last night. My whole team, that's why we're a great team because we care about each other."

dbarbari@projo.com