Pedro

by Pedro Martinez

  Command Performance

  I CAN POINT to four reasons why I turned in an epic season in 1999 and then was able to repeat it in 2000.

  I was able to raise command of my curveball to the level of my fastball and changeup.

  I was 27 and 28 years old, which are the peak years for any baseball player.

  My brother and best friend, Ramon, joined me on the Red Sox.

  Jason Varitek became my catcher.

  Number four was the most important, and I can thank my mostly rancid relationship with Joe Kerrigan for it.

  For 25 of my 33 starts in 1998, Scott Hatteberg was my catcher. My numbers that year demonstrate that he and I worked well together. Scott and I never had a problem, but along the way a few situations arose. The Red Sox wanted me to limit my use of the slide-step when I had runners on base. The slide-step is a deke of sorts, a leg movement from the stretch position that momentarily kicks to first base to make the base runner hesitate for fear that a pickoff throw is coming. Red Sox manager Jimy Williams didn’t like his starters to use it because he felt that it interfered with a pitcher’s natural delivery and could lead to an injury. So if I had to eliminate a tool from my arsenal for holding on runners, I wanted a catcher with a cannon to throw them out if they tried to steal. In that department, I preferred Jason’s arm to Scott’s.

  I also preferred Jason’s ability to catch my pitches, which tended to break violently—and late sometimes.

  The one time an issue arose between Scott and me had more to do with Joe, who felt it was time for him to start calling pitches while I was on the mound. This was in April 1999, and Scott called for a pitch that I knew was the wrong one. Instead of giving Scott the subtle shake most pitchers use, I gave him a defiant, emphatic shake. But Scott kept calling for the pitch that Kerrigan was calling for. When we got out of the inning, I asked him what he was doing.

  “I’m only doing what I’m told,” said Hatteberg.

  “Okay, but don’t do it. I’m a veteran, and I know what I’m doing.”

  The pitches I wanted to throw in a game reflected in part the prep work I did with Hatteberg and all my catchers before a game, but much more important to me from inning to inning was finding out whether my pitches were on that day, or not, and reading opposing batters and responding to signals I saw them giving that would guide my pitch selection.

  But Joe continued to call pitches. And Scott continued to relay them, reluctantly, always giving me the signal from the bench twice, so I would know where it was coming from.

  After the game, I confronted Joe. “I pitch my fucking game—don’t be calling pitches on me.”

  Joe ignored me.

  The pitch-calling didn’t stop.

  That’s when I went in another direction.

  I hired Jason Varitek.

  One afternoon in 1999, I brought Jason into the bullpen when Joe was there. Varitek was 27 years old, my age, two years younger than Hatteberg but still relatively new to the big leagues.

  “I want this kid catching,” I told Joe, and then looked at Jason, lifting my chin, “and you’re going to do what I tell you to do.”

  Jason had his own catcher’s gear when he walked into the bullpen that day, but for the next six years he wore mine. That meant that he quit doing everything he had learned in college and in the minor leagues and adapted to how I went about my business. By my fourth start of 1999, he was my catcher, and over my final 168 starts with the Red Sox, Jason was my catcher in 158 of those games, 94 percent of them.

  I understand how impressive my seasons were in 1999 and 2000, and that I put in seven strong years with the Red Sox, but Jason deserves as much credit as I do. He took everything he knew and put it aside to become what I wanted him to become behind the plate. In my eyes, that was a selfless act, one for which he earned all my respect and gratitude.

  I mentioned before how important command of my curveball was to my game. It was still good in 1998, but I gained renewed faith in it in 1999 with Jason behind the plate. When I knew that the situation called for a breaking ball, Jason would also know. He would not hesitate to call for it—back door or back foot, wherever we wanted it, that’s where I was able to place it.

  After my first start with Jason on April 20, 1999, my ERA dropped below 3.00, and it never went higher than 2.52 the rest of the season. By the All-Star break my record was 15-3 with a 2.10 ERA, but for a stretch from May to June, it dipped below 2.00.

  That first half of the 1999 season was probably my happiest as a Red Sox. Everything Jason and I worked on together yielded almost perfect results. I felt in charge. And I liked that feeling.

  On May 1 in Oakland, I was in my hotel room watching our game because I was starting the day game the next day. It was a close game, and in the seventh inning Jim Corsi threw a pitch with the bases loaded that Olmedo Saenz leaned into to drive in a run.

  I showed up at the park the next day and announced, “Okay, everybody, Olmedo Saenz wants to get hit that bad? Watch this.”

  Imagine my disappointment that Saenz wasn’t in the starting lineup. My luck turned when he came in to pinch-hit with one out in the ninth inning. With my first pitch, I hit him square in the middle of the back. It looked as if the ball got wedged and then stuck between his shoulder blades, because it took a couple of seconds for it to roll slowly down his back before he collapsed to his knees.

  Saenz and the A’s didn’t make a big deal about it. Of course, I got asked about it afterwards, and I denied it like I always did, although there was half a grain of truth in my response.

  “I have no reason to hit him. But believe me, if you get fresh with me or do something to show me up, I’ll drill your ass.”

  By mid-May, we started to play better and moved into first place. I tried to keep the team loose the only way I knew how, which was to just yap. I never was a quiet person on the four days between my starts. I had a bundle of energy, and it wasn’t easy for me to stop my mouth from running. Jockeying the other hitters from the bench was my specialty. That used to bug the other team a great deal, which really didn’t bother me at all. Sometimes it would bother my own teammates too. Once, in June, we had a big lead over the White Sox, and I was yapping a little too loudly and often. Led by Nomar, my teammates wrapped a couple of rolls of white trainer’s tape around me and left me tied to the pole. This was before we had a screen protecting the dugout, and I know Jimy wasn’t too happy about it because he thought I had no way of protecting myself from a foul ball. I wasn’t thinking about that, although in hindsight I hope that my teammates would have protected me. But maybe I was too loud to protect. I thought it was pretty funny, but the geniuses forgot to tape my mouth up, so I didn’t shut up. Nomar finally made a weak attempt at taping up my mouth, but by then everybody was laughing too hard about the gag.

  I put on a Yoda mask one game for no other reason than I had one and I thought it would be funny. Same with wearing the jersey of Jim Corsi and pants of Rich Garces, two big boys. I was swimming in that uniform, but it got a few laughs, so mission accomplished. We were loose, times were good.

  The All-Star Game was held at Fenway Park in 1999, a beautiful coincidence in my mind. The ballpark, the city, and the team would be at the center of baseball. I also knew there was no possible way that I was going to get snubbed for that start for the second season in a row. There would have been riots in the streets outside Fenway Park if Joe Torre, manager of the Yankees, had picked anyone but me.

  I found out early I was going to be the starter, and I went into the break really wanting to put on a show for the fans and all of baseball.

  The night before the game was the Home Run Derby. The atmosphere was electric, and we had a blast, kicking back on the grass and watching the big boys, especially the ones from the National League, take their hacks with nothing on the line. When Mark McGwire went loco, golfing 13 home runs up, up, and away over the Green Monster in the first round, I had to act on behalf of pitchers from around the world. I walked over to him
in the middle of the round and asked for his bat, shaking my hand at him as if to say, This must stop right now. He handed it to me, and I walked away. I finally gave it back because, even though Mark was smiling, his forearms were the size of my thighs and I thought it was in my best interest to let him continue.

  When it came to the game the next night, the buildup was so much more intense than it had been for any of my three previous All-Star Games. For me, it had to do with the setting and where I was with my craft at that moment. For baseball, there was still an almost unquestioned fascination with power. Mark and Sammy Sosa had broken Roger Maris’s and Babe Ruth’s single-season home run mark the season before, and they were each going to come close to those numbers again by the end of the 1999 season. The Home Run Derby was a cartoon show that year, but the All-Star Game would be a more legitimate platform to see what McGwire and Sosa could do. (Barry Bonds wasn’t at that game—after coming to spring training that year with a dramatically enlarged physique and some bad back acne, he had torn a triceps tendon at the end of April.)

  Joe Torre and his brother-in-law were in Jimy’s office at Fenway before the game. Joe was listening to his brother-in-law go on and on about the power in the National League lineup and how many home runs were going to be hit.

  “Pedro will strike everyone out,” Joe told him.

  “What? You realize who they’ve got?”

  “Yeah, and I don’t care—he’ll strike everyone out.”

  Joe was almost right.

  I was amped up at a level I had seldom reached. I normally did my pre-start long toss with a catcher stationed in front of the Pesky Pole. I’d keep backing up a few steps after each throw, all the way back to the center-field wall. That was how I got my shoulder loose and warm. Every pitcher did it, still does, but my throws were definitely on the long side. The “100 Greatest Living Ballplayers” were being kept in the area under the center-field bleachers before they were to be introduced for the pregame ceremony. One of them, Brooks Robinson, mentioned to Dan Duquette later that he thought I might have been a little over-excited with those long throws that night, I was throwing them with too much intensity. I thought I was under control, but both Curt Schilling, who started for the National League, and I were the only two people in the stadium that night who were negatively affected by the introduction of all those players, capped off with Ted Williams’s arrival in the golf cart. I could tell from the bullpen that there was a magical moment taking place near the mound as the players, both “Living Legends” and the current All-Stars—minus Schilling and me, as well as our catchers, Mike Piazza and Pudge Rodriguez—all converged around the 80-year-old Williams. The public-address announcer had to ask the players to leave the field so the game could start on time, but they ignored the request, which meant that the game began more than half an hour later than planned. Nobody minded the reason for the delay—except for starters like Schilling and me, who always timed our warm-ups to the minute, because the cool-down after an extended warm-up session could lead to problems. Schilling said that he pitched himself out before the game and that his off-season shoulder capsule surgery stemmed from that over-exertion. Schilling did not pitch so well that night (two innings, three hits, two runs), but I put on the show I’d hoped to.

  As Pudge warmed me up, he said he would go with whatever I wanted to throw that night, whatever made me comfortable. I told him that would be my fastball—I didn’t want to throw anything else.

  First inning: Barry Larkin, Larry Walker, and Sammy Sosa. Three up, three down, three strikeouts. Larkin gave me the toughest battle, working me for eight pitches before I finally threw him a changeup, which he swung through. My old teammate Larry watched me paint a 97-mile-per-hour heater on the outside corner for his third strike, and Sammy swung through a 96-mile-per-hour fastball up and in for the third strikeout.

  Next inning began with McGwire whiffing at a 97-mile-per-hour heater right down the middle but high. My old foe from the Giants, Matt Williams, now with the Diamondbacks, was up next. He said he came up there only looking to make contact, and he stuck his bat out on a first-pitch breaking ball. “I was really happy,” he said later about hitting “a 17-hopper to second base” that Robbie Alomar couldn’t handle. Williams reached on the error. I wasn’t pissed that I didn’t strike out Williams, I was more amazed that he was able to put a ball in play on a breaking ball—he usually sat dead-red on fastballs. Matt was off and running when Jeff Bagwell flailed at a breaking ball for his strikeout, and Pudge threw out Matt at second base for out number three.

  Joe had been off by one: I had five strikeouts. Once the game ended with an AL win, I was named the MVP.

  My shoulder was sore with what I thought was normal soreness after that game, but I was unable to work it out of my system before I went back into the rotation five days later. I only lasted 3⅔ innings in my first start back, against the Marlins, because my shoulder was too sore to go on. I had to go on the DL for the minimum two weeks. I got eased back in for two short but effective one-run outings in August as I regained my bearings from the shoulder issue.

  That was one reason why on Saturday afternoon, August 14, my third start back, I got to the ballpark later than I usually did for my start. I was at home, getting stretched out there and doing pool exercises. I got to Fenway more than 90 minutes before the scheduled start, but I spent a long time in the parking lot talking with Joe the attendant. I was all stretched out, but I still had an hour before start time. I didn’t like to wait, and all I had to do was put my uniform on. But Joe Kerrigan always wanted me there early, and that day I definitely wasn’t within his field of vision early enough as far as Joe and Jimy were concerned.

  When I strolled into the clubhouse about 45 minutes before game time, Jimy told me that I wasn’t going to start. I lost it. I knew this was Joe Kerrigan’s doing—he was trying to make a statement with me about my punctuality, but I took it personally, as I always tended to do.

  “Jimy,” I pleaded, “I have never missed a start in the big leagues since I was a starter, this would be the first start I would miss.” Pat Hentgen and I were going for the record of not missing a start, and I hadn’t missed one since 1994 with the Dodgers. I cared about that streak. In stopping it, Kerrigan could finally say he had done one thing for me.

  I looked elsewhere for support.

  I seized on Mike Stanley, who was one of our veteran leaders.

  “Stanno,” I said, “I promise you, I’ll explain everything after the game, please go and explain to Jimy and tell Jimy. You’re the captain of the team. Tell Jimy that I need to pitch and I’m ready to pitch.”

  While I was pleading my case, Joe breezed by and made sure I heard him say, with his curt Philadelphia accent, “Let’s go, Bryce Florie, get ready to start.” Then Joe walked out of the silent clubhouse. I was reeling. Instead of channeling my focus and energy toward my start, I was trying to hold back the rising tide of anger that always came before I snapped.

  I didn’t knock, I just opened the door of Jimy’s office.

  “Yes, Jimy, I’m pitching.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Goddammit, I’m pitching.”

  Jimy’s face got redder and redder. He could get as stubborn as me. I saw he wasn’t going to give in. I asked him what he was going to tell the media.

  “That you were late.”

  That set me off again. I told him again that I wasn’t late, and we started screaming some more at each other. Stanno heard us and said he wasn’t going to back me up on this one. That was the moment I lost respect for him. I didn’t like him, I didn’t like him in my games at all. I was a big contributor to the team by that point, and he had been having a bad year, striking out a lot but playing every day—he turned his back on me, which I could not understand. Players need to show solidarity for each other. There is a bus for players and a bus for coaches. We play, they don’t. They’re the brains and we have to listen, but it’s up to us to execute. Players back up players. If
Stanno had held me accountable after the game and said, “Pedro, that was horseshit, I’m fining you $100,000,” I would have paid because that was a teammate who told me I screwed up.

  None of that happened.

  I went out to the field and sat in the bullpen and watched Florie warm up, unable to comprehend why the team had taken such a drastic step with me. The game started, and we built a quick lead early, but Florie had run out of gas in the fifth inning and needed relief before he could earn credit for a decision after five full innings.

  The phone rang. John Cumberland, our bullpen coach, got to it and told me Jimy wanted to speak with me.

  “Pedro, are you ready to pitch?”

  “What took you so long?”

  I came in before I was ready, but I wound up finishing the game, throwing the final four innings, allowing three hits and one run, and getting the win, my 17th of the season.

  I left Fenway Park in my uniform and drove home.

  This being Boston, where baseball has holy status, my next start, of course, came under intense scrutiny. One local TV station had a cameraman perched above the players’ parking lot to see what time I arrived, and I gave that guy an earful when I saw him. When I saw Duquette in the clubhouse when I walked in that next time, he heard from me too.

  “Are you here to see if I’m here two hours before the game? Can’t I get into the fucking ballpark?”

  I was embarrassed to have to explain myself because I thought Jimy should have taken care of the matter of the media instead of leaving it to me. The entire episode was by far the worst one I ever had with Jimy. Besides that, we got along well—he had known me from my Expos days, when he had good views of me pitching from the third-base coach’s box for the Atlanta Braves.

  We never had a problem after that, but I never understood why he and Joe came down so harshly on me.

  My ERA ballooned, relatively, from 2.10 at the All-Star break to 2.52 by the middle of August before my shoulder settled down.