Pedro

by Pedro Martinez

I felt the league was caving in to complaints from opposing managers, who were looking for any available weapon they could find to combat what I was achieving from the mound against their hitters.

  A new strike zone was supposed to make it easier for the pitcher to get the high strike but did nothing about the inner half of the plate, the area that I needed to command in order to succeed.

  “They’ve done so many things to me,” I said. “One thing they’ve never done is appreciate what I do for baseball, what I do off the field.

  “They don’t recognize the things I have had to overcome, to come from the Dominican to become a star in the game. They don’t recognize any of that, but now the bad things they want to point out.”

  It wasn’t just the feeling that I was being targeted and unappreciated. At that point it hit me again that I had run into baseball’s brick wall. What exactly had I done that was wrong?

  I believe that baseball saw me as a threat, a foreign threat.

  Roger Clemens had won five Cy Youngs entering the 2001 season, Greg Maddux had four, and I had three. Still not even 30 years old, I was well on my way to a fourth Cy Young in 2001, if I hadn’t got hurt, and the following year I came very close to winning what could have been my fifth Cy Young. That would have put me in Clemens and Maddux territory, a place where I didn’t believe baseball wanted me. At that time I didn’t belong to America. I believe they thought I represented a real threat of becoming a historic figure in America’s game and I wasn’t American.

  I was more upset at the time than I am now, but even after I became a US citizen, I never lost the feeling that I didn’t have the right look and feel of a successful MLB pitcher.

  I was still hot a couple of days later when I got after Frank Robinson for supporting the warning I received.

  “Come and get your ass in there and pitch a little bit,” I said.

  When the makeup game of a late May rainout in New York was rescheduled to June 4, it brought me a dubious distinction: I would start three games in a row against the Yankees, May 24, May 30, and June 4. One Yankees game was always an ordeal. Dealing with the Yankees’ lineup was a full-out battle on its own, but the media, both Boston’s and New York’s, had a knack for wearing me out as well. I was matched up against Mussina the first two times, and we split. Each of the games featured a massive buildup from the media, but the tone shifted after I pitched a complete-game loss in New York on the 24th (eight innings, two runs, 12 strikeouts).

  Even though I pitched very well, the focus after the game was on the negative, about how I couldn’t beat the Yankees because the Red Sox had lost my last five starts against them. That gave the newspapers and radio shows enough red meat to last them until May 30, my next matchup against the Yankees and Mussina.

  This time, during a game that featured a hellacious rainstorm at Fenway, I held the Yankees scoreless with just four hits, striking out 13 with one walk.

  The win brought us to within half a game of the Yankees for the AL East lead.

  One of the first questions I got afterwards was: “Enough of this can’t-beat-the-Yankees stuff?”

  I ignored that one, but I couldn’t hold it back any longer when Jonny Miller, a Boston radio reporter who always knew how to get my goat, asked me if I thought there was a “Curse of the Bambino.”

  “No, I don’t believe in curses,” I said, but then I got another Bambino curse question.

  “I’m starting to hate talking about the Yankees,” I said. “The questions are so stupid. They’re wasting my time. It’s getting kind of old.

  “I don’t believe in damn curses. Wake up the Bambino and have me face him. Maybe I’ll drill him in the ass, pardon me the word.”

  My next start against the Yankees I got a no-decision, but we still lost and I gave up three runs in six innings. I had one more start left in me, on June 9, but my shoulder was tender. The team ran me through all kinds of exams before deciding that I should skip a start. I made two more short ones in late June before I went on the DL with what was called inflammation in my rotator cuff.

  In fact, the rotator cuff was torn. I flew out to Los Angeles to get an MRI and be evaluated by Dr. Lewis Yocum. Everyone wanted the shoulder to calm down, so I went back home to the Dominican and did the best I could to stay in shape without bothering the shoulder. The Dominican press hounded me while I was down there, staking out my apartment and spreading a lot of misinformation about my perceived need for surgery. In the middle of July, after a few weeks away, I returned to the team. We thought the rest had done its trick, but once I tried to throw I knew it was not going to happen. They shut me down for five more weeks.

  My condition was a major topic of conversation in the middle of that summer, and I was starting to feel a great deal of pressure, even from within the Red Sox, to return as soon as possible. Dan had criticized Jimy because he lifted me after only six innings and 90 pitches in that last start against the Yankees, saying Jimy owed the fans an explanation for his action. The public call-out of Jimy was a sign of just how frayed their relationship was. While I was down in the Dominican in the middle of August, the Red Sox fired Jimy—and replaced him with Joe Kerrigan.

  It was a good thing that I was not with the team or near a microphone when I learned who my new skipper was going to be, but I vowed not to let it slow down my recovery. I wasn’t going to stop working hard to return just to avoid Joe. I figured that since I had ignored him as a pitching coach, ignoring him as a skipper should come easily to me.

  I wasn’t the only one having a difficult time handling Joe, whether as a manager or a pitching coach.

  In August, before I had even come back, Joe informed knuckleballer Tim Wakefield that when I returned he would have to go back to the bullpen. He handed Wakey a piece of paper that explained, statistically, why the move was the right move. Wakey didn’t bother to read it. He crumpled it up and threw it right back to Joe. Wakey was worried that his days were numbered with Joe in charge. I tried to console him. I knew how pissed he was. Joe had made another wrong move. All in all, it was a little too easy to find guys who disliked Joe, guys who thought that Joe believed his sole purpose in baseball was to take credit for others’ success.

  As unpopular as Jimy was by the end, I still haven’t run across a teammate who thought Joe was a better solution. Joe’s idea of team-building was to remove the sofas from the clubhouse, keep the TV off, and deliver hitting tutorials to guys like Manny and Nomar.

  When I returned to the team late that summer, it was in a mutinous mood. Carl Everett, who never liked Jimy Williams all that much, disliked Joe even more and began telling me how Joe had backstabbed Jimy by going to the front office and saying things to get him fired so he could take over. That sounded authentic to my ears, and I quickly discovered that Joe had not only Everett and Wakefield in his sights but me as well.

  Working off of my schedule, I arrived at Fenway one afternoon for rehab with Chris Correnti. Kerrigan was waiting for me. According to Joe, I was late and it was time for him to show me who was boss.

  “Come into the back of the training room, Pedro, we’re going to have a talk.”

  The room was windowless and stuffy, barely bigger than a walk-in closet. Duquette was already there, and I sat down next to him.

  Joe asked Chris Correnti to come in.

  “Chris, was Pedro late for his rehab today?”

  “Pedro’s never late for me, Joe—I’m on his schedule.”

  “Chris, was Pedro here at his scheduled 1:30 time?”

  “No, Joe, but whatever time is best for Pedro is best for me too, I’m here all day and—”

  “That’s enough, Chris. Pedro, you were late. Again. We have a schedule for a reason and—”

  “Joe, I know what I’m doing, and Chris knows what I’m doing. We work well together. What does it matter if I’m not here when the schedule says—”

  “Why doesn’t it matter?” Joe smirked. “You think you’re better than the schedule, Pedro? That act worked for y
ou in Montreal, and it worked for you for a while here, but that shit’s not going to fly anymore around here.”

  “Hell with you, Joe. Things didn’t turn out well enough for me in Montreal or Boston for you?”

  Joe and I started to lean in toward each other, and it was about to get physical, but Chris and Dan stepped in to separate us.

  “I was just trying to get the boys to work together,” said Dan later. “I wasn’t very successful on that one.”

  I made three more starts after my return in late August. It just so happened that the last two were against the Yankees, at Fenway on September 1 and then again in New York on September 7.

  Even though my pitching line from September 1 looked decent—six innings, two hits, no runs, six strikeouts, and no walks—my body felt like a stranger on the mound. I knew that my delivery was different. It had to be. I was compensating for my injury, which meant I was altering my mechanics. One obvious difference was that my release point was less overhead and more to my side. This wasn’t like how I modified my game plan in the 1999 Division Series Game 5 at Cleveland and resorted to throwing off-speed pitches only. This time around I had a fastball, but I was throwing it tentatively. Everything about my delivery was hesitant.

  Meanwhile, Dan went on record saying he believed that I was essentially healthy.

  I was shocked by that. By this time everyone knew I had a slight tear in my rotator cuff.

  “What I don’t appreciate is Duquette saying I’m healthy because damn it, that’s not true,” I said. “I’m doing the best I can to help the team. I don’t need to be pushed. If you want, I can leave you the damn paycheck up there. Take it and I’ll go home and rehab my shoulder and not feel guilty about anything.

  “He’s not going to put me at risk. If I’m hurting, I’m just going to shut it down.”

  I had one more start left. If I had faltered at Fenway, it was even worse six days later at Yankee Stadium. I lasted just three innings and gave up three runs on four hits and two walks. Afterwards, I was near tears, saying I felt like I was “risking my career.”

  “I don’t feel right, I don’t feel good enough to pitch.”

  Dan, Joe, and I talked in New York and agreed there was no point to pitching in any more meaningless games. (We were 11 games back after my last start.)

  Our last game in New York was scheduled for September 10, but it was rained out, and we had to wait on the tarmac at La Guardia for what seemed like hours until the storms passed and we could leave, very late, for Tampa.

  On the morning of September 11, most of us were still sleeping in our hotel rooms when we started to receive calls from our family members telling us to turn on our TVs. I watched the smoke billowing from the rubble of the collapse of the twin towers. I told a Boston Herald reporter that I was seeking “soft music, soft sounds,” in the wake of the tragedy.

  “It seems like a movie, a horror movie, a nightmare, the kind where you wake up and feel things are behind you—you start yelling, but you don’t see anyone near you.”

  We stayed at our hotel for the next couple of days, awaiting word on when or if baseball would resume. The Tampa Bay series was canceled, so we set out on a bus and train trip to Baltimore, where our next series was to be played. That was canceled too, so we got on a flight, one of the first authorized to fly after 9/11, to Providence, Rhode Island, since Boston’s Logan Airport was still closed. We took a bus back to Fenway. It was a long trip home.

  Baseball didn’t resume until September 18. We held workouts at Fenway Park, where Joe and I had our final run-in.

  I was well aware of the shouting match and near-fight that Kerrigan and Everett had already had at the workout. I didn’t know what good I was doing still being with the team, but Joe wanted me on the field in full uniform. I thought that was ridiculous, but I threw my uniform on over my regular clothes and went out on the field.

  Joe saw me and told me to go out to the bullpen and supervise Derek Lowe’s and Bronson Arroyo’s side sessions.

  That’s when I went off.

  First, I told him to use his new pitching coach, Ralph Treuel, to watch Lowe and Arroyo—I wasn’t a pitching coach.

  “Joe, I don’t need to be on the field, I’m not going to practice, I’m not going to do anything—can I just stay at home? This is absolutely meaningless to me. I’m completely shut down for the year.”

  “No. If everyone else has to be here, why do you have to be at home?”

  “Joe, we came 21 hours in a train. I’m still sore. I don’t need to do anything, I’m not working out, I’m not doing anything on the field. Why don’t you let me go home?”

  “Because you can be helpful, you can watch everybody in the bullpen.”

  Right then, I took off my uniform on the infield and threw my jersey at his feet. I never should have done that, out of respect for the Red Sox, but I wanted to disrespect Joe, I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t going to play for him. I pretty much said, “I quit.”

  Kerrigan reported the incident to Dan, who came out to watch the rest of the workout in the left-field seats.

  I went up to him in the stands and said, “You know what, Dan, you can go ahead and release me now, make me a free agent—you can keep the rest of the money, but I’m not playing for Joe, I’m sorry.”

  “No, we don’t need to go there, Pedro.”

  We agreed to meet back at Fenway the next day.

  I called Fernando Cuza, my agent, beforehand to give him the heads-up that I was strongly considering asking for my release.

  He told me to cool down, but when I saw Dan I said, “I want you to release me or trade me.”

  “I’m not going to trade you, and I’m not going to release you.”

  “I’ll sign a release, and you can keep the rest of the deal.”

  “Nah, I’m not going to do that, Pedro.”

  But Dan knew I was serious.

  “You’re really, really upset, Pedro.”

  “No, enough is enough.”

  Finally, Dan went over Joe’s head.

  “Get out of here, Pedro. Go home, rehab, take your program with you, and do what you have to do and come back healthy next year. What do you need?”

  I told him I wanted our trainer, Rich Zawacki, to come down and teach one of my trainers what to do with my shoulder, plus I wanted B. J. Baker, our strength and conditioning guy, to come down as well.

  Dan said yes to everything, and I flew out of Boston and home to the Dominican. I couldn’t get there fast enough.

  PART V

  2002–2004

  20

  An Ugly Chapter

  I WAS THE perfect candidate to take steroids, believe me.

  Dating back to when I walked into Campo Las Palmas as a short and scrawny 16-year-old, all the voices around me kept telling me I was too small and too skinny.

  “Don’t you want to make it, Pedro?”

  What kind of question was that? Of course I did.

  And beginning in Albuquerque in 1992, the first year when steroids were offered to me, I was tempted to try.

  First, I listened.

  “Take this shot,” I was told by a teammate, who did not use the word “steroids”—just “this shot.”

  “Then you can go to the gym, lift all the weights you want to lift for as long as you want to lift, and then you’re going to get bigger and stronger.”

  That sounded all good to me, no downside at all.

  Even though I had rocketed through the minor leagues and was already at Triple A by the age of 19, I was still sensitive about my size. I hadn’t reached the big leagues yet, and I was in a hurry to get there. I was around 5-foot-10, still on the short side, and I wasn’t going to get much taller. But stronger? I had room for growth.

  A bigger, taller, and stronger pitcher, Pedro Astacio, got a midseason call-up from the Dodgers even though I had a much lower ERA.

  I was stuck in New Mexico.

  The temptation to sneak out was very real.

&nb
sp; I was too small, too fragile.

  If anyone had a legitimate excuse, it was me.

  But after listening, I had questions too.

  “What else can happen? What could go wrong?”

  “Your nipples may grow—you might grow tits,” he said. “Or your genitals may get damaged.”

  The first side effect was bad enough, but the second one was the scary part.

  Not for me.

  I declined immediately.

  At that point in the mid-1990s, Major League Baseball had not warned us about the dangers of steroids or their side effects on bones, livers, and brains. Clearly, though, players were using them. All around me, guys were pumping up, getting bigger and bigger. I never saw any guys with breasts, but there was a lot of acne, especially on guys’ backs. Also, I noticed how so many guys were prone to snapping after striking out or getting taken deep. There were a lot of broken bats in the tunnel in those days. I can’t even imagine how I would have reacted if I had taken steroids. I was a born snapper. I would have been getting into fights every day because there was nobody angrier than I was.

  I know that I had teammates and opponents who used them, without a doubt, but at the time I didn’t know or at least I was not certain what exactly they were using. Later on, when the list of names came out in the Mitchell Report and other investigations went deeper and deeper, I started to put two and two together. Whatever was happening was being done very surreptitiously for the most part. Nobody walked around the clubhouse saying, “Hey, guys, let’s do some steroids.”

  When I was with the Expos in 1994 and 1995, I saw guys injecting each other on several occasions. I saw it with my own two eyes, and it was actually a common sight, but I can’t say what was in those needles. I’m not positive it was steroids. I never saw or heard the words “steroids” associated with any of the needles and equipment. I actually thought that it was painkillers, something they were taking for pain or inflammation. I know that sounds naive now, but at the time I didn’t know for sure and I was only guessing. I could never have walked up to a table full of little medicine bottles and picked out the ones that had steroids in them because I had no idea what they were called.