I could see he was starting to panic, shaking right there on the mound. He gave up a three-run home run to Mike Lansing that inning, and as I crossed home plate I was still tripping.
“I’m going to hit you anywhere that I see you from now on.”
He gave up one more home run and was out of the game for the third inning. I stayed in for five more complete innings and gave up just one more run and got the win.
I never could let that one go. Drabek was traded to the Orioles in 1998, my first season with the Red Sox. He was throwing on the side, and I came by and said, “Even in an Old-Timers’ Game, I’m going to hit you if I see you.”
If he heard me, he didn’t show it.
The point is, no matter how well I was doing, I was always only one up-and-in pitch away from naysayers pouncing on me, trying to take me down.
Still, I finished the season strong. Heading into my final start of the season against the Phillies, I had gone 3-2 with a 1.59 ERA in my previous six starts, batters were hitting just .205 against me, and I hadn’t hit a batter in any of my previous 13 starts, and just two all year. One of those two hit batsmen was Philadelphia’s Kevin Stocker, back in July.
On September 24 at Philadelphia, I made what should have been my next-to-last start of the season. I was lined up to pitch the season finale, which mattered since we were in the wild-card hunt at that point. The Phillies were the worst team in the league that season. They definitely played that game with the attitude that they had nothing to lose.
Felipe must have sensed that either they were ready to take me down or I was ready to explode, or both, because he asked me before the game to keep my emotions in check.
I did, at first.
The game was scoreless in the third, two out, nobody on. I got ahead of left-handed-hitting Gregg Jefferies, 0-1, when I lost control of a pitch. The ball hit him in the arm. Not a big deal, not a deal at all in my mind, even though Jefferies had to leave the game. But Jefferies kept looking at me, and I could hear some Phillies, one of whom sounded like Curt Schilling, yelling at me from the bench, plus I could hear some Veterans Stadium boo-birds.
This might bring something, I thought.
After Jefferies left the game, all was calm until I came up in the top of the fifth, when we were ahead, 2–0, and there was a runner on first and no outs. Naturally, I squared up to lay down a sacrifice bunt. Mike Williams made a bunt impossible when he threw a pitch at my knees that forced me to jump backward and then fall forward, thrown completely off-balance. The home plate umpire immediately pointed his finger at me and then at Williams before telling both dugouts that we had been warned—the next inside pitch deemed purposeful would mean instant ejection.
I wasn’t naive enough to be surprised that Williams had tried to hit me, and I knew that he would try again. I told Benito Santiago, the Phillies catcher, “Benito, just reassure me that if he hits me, he can hit me from the ribs down—I never hit anybody in the head.”
“Tu sabe como es,” he said. “You know how it is.”
Next pitch, Williams threw one behind me—up high and behind me.
My bat flew behind me as I arched my back to get out of the way. I fell on my back and rolled over onto my knees to face Williams, who had already been ejected by the home plate umpire and had taken a few steps toward home plate. I snapped. I scrambled to my feet. All I could think was: How can I hit you as hard as I can?
I didn’t wait for a plan, I ran right at him. Once I got a head of steam, I remembered I had a helmet. That was my biggest mistake. I snatched it off my head with both hands, and just before I got to him I reared back to whip it at him. Thank goodness Williams ducked and I missed. If I had hit him, I think I would have killed him. Had I not missed, I probably would have been thrown out of baseball for good. Such was my reputation.
But he ducked, which allowed me to grab him in a headlock, and I held on as tight as I could as we went tumbling down and everyone piled on top of us.
I ended up face-first in the artificial grass, which scratched up my face. I was still holding on to Williams and he was holding on to me when Schilling got in there, trying to first pull my head out and then settling for my right arm.
Every time he came in I would squeeze in and duck down on Williams. Schilling kept saying, “Let him go, you asshole,” over and over, but I wasn’t going to give my arm up to Schilling. Somebody yelled at Schilling to get off my arm. I was at the bottom of the pile, and I could feel the weight every time somebody jumped onto the pile.
Schilling somehow got a hold of my gold chain, which had a big number “45” and “P MARTINEZ.” Schilling pulled on the chain hard enough that the “P MARTINEZ” bent against my neck.
All that Schilling remembers from that fight is that he was trying to kill me. He was starting to succeed—the chain was choking me—when finally Uggie Urbina, my teammate, told me in Spanish to let Williams go. Because somebody was yelling at me in Spanish, I trusted them. I let go of Williams, who left plenty of his saliva on me.
Once I let go of Williams, everything started to calm down, until Schilling started popping off again. This got Uggie going.
“You want to fight? You want to fight?” he asked Schilling.
“You’re too young, you shouldn’t be throwing pitches and hitting guys, you’re going to get hurt, motherfucker.”
I grabbed my jock.
“You don’t have the balls to pitch like I do or tell me that.”
I exploded because, once again, baseball had me all wrong. Nobody cared that I had made the All-Star team, or that I was pitching deep into games, my strikeouts were up, and, especially, I was no longer hitting people. I was in a steady climb, getting better, and still I was being treated differently, like a thug.
What was it with me?
Why did I get the rap that was as inaccurate as it was unfair?
Why did the Dodgers say I was weak?
I never was.
Why did opposing teams call me a headhunter?
I never hit anybody in the head.
When was the respect going to come?
In 1997 Joe Kerrigan took his batting dummies with him to the Boston Red Sox. I can’t say I was sad to see him go. I was curious about my next pitching coach, Bobby Cuellar, who I knew had been in Seattle with Randy Johnson when he won his first Cy Young in 1995.
Once I met Bobby in West Palm Beach, I knew it was going to work out. Too often when Joe had wanted to make a point with me, he would grab me by the jersey to get my attention. I half-expected that from Bobby too, but I gradually learned that a soft-spoken, knowledgeable coach can get his point across without resorting to physical contact. I came in more determined than ever to find out what it took to get over the hump and reach the next level where Maddux, Glavine, Johnson, Brown, and the others were.
I was suspended for eight games because of the Williams charge, so some of that punishment carried over into the 1997 season. That gave me extra time to work on what needed working on, and Bobby, who was a real teacher, helped me figure out what that was.
During one side session, Bobby saw me throwing my fastball and changeup as much as my curveball.
This was wrong, said Bobby. I had to concentrate on my weaknesses, not my strengths.
Bobby would say, “Mijito [which means ‘my little son’], what are we trying to do here? You don’t have a problem with your changeup and your fastball—let’s go warm up and go to work on your curveball. Let’s focus on the things that you want to correct. Your problem is the curveball—let’s work on it, let’s see what we can do.”
He was right.
My changeup, thanks to Ramon and Guy, was just as dangerous as my fastball, which, thanks to Felipe, I had finally begun to command on the inner half of the plate with that four-seamer.
But my curveball had been a work in progress since my Dodgers days, when Tommy Lasorda used to try to teach me to throw his slow and slurvy one. My arm action was too fast, and I could not command it. Ramon an
d I figured out how to change the grip on it and spike it down. I had better rotation and plenty of break on it, but it was a “show-me-over” curveball, meaning that I was basically throwing it over the middle of the plate and hoping that its break, rather than its location, would fool the batter.
Bobby and I tried throwing it slower than I had been, and we tried throwing it from different arm angles. Then he said, “Hey, Pedro, just throw it hard, like a fastball, right down the middle—hard.”
I tried one.
Poom.
It felt great, and I could move it too.
I had my fastball that I could throw between 94 and 97 miles per hour, and I had my changeup, with the same arm action, that I threw at about 80 to 82 miles per hour. My old curveball came in at the speed of the changeup. If I threw my curveball a little harder than I had been, at 83, 84, 85 miles per hour, that uptick in velocity was not going to matter much, not if I could maintain its break plus add the ability to command it up or down, inside or out.
I had to wait until the Expos’ 11th game of the season to deploy it, and there was no doubt that it worked.
Unlike my prior seasons, which tended to start off slowly, I was off like a rocket in 1997.
After my fourth start, I had my first shutout and my fourth win with an ERA of 0.31. Batters were hitting .149 against me and slugging .198, and I had 32 strikeouts after 29⅓ innings.
After my eighth start, I was 8-0 with three complete games and a 1.17 ERA.
And so on and so on.
My primary catcher, Darrin Fletcher, said that with my pitches that season, “everything was on. I really thought hitters thought they were not supposed to get hits off this guy, and so everyone kind of folded up, hoping to scratch out one hit, and just wanting to move on to the next guy in the rotation.”
Chris Widger, who caught a few of my games that season, once told Cuellar that I got more strikes called down the middle of the plate than anybody he ever caught. “Batters would be looking in, looking out, looking curveball, looking changeup, looking heater up and in—he’d throw pitches right up the middle,” said Cuellar.
Cuellar earned my respect and trust. There were few times when I needed a visit from my pitching coach in the middle of a start in 1997. There wasn’t much I had to hear that I didn’t already know, and Bobby, much like Tommy Harper, quickly came to learn that the best coaching for me was to stay understated and calming.
“The only thing I would tell Pedro when I came to the mound was ‘Control yourself, relax, you can get yourself out of anything you want, let’s just relax, what do you want to do here?’” said Cuellar. “And of course, he’d give me a look. ‘I know what I want to do.’”
Bobby learned from my eyes.
“The look,” said Bobby. “It’s that look: steely-eyed, mad, under control. ‘I’m going to get it done, just let me go do it.’”
I did it to everyone in 1997. In Denver, I struck out 13 and shut out the Rockies, whose lineup that season was loaded with behemoths like Larry Walker, Andrés Galarraga, Dante Bichette, and Vinny Casilla. And by the end of my ninth inning at Yankee Stadium, after I had struck out my 10th batter, the Yankees fans were chanting “Ped-ro, Ped-ro.”
Felipe believed I finally relaxed in 1997.
“He understood that he had prevailed,” said Felipe. “He owned what it took—quality, confidence, and determination. He was fearless.”
I finished the season tops in the league in ERA (1.90), WAR (9.0), WHIP (0.932), hits per nine innings (5.892), strikeouts per nine innings (11.374), and adjusted ERA (219) and second in strikeouts, behind Schilling, with 305.
From 1991 through 1996, one from the Braves’ trio of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz had won the National League Cy Young Award. In 1997, I won it, unanimously.
With my success in 1997, I became the face of the Expos franchise, but the franchise was not equipped to keep my mug around.
The Expos and I had avoided arbitration in the spring of 1997 and settled on a $3.615 million salary, my first million-dollar contract and one that I felt I lived up to. As good as my starts were, they were not translating into bigger crowds at Olympic Stadium, where the last game I pitched drew just over 12,000 fans.
There were no surprises left for me in Montreal by the time I finished my 1997 season. I reached my goal of becoming as good as any pitcher in the game, and when I got there, I had to go.
Right after the season ended, general manager Jim Beattie had two things to tell me.
Congratulations.
And, where would you like to pitch next year? I’m going to have to trade you.
13
Dan, You Made a Bad Trade
IT WAS LATE September.
In Montreal, no one seemed to notice, or care, but we were still in the wild-card hunt. And the Expos executives—general manager Jim Beattie, manager Felipe Alou, assistant GM Bill Stoneman, and owner Claude Brochu—had gathered for a meeting.
Felipe just laid it all out.
“There’s only one thing for us to do, then—we have to trade Pedro.”
Attendance was averaging less than 14,000 a game in September, and I had one season left, 1998, before becoming a free agent.
Fernando and the Expos had spoken at the start of the 1997 season about an extension based on the $3.6 million I was making that year. The Expos thought a four-year deal worth $16 million would be enticement enough to keep me away from free agency, but that was not even close to the actual market.
I was tempted to stay, I really was. I told the Expos I’d postpone free agency for a year if they wanted to talk about a two-year deal worth $18 million, but that never flew. Even before I officially won the Cy Young Award in November, the Expos knew that my 1998 salary was going to be in the range of $7–8 million, and that was out of their league.
Brochu vowed to the fans at the beginning of the 1997 season that he would not trade me, but in that meeting in September he realized he could not keep that promise. Given how little attention the city was paying to the team, nobody in the room feared much backlash.
Beattie already knew that I was a lost cause. When he had asked me what it would take for me to stay, I told him that I wasn’t interested in staying if they were not going to spend the money to bring in established veterans to surround me.
He brought that message into the September meeting, and that was why Felipe came to the same conclusion everyone else had.
In fact, before the season ended, Beattie had already spread word to the other 27 clubs that he was looking to trade me in exchange for young talent, preferably young pitching.
When our season effectively ended, Beattie let me in on his plans. He at least had the courtesy to ask me where I wanted to go, so that if he could oblige me, he would.
The Red Sox were definitely not on my list.
My first choice was the Yankees because, yes, they were the Yankees, and Mr. Steinbrenner always spent what he had to for the best players.
I also mentioned three other teams: the Indians, the Orioles, and the Giants.
Those three teams were first-place teams—the Yankees finished second—in 1997, and I wanted to go to a contender.
The Dodgers? No, I wasn’t going to go back there.
The Braves? Tempting, but they had all the pitching they needed.
Boston was a next-to-last-place team with a 78-84 record. They were not even on the outer edge of my radar.
When the Red Sox did pop up, I thought it would be a one-and-done season: play there in 1998 and then take my talents to wherever I wanted to go as a free agent.
I thought wrong.
Beattie told every team that was interested in me that the Expos would not grant a window to negotiate a long-term contract extension with me before consummating a trade. Beattie risked not winding up with the best package of prospects, but the reward was that I would not be able to blow up any deals because they sensed—accurately as it turned out—that my mindset was to not sign a long-term deal
with the team that traded for me. The Expos believed they could still get a good return from a club that wanted to take on the reigning National League Cy Young winner, one who had turned 26 that October.
Beattie wanted at least two arms, one of which had been a successful starter at the Triple A level or maybe two younger pitchers, or one position player with at least a couple of years left before arbitration.
The Yankees let Beattie know immediately they were interested. They didn’t know that Brochu had no interest in being the small-market team that helps out the biggest and baddest team on the block.
The Expos wanted the Yankees involved in the talks, since that always generated more interest from other teams. The Expos might have had a hard time turning down a better package from the Yankees than from either the Rockies or the Red Sox, but Beattie said that he never saw enough of a match.
But some awfully interesting names did come up from the Yankees’ side, Mariano Rivera’s being the biggest. Beattie was intrigued with Rivera, who was coming off his first season as the Yankees’ closer, but Beattie had Uggie Urbina as the closer, and Uggie was a cheap closer. The Expos did not want a closer in return for me, especially one who was a year or two away from making big money. More than anyone else I ever heard of being considered for this trade, the idea of trading Rivera for me probably would have wound up being the best for each club in the alternative universe where the Expos never left Montreal and discovered how to make and spend money. Imagine if Rivera had never blazed his Hall of Fame path in the Bronx and I had spent my peak years there instead. It’s a fun scenario to toss around, and there were others too. The Yankees and Expos also discussed catcher Jorge Posada and third baseman Mike Lowell, then a well-regarded Triple A third baseman but not an elite prospect. Eric Milton was the starter the Yankees wanted to ship to Montreal.
Beattie was understandably keen on Cleveland’s Jaret Wright, who as a 21-year-old had gone from Double A all the way to the majors in 1997, and who pitched well in the postseason through the World Series as well. The Indians, however, thought they had their own ace, a very special one, on their hands, and they weren’t ready to trade away Wright at such a young age. The lack of a window in which to work out a contract extension with me also dissuaded the Indians from engaging in any serious talks with Beattie.
Pedro Page 13