Pedro

by Pedro Martinez

  She told me, “That’s what you’re here for, you’re here to learn.”

  That next day in Great Falls I went out to the outfield, and when I was doing my flush run I thought back to the night before and how poorly I had pitched, and I just lost it. I got so angry, and when I got angry, I would cry out of anger. There I was, in tears again, this time in the middle of the outfield.

  Guy came up to me and said, “Pedro, it’s not that easy to pitch like you did under those conditions. You didn’t eat and you didn’t sleep.”

  I didn’t listen.

  “But, Guy, I wanted to be like Ramon. I wanted to get to the big leagues, I wanted to be a really good pitcher, the best pitcher, and I want to help out my family, like Ramon.”

  Guy gave me a hard look and then pointed to another pitcher running in the outfield.

  “See him out there running? He’s 22, 23 years old. You are 18 years old. When you are 23 years old, you are not going to be pitching in High A ball. You’re going to be at an entirely different level. You’ve got to remember that.”

  I was stubborn and felt sorry for myself. I found a loophole in that logic.

  “I may be 18, but I still can’t get guys out,” I said.

  “Pedro, anyone can give it up anytime.”

  Being reminded that I was so much younger than everyone else did help, but I still had a hard time reconciling where I was and the results I was getting with the drive I had to be as close as I could to perfect from the mound. If something got in my way, either a bad outing or a coach shouting at me, it felt as if my life had just been put in jeopardy.

  I thought that anytime I failed my career was at an end.

  I wouldn’t sign him. He’s too small, he’s too fragile, he’s not going to make it. I don’t like him.

  The voices from the academy continued to speak in my head. With no effort, I could summon Chico Fernandez’s swipe that I was going to go back to the Dominican Republic to cut sugar cane and Joe Vavra’s fury over nothing. And now, I couldn’t set down opposing batters.

  He doesn’t belong here.

  Those voices shook me deeply, almost to my core, but I discovered that my own will spoke louder. I was too afraid to fail. I did not want to fail, and so I would not take no for an answer. I wanted to succeed. I had to succeed. That way, when I did, I could prove everybody was wrong about me. I didn’t cry forever. The tears turned into a fury that I could barely keep under control and a confidence that I let run wild.

  That game in Butte was the worst of it. Soon, slowly but surely, I pitched better and better. My numbers wound up being not that bad that summer. I led the team in wins, going 8-3, and I finished second in strikeouts, with 82 in 14 starts and 77 innings. I struggled with my control, though, and led the team in walks, with 40.

  I finished strong as the Pioneer League season finished up. We finished first in the North Division, beating Helena to set up the championship game against the Trappers of Salt Lake City. It was my game to pitch. Because the bus drive was seven hours long and because of what had happened to me in that Medicine Hat–to–Butte drive, we took a plane for the first time that summer. We took care of the Trappers, winning the Pioneer League championship. After we’d flown back to Great Falls, I was going to head to our celebration party when Mondesí and I got some unexpected news. The Vero Beach rookie team needed some offense for their playoffs, and they wanted Mondesí to join them. And the Dodgers’ Single A team in Bakersfield, California, needed pitching for their playoff run, and they wanted me. I had to skip the party to go home and pack and leave for California the next morning. That was a hard good-bye with Shelley and the Haffners, but I knew that this was the best reason to leave.

  Being asked to pitch in California meant somebody believed in me besides myself.

  One of the Bakersfield pitchers, John Knapp, got ticked off because I was asked to pitch in his spot in the semifinal playoff game. He said, “Why do I have to be moved back? Just because he’s Ramon’s little brother? He comes here, now he’s going to pitch after I spent the whole year here?” I would have been bothered too, but I also thought that since he was going to pitch in the biggest game for us the next day if we won, there was no reason to complain.

  The manager, Tom Beyers, snapped at Knapp. “I was told to let him pitch, and I’m going to let him pitch.” Beyers was a smart man and a good manager. I pitched seven shutout innings in my game, and the next day Knapp lost the game for us. Because he had chewed out the manager the day before, Beyers made Knapp stay in the game for a long time to make a point.

  My departure from Great Falls happened so swiftly that I had had no time to call Ramon. After the loss, I called him collect in Los Angeles to tell him that I had been called up to A ball. He asked, “What’s the name of the town?” I said, “We have a ‘B’ on our caps. I think it’s ‘Bahk-kers-field.’”

  “Oh, Bakersfield,” said Ramon. “You’re only an hour from here. I’m going to send somebody to get you so you can come over and stay with me.”

  That made me so happy. I hadn’t spoken with Ramon that much over the summer. He was with the big league Dodgers then, and I wouldn’t want to bother him, plus he could get a little cranky on the phone. He was always hard with me, never that sweet, but the offer to have a driver come pick me up meant a lot. A couple of hours later, two friends of Ramon’s were in Bahkkersfield with a pickup truck. I threw my bags in the back, and we drove up to LA.

  In September 1990, Ramon was wrapping up his first full season in the big leagues, a season that also happened to be the best of his career. As a 22-year-old with the Dodgers, he threw 12 complete games, posted a 2.92 ERA, struck out 223 batters in 234⅓ innings, and wound up finishing second in the Cy Young voting. His star was not rising—it had risen, and he was a hot commodity.

  We went first to see Ramon at Dodger Stadium. I didn’t know that Ramon and a bunch of other current and former Dodgers and baseball players, including Reggie Jackson, were in a private room with fans, taking part in an autograph session. All I saw was the silent auction area, and I started browsing through the items on display. There were cleats, hats, balls, bats, all signed by people I admired, like Darryl Strawberry and Eric Davis. Then I saw a baseball signed by one of my favorite players, Reggie Jackson. 250 bucks. I had always loved Reggie’s bluster and strut, and I knew all about those three home runs he hit at Yankee Stadium in the 1977 World Series. I kept staring at that baseball until the girl behind the table went, “Dude, do you want that ball?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You have 250 bucks?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, then sign here.”

  She asked if I was related to Ramon, then said, “You sure you have 250 bucks?”

  I did have that much on me, exactly 250 bucks, and I started to take it out to give to her.

  She stopped me and said, “No, no, you have to wait and see if other people come and bid more for it than you did.”

  So I started praying. I didn’t have another nickel.

  The girl kept quizzing me.

  “That’s all the money you have? You’re going to spend it all on a baseball? You know your brother’s going to give you more.” She didn’t know that I wasn’t going to ask Ramon for anything, but I didn’t have to worry. They announced my name as the winner of the Reggie Jackson ball. Ramon saw me right afterwards, after Reggie Jackson had left. I hadn’t even known he was there.

  “Pedro, you know I could have gotten you that ball for free,” he said, laughing.

  All I knew was that I had a ball signed by one of my baseball heroes, and I had paid for it from my own baseball salary. Paying for it myself felt like the right way to go about it. I still have the ball.

  I hung out in Los Angeles for a couple of days, long enough to be driven around the city some. I was impressed by the size of all the buildings, plus I can remember that I saw a bunch of signs that read “UCLA.”

  “What’s an ‘Ookla’?” I asked the woman who was dr
iving me.

  “‘What’s an ‘Ookla’?” she repeated. “I have no idea.”

  I showed her a sign, and she threw her head back and smiled. “Ohhh. U-C-L-A—University of California Los Angeles.”

  Another English lesson!

  My summer ended with a quick trip down to the Instructional League in Arizona in October. I threw just one game, and when I came in to do my cuff exercises the next day, the trainer came over and asked me if I was okay.

  Okay?

  The day before I had thrown 94, 95 miles per hour on a 100-degree day, and I had just come off a spring and summer of throwing in extended spring training—77 innings for Great Falls and then a game for Bakersfield.

  “Yes, I’m fine. Why?”

  “Because your elbow looks a little funny,” he said. My left elbow is double-jointed, my right one is not, so they look different when you compare them side by side. He tapped just underneath the right elbow and asked me, “How come this one looks different?” I had just pitched the day before, so I was a little sore—normal sore—and I went, “Wow, that hurt.”

  “You’re hurting for real?”

  “No, but when you pushed it, yes, of course you found soreness—if you tap on it, I’m going to be sore.”

  “I think we need to get that elbow checked out.”

  “No, I’m okay, I just pitched yesterday.”

  “I don’t know, I feel a little bone chip in there.”

  This scared the shit out of me. They sent me back to Los Angeles, and they gave me an MRI, which made me extremely nervous. I felt fine, nothing strange at all.

  The doctor gave me the report.

  “Essentially, you have a bone chip in your elbow. We’re going to have to open it up and do surgery.”

  I knew he couldn’t be right. I felt perfectly normal.

  “You know what, I haven’t been home to the Dominican since March,” I said. “Give me a week so I can see my family and then I’ll be back.”

  I went home, rested for only a little while, and then I pitched in the sub-Winter League for the second-tier Licey team and went 11-0 with six shutouts.

  My elbow was fine. For the rest of my career, I never had a problem with it.

  5

  King of the Jungle

  THE NEXT SUMMER, 1991, I had no reasons to cry.

  I had survived and overcome so many obstacles to get there. I had ignored the naysayers, pushed past the setbacks, and summoned every ounce of will and determination inside me. That summer, when I stood 10 inches higher than everyone else on a baseball diamond and planted my right foot on a slab of rubber buried in the packed clay of a pitching mound to begin my delivery, I was in full attack mode—king of the jungle, there to protect my pride and to prey on my enemies.

  On the mound, I could not prevent my mind from summoning that image of my kidnapped mother, bound and gagged, one plunge of a knife from death, nor could I stop myself from saving her precious breath nearly every chance I had. Very little could throw me off. That summer of 1991 marked my first and longest uninterrupted stretch of dominance. This 19-year-old ducked the drama and pitched his tail off.

  I breezed through Single A, Double A, Triple A, all the way to the major leagues, all in one six-month span. Technically, the major leagues did not count, because the Dodgers only wanted me to travel with Ramon and the team, not to pitch when I arrived that September. They said I had pitched enough that summer. Over 177⅓ innings at the three levels, I won 18 of my 28 starts and posted a 2.28 ERA with 192 strikeouts. I didn’t want to stop pitching when I reached the big leagues.

  In fact, I thought I deserved to pitch against big leaguers. I just didn’t make a big deal about it.

  Just knowing it was enough.

  In Vero Beach in February 1991, that bone chip in my elbow was never even mentioned to me. I began working out with the Double A and Triple A pitchers, which I knew was a good sign. The team had placed me on the 40-man roster, and even though I was, on average, about five years younger than the pitchers around me, I never had a moment when I thought I wasn’t keeping up with all of them. In fact, I was surprised to hear that they did not want me to start the season with the Double A team because they had some veterans that needed to start off in San Antonio.

  So it was back to Bakersfield for me. This time we lived in our own apartments, so I didn’t have the comfort of the Haffner family to go back to every night. Then again, I felt hardly any homesickness either. The bus rides in the California League, up and down the San Joaquin Valley and over the Sierra Nevada mountains, did not top the Pioneer League in terms of scenery, but they were shorter, so no complaints. Reno was the farthest stop from Bakersfield, about a six-hour ride. Not so bad, especially since I got to touch snow for the first time when we stopped on the side of the road at a mountain pass. I packed some snow up as best I could into a snowball and took some target practice on some trees.

  In Bakersfield, I had Goose Gregson for my pitching coach. Ganso (“goose” in Spanish) really took to me, I could tell, and I liked him right back. He spoke Spanish, which I appreciated, plus he saw how focused I was. Drills, side sessions, pitchers’ fielding practice, long toss, playing catch, stretching, weight work, and then at the end of the day, four- or five-mile runs, usually by myself, around and around Sam Lynn Ball Park.

  “Pedro,” he asked me once, “why do you work this hard?”

  I looked him in the eye and said, “Ganso, when I’m standing on the mound, it could be in Vero or here or back home, and I see a hitter in the box, I know that I’m a better pitcher than they’re a hitter. I believe that because I outworked them.”

  By the end of May, after 10 starts, I had gone 8-0 with a 2.05 ERA and 0.978 WHIP against California League hitters. The Dodgers promoted me to Double A in San Antonio, where honestly, the Texas League hitters did not look that much different than Single A ones, just a bit less free-swinging.

  What I took out of my time with the Missions in San Antonio was some excellent coaching from Bert Hooton, a former Dodgers pitcher who had given up the first of Reggie’s three home runs in Game 6 of the 1977 World Series. Hooton was my pitching coach, and he let me do my own thing. He didn’t care that I was still skinny, and he had no problem with all the running I was still doing. “Do your body, boy! Run!” he’d tell me, and I did, as much as I could.

  Hooton taught me two things. One, he reinforced Sandy Koufax’s lesson about hooking the rubber to create resistance and leverage as well as a smoother delivery. And two, Hooton taught me the proper way to throw a side session. Before, I thought throwing on the side was all about throwing hard and harder. I didn’t think it was that important, just one of those things teams told starting pitchers to do. Burt, as well as Dave Wallace—who was the minor league pitching coordinator and who was starting to show up at more of my games that summer—showed me that a side session is a lot more than that. Burt would put on his own catching gear to catch us. The first time I threw to him, I zipped in a few fastballs, and six minutes later, thinking I was done, I was looking for my jacket. Burt slowly got up from his crouch and in his thick Texas accent asked me where I was going. He told me that I couldn’t learn how to throw pitches in six minutes, it was going to take a bit longer than that. He taught me about how and where to place the ball, commanding its location. That meant paying attention to my mechanics. That made sense to me. Even though I would be throwing more pitches, their velocity was the last thing to be thinking about, which made even more sense during the oppressively humid and hot San Antonio summer.

  My ERA with the Missions was 1.76, more than a quarter-point lower than in Single A. I was allowed to go deeper into games in Double A. Four of my 12 starts were complete games. Three of them were shutouts.

  I made two All-Star teams that summer, the California League and Texas League All-Stars, but I didn’t pitch in either one. You couldn’t go back down to Single A to pitch in an All-Star game, and then I heard that somebody who had been in Double A the whole se
ason would have to be taken off the team if I pitched in that All-Star game, so I said I wouldn’t go. I was happy just remembering that I made the team.

  In Triple A Albuquerque, I made six more starts. My ERA rose to 3.66, but my WHIP was a bit lower than in San Antonio, 1.119 versus 1.148.

  Mike Piazza was my catcher in New Mexico, and Kevin Kennedy was my manager. Kennedy pretty much left me alone. He did help me notice that the base runners in Triple A were quicker, which meant I had to pay more attention to anyone on first base.

  Other than that, he just let me pitch.

  “He had complete command of himself,” said Kennedy. “When I evaluated pitchers, I would always ask, ‘Does he stand up tall like he’s going to throw the ball right through the batter?’ He had that immediately. There was no sense of doubt with him. He knew exactly what he wanted to do—he was almost a finished product by the time he got to me.”

  The Triple A season was over by early September, and the Dodgers said they wanted me to rest up, but that I should travel with Ramon and the big-league team. I wasn’t wild about not pitching. I was at least allowed to warm up and play catch with the team.

  Tommy Lasorda was the manager, and before some games he took the time to try to teach me the curveball. I was pretty much fastball-changeup-only that summer—I had lost my breaking ball along the way. Lasorda wanted me to throw the same curveball he threw, a slow and slurvy one, but it didn’t work for me—my arm speed was too fast. We had some fun, though, just spinning breaking balls back and forth. Tommy tried to get me to bend my knees more when I threw the curveball, but I had trouble with that, because my extension was longer than his. He also threw his with two fingers on top. That didn’t work for me either. I kept trying, but it wasn’t happening—it wouldn’t break that much, and I couldn’t command it. Ramon came over and said, “If you can’t use two fingers on top, take the middle one off and just use your forefinger.”