Pedro

by Pedro Martinez

  On September 10, it became clear that I had put the injury behind me.

  I made my first start of the season at Yankee Stadium that night, and I was feeling cranky, tired, and beat up. Even though we’d had a day game on Wednesday in Oakland and an off day in New York on Thursday, I was still ticked off that I hadn’t been flown ahead of the team to rest up for the series kickoff with the Yankees on Friday night.

  Joe Kerrigan asked me to go to the pitchers’ meeting, but I was in the whirlpool, trying to get loose and stretch a little bit and get all the crankiness out of my shoulder.

  As usual, Joe acted surprised that I was not there.

  “You’re not going to go to the meeting?”

  “No. I’ve faced these guys before. What is there that I haven’t seen?”

  “Well, you better find your way to get Jeter out.”

  “Why don’t you and Jeter together go fuck yourself, Joe.”

  He had to laugh at that one, but that made me even more snippy.

  Once I stepped onto the field, I realized I had a pretty good fastball. Physically, I felt heavy and sluggish, but my fastball did not diminish and I kept control of it that night, even though I threw it in anger. I threw the ball as if I wanted somebody to piss me off. There are nights when, as a pitcher, you are looking for someone to do something, anything to get you going, and that night I took it out on the Yankees.

  I hit Chuck Knoblauch with the second pitch I threw that night, but Jason threw him out trying to steal. The next inning, with two outs, Chili Davis guessed right on a fastball that I missed location with. That home run caught me by surprise—I wasn’t expecting it at all, and it helped me to bear down even more the rest of the way.

  The home run by Chili was the sole hit I allowed that night. I went all nine innings. Besides the caught stealing, nine outs from that game were split evenly between three fly balls, three ground balls, and three pop flies. After the fourth inning, the Yankees did not hit a single fair ball. The other 17 outs came on strikeouts—a career-high for me and the most ever against the Yankees.

  Afterwards, I said, “This is as good as it gets,” and I meant every word.

  But by early October, I ate my words.

  The Red Sox were in the postseason as a wild card.

  16

  “Petey’s in the House”

  SOMETHING BETWEEN A pinch and a pull—that’s what I felt after throwing a pitch to Jim Thome.

  It was Game 1 of the 1999 American League Division Series, and we were up 2–0 in the fourth inning. There had been nothing odd about my delivery or the way I landed—the injury came totally out of the blue. Or maybe it was an unforeseen outcome of the All-Star Game soreness. I stayed in and finished the inning, but once I told Jimy and Joe what had happened, they pulled me out of the game and a team of doctors went to work on me.

  The team announced I had sustained a back strain, but it was my lat that I tweaked, and nobody could give me a good answer about how bad the tweak was. At first, I feared the worst—that I had done something so bad that I would need surgery. I had never felt a pain like that in my life, and certainly not in that area below my throwing shoulder, so I had a few panicky moments when all the worst-case scenarios ran through my head.

  The doctors tried to assure me that I needed to just let the area rest for a couple of days while they used anti-inflammatories and light electrical stimulation to address the discomfort.

  Meanwhile, we wound up losing our lead and that first game, and when we lost Game 2 as well, we were on the brink of elimination. Ramon pitched well in Game 3 to keep us alive, and then we ran over the Indians, 23–7, in the fourth game. The decisive Game 5 was back at Jacobs Field. I had begun to do light tossing in the outfield in the middle of the series, but the strain had not disappeared.

  I didn’t want to shut the door on pitching again, however, so I kept telling everyone to be patient with me and let me try to see how I felt the day of Game 5, which was October 11, five days after the injury.

  I wasn’t going to start, that was clear, but with Bret Saberhagen out there, I had my fingers crossed that the team wouldn’t need me. Still, I had to go to the ballpark with the right frame of mind in case I could pitch.

  Dan Duquette helped me get there when we shared a ride in the hotel elevator before we headed to the game.

  “Pedro, you have to decide if you’re ready to pitch,” Dan said. “You have a fair part of your career ahead of you, but this is also an opportunity that I know you’ve been aiming for your whole career.”

  “I think I’m going to be ready to pitch.”

  “Well, just use your head. You’re a smart guy. Make the right decision. If you’re ready to pitch, tell your manager you’re ready to pitch and go out and do your job.”

  I went out to the outfield around 2:00 in the afternoon to play catch. My back felt stiff—still not normal—but I was able to throw. I didn’t want to say anything to Jimy until after the game began. But that game deteriorated quickly. Bret gave up four hits and five runs and was out before the end of the second inning. By the time Derek Lowe was done in the third inning, we were down 8–7.

  The game called for me to do something. I wasn’t trying to be a hero, but I just went and did what my heart told me to do. I did not want to lose that way and not be able to do anything, even if I was jeopardizing my career—which I was.

  I walked over to Jimy in the dugout.

  “Jimy, I’m sorry, but I’m going to go to the bullpen and try and see what I can do.”

  “No, Pedro, if you can go, you’re supposed to go at the end, and that’s only for one inning, maybe two, and 18, 20 pitches.”

  “Jimy, this is the time. I’m sorry, but I’m going in to see what I can do and if I can do it. I’m going in.”

  “Goddammit, Pedro, I can’t let you do that. I don’t want you to hurt yourself, and it’s going to cost me my job if I let you do that.”

  “No, Jimy, I’m going now.”

  As always, Joe Kerrigan did not have an opinion. He stood there and played dumb like he didn’t know shit.

  I walked out to the bullpen before the top of the fourth, and it took maybe five seconds before the friendly fans at Jacobs Field spotted me taking the walk from our dugout.

  I heard from the stands, “Fuck you, Pedro, don’t go in there,” as I got closer to the bullpen.

  Rod Beck was warming up for us. In the top of the fourth, we tied it up at 8, and he was supposed to go in to pitch the bottom of the fourth.

  I knew Jimy wasn’t going to pick up the phone and ask for me to come in the game, so I asked Beck, “Hey, Shooter, what if I’m okay to pitch—would you let me go in?”

  “Yeah, Big’n, you’re the ace of this team, this is what it’s all about. If you can throw, I’ll just sit down right here on this bench.”

  I started to warm up. Our bullpen catcher, Dana LeVangie, was so worried about me. “Just make sure that you’re okay,” he said. He saw how low my arm slot was, not much higher than my hip.

  “Oh my God, you’re not throwing hard enough, Petey,” said Dana, acting like Ramon, as if he were my big brother in the bullpen. “Just be careful. If anything goes wrong, just get out of there.”

  The seats in right field sit directly above the visitors’ bullpen, and the taunts were particularly loud that night. I got called a “beaner,” which is not a word for a headhunter but a slur about the diet of Latinos. Worse, one guy leaned over the railing and said, “Pedro, if you get out there to pitch today you’re going to get shot.”

  That really got to our bullpen coach John Cumberland.

  “I’ll tell you who’s going to get shot, you son of a gun,” he said as we tried to get a Cleveland policeman to come over and grab the guy, who had run away. I figured, My God, people would go that far, try to shoot a person for competing? I had heard many ugly words directed at me before, but “You’re going to get shot”? I was worried, but I also had to laugh when Cumby started to go after that guy
. I really appreciated it.

  “Don’t worry, Big’n, don’t worry, they just want to get in your mind—go on and do your thing,” said John.

  Before I did, I picked up the phone and called Jimy. I told him I was ready to pitch the bottom of the fourth.

  “Okay, you’re in there.”

  As I jogged out to the mound I could hear a frisson of anxiety roll through the stadium, which was ironic because as I reached the mound I felt more exposed and at risk than anyone there. I looked up and swiveled my head to scan the roof and the upper decks, figuring that would be where a rifleman would hide himself.

  Nothing caught my eye, so I just went out there and pitched.

  I was at about 60 percent. I started out very cautiously, flipping a lot of curveballs and off-speed pitches to the Indians, a team that I knew would chase pitches outside the strike zone. I knew that they also were probably confused. If I had come back to pitch, that must have meant I was healthy, and when I was healthy I had my fastball-changeup combination. Of course, I didn’t have that fastball that night, but I used the element of surprise to my advantage. I started to throw curveballs early in the count against guys I’d never used a curveball against, like Thome. Normally, I would never take the chance of hanging a curveball with him because he had such a long swing and could murder that kind of pitch. I threw changeups in fastball counts or a curveball at the complete opposite moment when one was called for.

  I tried to stay smart while I was out there and not overdo it. My discomfort grew minimal as my adrenaline began to flow. In my first inning, the Indians went down in order. I could tell from the looks of the batters and the looks of the Indians in their dugout that they were done.

  When I got back to our dugout and stood on the top steps to knock the mud out of my cleats, I looked up at my teammates sitting on the bench, all of them looking back at me. With my game face cracking only a little, I announced, “Petey’s in the hooouuussse.”

  I couldn’t hear them, but two of my teammates, infielder Lou Merloni and my old catcher Scott Hatteberg, had been discussing the difference between playoff shares for getting through only a Division Series or making it through a League Championship Series. It was about $80,000 they thought. Hatteberg told Merloni that if we won the game and got to the LCS, he was going to use the money to build a shed for tying fishing flies behind his house.

  When I proclaimed that I was back in the house, Hatteberg turned to Merloni and said, “I’m going to get my shed.”

  Troy O’Leary hit a three-run bomb in the seventh to put us on top.

  I lasted the final six innings of the game and didn’t allow a hit.

  When I got the final out in the bottom of the ninth, it was the most joyous moment in my baseball life. My teammates carried me off the field and into the clubhouse, which we destroyed with champagne, cigars, and a delirious dancing frenzy.

  Our ALCS against the Yankees began two days later in the Bronx. We fell behind two games to nothing, and Game 3 was to be a matchup between Roger Clemens and me at Fenway Park. The media ran with it. The Boston Herald ran a “tale of the tape” on its front page, touting the game as if it were a heavyweight boxing match. The day before, I got peppered with questions: “How’s your back? Is there more pressure on you or Roger? How well do you know Roger? What does Roger’s return to Boston mean?” and on and on.

  I downplayed the matchup against the opposing pitcher. That’s what pitchers do. I emphasized that I wasn’t pitching against Roger, I was pitching against a phenomenal Yankees lineup. Memories from the 17-strikeout game in September were still fresh, and the media tried very hard to make the game into a grudge match between the city of Boston and Roger.

  “Roger has to deal with it—I don’t,” I said. “I know they love me, and they are going to be out there clapping, and whenever I get somebody in two strikes they are going to expect me to strike him out and put up the ‘K.’ So I don’t really care. I don’t really care what is going on with Roger and the fans out there. I can’t help that. I can only help what I do. Like I said before, I can only help what I do on the mound. Off the field, I go to my house, and I don’t expect you guys to follow me or anybody because that is my business. Whatever happens with Roger and the fans out there, it is his business. Let him deal with it.”

  Roger did not deal very well with it.

  Our own phenomenal lineup knocked him out by the third inning when he allowed a leadoff single, after already giving up six hits, four runs, and two walks. The crowd was relentless that day. “Ro-ger, Ro-ger,” they bellowed in the first and second innings. Without my fastball, I was able to last seven scoreless innings, allowing just two hits and striking out a dozen more Yankees.

  Toward the end of the game, the chant morphed into “Where is Ro-ger?” followed by “In the show-er.”

  We won that game, but unfortunately we lost the next two games and lost the series in five.

  Unlike the previous season, when my second-place Cy Young numbers were pretty close but not better than Roger’s, my 1999 numbers in the most important pitching categories established a significant gap between me and the rest of the AL pack.

  My final numbers were 23-4, 2.07 ERA, 313 strikeouts, 0.923 WHIP, 6.8 hits per nine innings, 0.38 home runs per nine innings, 13.2 strikeouts per nine innings, 8.46 strikeout-to-walk ratio, 243 adjusted ERA, and a 9.7 WAR.

  The next closest were five wins, almost 1.50 points of ERA, and 113 strikeouts away from me.

  The Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA) voters made me the unanimous winner of the AL Cy Young Award that year, my second unanimous election and my first in the American League.

  I was grateful for the award, and it wasn’t contested or questioned. Meanwhile, the results of the American League MVP balloting would arrive a couple of days later. I knew that it was rare for a pitcher to win the award, but Dennis Eckersley, a closer, had won the AL MVP seven years earlier. Roger had won his for the Red Sox in 1986.

  I finished second, 13 points behind Pudge Rodriguez. The baseball writers use a point system to calculate the MVP award, with 28 writers—two BBWAA members from each of the 14 AL cities—voting on a 10-deep ballot. A first-place vote is worth 14 points, with second through 10th each weighted by descending value: nine points for second place, eight for third, and so on.

  Pudge had an excellent season: defensively, he was superb, plus he stole 25 bases, hit 35 home runs and 113 RBI, and hit for a .332 average.

  The other top five finishers after Pudge and me were Roberto Alomar, Manny Ramirez, and Rafael Palmeiro, all of whom posted very strong numbers.

  I received eight first-place votes, Pudge got seven, and Roberto, Manny, and Rafael each received four first-place votes. One writer, George King of the New York Post, gave his first-place vote to Derek Jeter of the Yankees.

  I still believe I deserved the MVP over Pudge, but I understand better today than I did then that it was a strong group of candidates in 1999.

  Certainly there was room for debate.

  What I did not understand then and continue all these years later to be baffled by is how two writers—King and La Velle E. Neal III of the Minneapolis Star Tribune—left me completely off their ballots. In their eyes, I did not merit even a 10th-place vote. Even if they had each voted for me as the 10th most valuable player in the league, it still would not have been enough to put me over the top. I was 14 points from that MVP award. A certain combination of votes from those two writers—like a second- and sixth-place vote, or a third- and fifth-place vote—would have given me enough to win, but that math exercise never got to be played out.

  Naturally, I have asked each writer why he couldn’t be bothered to have me on the ballot. As recently as 2014, La Velle maintained his belief that pitchers do not deserve MVP votes because they have their own award, the Cy Young. He said that he remains open to changing his mind about the issue as it becomes easier to compare position players to pitchers, and he said that if he’d had the MVP vote i
n 2012, when Detroit’s Justin Verlander won the MVP, he might have voted for Verlander because he might “have concluded he was the best player.”

  When the Red Sox visited Minneapolis in 2000, somebody pointed out to me that La Velle was there in our clubhouse to do a postgame story. I had never laid eyes on him before. When he finally realized that I was staring at him, he came over and introduced himself. I backed away and pointed at him with both arms. “You did not vote for me, not even sixth, seventh, or eighth.”

  “Yes, Pedro, and I saw that you were quoted saying you weren’t upset and that everyone has a right to their opinion.”

  I stared some more at La Velle, who is an African American. And then I said:

  “And the man even looks like me.”

  I smiled when I said that line.

  La Velle told me that he received some 400 emails about his vote, expressing varying degrees of anger and frustration. Yankees fans thought he had done a fantastic job. He told me how he had received numerous voice mails from people with strong East Coast accents and more than once those messages hurled the “N-word” at him. For two years in a row on the anniversary of the vote, a group of four Red Sox fans called him as a reminder of how terrible his vote was.

  I still think he made a terrible vote, but at least he was consistent.

  I’m not so sure about George King.

  I think George’s first-place vote for Jeter told everyone where he was coming from, and if that wasn’t enough, there was the fact that the previous year, 1998, George had put Yankees pitcher David Wells on his MVP ballot.

  Those were two bright-red flags as far as I was concerned; it was clear to me where his loyalties were. After his 1998 vote, he listened to some people and decided that if he ever had an MVP vote again, he would not put a pitcher on his ballot. The geniuses George listened to convinced him that a pitcher who makes roughly 35 starts a season participates in only 22 percent of a team’s games, so he can’t possibly be an MVP.