Boston Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia may need to add a trophy room to his house in Arizona as he won the 2008 Silver Slugger Award for being the top offensive player at second base in the American League.

Pedroia hit .326 with 17 home runs, 83 RBI and 20 stolen bases. He also had a league-leading 54 doubles and was tied with Ichiro Suzuki with a MLB-high 213 hits. Plus he led the AL with 118 runs scored and 61 multi-hit games.

Before Pedroia’s double-double (Gold Glove and Silver Slugger), only Jason Varitek in 2005, Ellis Burks in 1990 and Dwight “Dewey” Evans in 1981 won both awards as members of the Red Sox in the same season.

Pedroia is considered to be one of the leading candidates for the American League MVP which will be announced on Tuesday afternoon at 2 PM by the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA).

Here is the full list of winners in both the AL & NL:

American League
1B – Justin Morneau, Minnesota Twins
2B – Dustin Pedroia, Boston Red Sox
3B – Alex Rodriguez, New York Yankees
SS – Derek Jeter, New York Yankees
OF – Josh Hamilton, Texas Rangers
OF – Carlos Quentin, Chicago White Sox
OF – Grady Sizemore, Cleveland Indians
C – Joe Mauer, Minnesota Twins
DH – Aubrey Huff, Baltimore Orioles

National League
1B – Albert Pujols, St. Louis Cardinals
2B – Chase Utley, Philadelphia Phillies
3B – David Wright, New York Mets
SS – Hanley Ramirez, Florida Marlins
OF – Matt Holliday, Colorado Rockies
OF – Ryan Ludwick, St. Louis Cardinals
OF – Ryan Braun, Milwaukee Brewers
C – Brian McCann, Atlanta Braves
P – Carlos Zambrano, Chicago Cubs

Down the stretch the Boston Red Sox come as the exclusive negotiating period with free agent catcher Jason Varitek is about to come to a close. And of course there’s nothing new to report on that end.

David Ortiz made an appearance on WEEI yesterday to promote his charity golf tournament in the Dominican Republic and during that time he talked about many things including former outfielder Manny Ramirez.

“The Manny situation was a tough situation for the team, for us the teammates, for him as a player,” Ortiz said. “He was trying to get to be out, everybody knows, it’s not news, for the past few years and it was something that it was getting worse and worse and worse every year. Last year [in the beginning] was one of those years that he just chill out and went to his business and pull himself together, it was a lot of talking.

“I myself, pretty much every year, have to kind of deal with that because me and Manny, we’re pretty close, and it got to the point where I had to come down and talk to him because we were going through a good situation and you don’t want to put the situation in a [bad] spot, everything just goes down. We were playing good. We were a pretty good contender in the American League East, and you just don’t want to change the whole thing, just knowing that you are the cleanup hitter, the best hitter in the game, and people look at you like, ‘Well what’s going on with this guy?,’ so, it was a lot of talking pretty much I encouraged Manny to talk to the media, make you guys job easy and it’s because you guys are the ones to let people know what’s going on, what’s happening with us in the clubhouse and everything, and he definitely agreed with me and started pretty much talking to everybody. Getting along.

“Everything started one day that I told Manny, ‘Hey look, look at the numbers that you have put up your whole career, and you have never been able to win an MVP, there’s a reason why’. And the media is our family. The media, sometimes you gonna find one or two guys that they’re gonna screw things up, try to get people’s attention writing bad things, but not everybody’s the same way. You gotta understand that and you can blame everybody for somebody that just makes a mistake. It doesn’t work like that . . . pull yourself together and start getting connected with the media because that’s how you express your feelings and people get to know more and Manny’s good things, that people don’t know about Manny. And he agreed with me.”

“Well, to tell you the truth, it was something going down between the Red Sox and Manny Ramirez that I can never really break that down for you because there’s some personal reasons that he has with our owners and I never got to the bottom of it, and [he’s] got his feelings, you know, Manny was, he got to the point that he really wanted to get to play for someone else.

“I’ll tell you one thing, I’m the kind of guy that I look at the positive side of everything and Manny, I get to learn a lot of things from Manny. Manny’s one of the guys that worked hard every day to have some really good performances out there, and I never saw Manny not getting prepared to play. . . now he wasn’t happy here, everybody knows that. And when a relationship get to the point, you gotta make a move just like we did, and you go from there.”

The Boston Red Sox have spoken to Scott Boras about Derek Lowe.  I just don’t see the Red Sox giving the money to him especially to be a No. 4 or 5 starter for the Red Sox. But who knows since we all know free agency can get kind of wacky at times.

The Red Sox and Lee County spent 3 hours yesterday hammering out the details of their new 30-year lease agreement.

Last night, the UConn Huskies women’s basketball team easily dispatched of Team SRP in their final tuneup before the 2008-09 campaign gets underway on Sunday. After the game, Geno Auriemma noted that freshman Heather Buck could be out for an undetermined amount of time. And of course Geno being Geno, he had to make a snarky remark about it.

“It’s just two days ago that it really kind of came to the surface,’’ Geno said. “She’s a healthy kid. She’s been healthy her whole life. It’s being thrown in with these slugs that got her sick I think. She was living in Stonington and eating right and getting rest and doing all the things that nice kids do and hanging around nice people. She was always healthy. Now put her in with these McDonald’s-eating vigilantes all the bad stuff happens.’’

As we used to say with the dreadlocked former outfielder for the Boston Red Sox, that’s just “Geno being Geno.”

The lone UConn women’s basketball recruit, Kelly Faris, sent in her letter-of-intent yesterday making it official.

John Altavilla of the Hartford Courant has the story of Caroline Doty and her missing teeth.

Renee Montgomery and her fellow seniors decided to hold Senior Night at the XL Center this season.

Renee Montgomery would like to cap her UConn career with an NCAA title.

Tiffany Hayes is glad to have her mom around for support since she’s far away from home.

Here are 5 keys to success for the UConn women’s basketball team.

The UConn women are ready for the 2008-09 season.

UConn men’s basketball recruits Alex Oriakhi and Jamal Coombs-McDaniel sent in their letters-of-intent yesterday.

Western Carolina coach Larry Hunter is hoping his players enjoy their visit to UConn.

Charles Okwandu may miss the opener tomorrow night against Western Carolina due to an eligibility issue.

Kemba Walker is looking to make an impression for the Huskies.

The UConn men’s basketball team is filled with a lot of potential this season.

Here are 5 keys to success for the UConn men’s basketball team this season.

Jeff Adrien hopes to be more explosive this season thanks to changes in his diet.

Hasheem Thabeet hopes to the be the centerpiece of the UConn men’s basketball team this season.

The UConn men’s team is thirsty for a Big East Championship this season.

ESPN.com’s Bracketology has UConn opening up as the #1 seed in Boston against Boston University.

UConn AD Jeff Hathaway talked about the new Big East commissioner John Marinatto.

The UConn women’s hockey team takes on Boston College tonight.