Pedro
Page 22
When the Mitchell Report came out, with its list of the names of players accused of using performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), I was floored. In my mind, all of those players—Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Andy Pettitte—they were all so good, so awesome. And later there was Manny. Manny was maybe the biggest letdown. I refused to believe it at first. We had hung out together all the time. Plus, why would a hitter with Manny’s caliber of talent need to do that? A guy like Paul Lo Duca, who was named in the Mitchell Report, had languished in the minor leagues forever, and he had probably said to himself, I have no chance, and this is the only way for me to get to the major leagues.He was small, a catcher who didn’t have power—I could understand the temptation for someone like that.
But Manny?
When I heard that police found steroids in the glove compartment of Manny Alexander’s car, I was stunned. Manny Alexander’s body got big, and there were a couple of other infielders on the Red Sox who went from slightly built, Punch and Judy hitters to bulked-up, line-drive hitters, but I never suspected anything. I thought later, Oh man, not them too.
The fact that so many Dominicans have been linked to steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs is such a disappointment to me. I used a trainer, Angel Presinal, nicknamed “Nao,” who cropped up in the news quite a bit between 2001 and 2003, and then again later that decade on suspicion he was providing steroids to players such as Juan Gonzalez and Alex Rodriguez. All I can say about Nao is that yes, he trained many of us and was popular in the Dominican Republic for a long time. But inject us with steroids? I never saw it. He never offered any to me, and I would not have taken anything if he did.
Nobody ever offered me steroids after I left the minor leagues.
The fact of the matter is that steroid use was rampant all around me during my time in the major leagues. I didn’t suspect the worst in people at the time. Until I saw their names on a list of alleged users, I could only guess as to whether or not they were using.
But this takes me right back to the ALCS playoff game in 2003, Game 7, when Jason Giambi hit a changeup off me, off-balance and one-handed, to straightaway center field. . . . Wow.
And I think of Luis Gonzalez. He hit 57 homers in 2001—where did that come from? Brady Anderson hit 50 home runs one year, then 18 the next? Wheee! Those are some funny numbers. Now that I know that players were using all those years, I have a lot of questions, and I have a lot of guesses about who was doing what.
My training regimen was all out in the open. I used to drive in to Estadio Quisqueya in the middle of Santo Domingo and train with all the kids, pulling tubies, running sprints and laps, doing everything where everyone could see what I was doing. Meanwhile, some of these players went to Arizona to train in a special place away from the public eye. Then, all of a sudden, after their regimen in Arizona, they would show up in spring training with an extra 20 pounds of muscle. The most weight I ever put on was six to eight pounds, right after the 2001 season and heading into 2002, as I added muscle mass in my shoulders to protect the tear in my rotator cuff.
I worked out in the open, and I didn’t have secrets, but I won’t say what doesn’t belong in my mouth about others. I know a lot of people who’ve done PEDs—believe me, everyone knows people—but I am not going to say I saw people doing steroids precisely because I didn’t.
What I know is that I went out day after day and competed, and I did not stop to figure out what was going on. But imagine if I could have reversed a few things, like those two home runs that Jason Giambi hit off me in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS. And my ERAs in the late 1990s and early 2000s—imagine what they would look like if the playing field had been level.
But in a way, I don’t think I would have wanted it any other way. You can’t choose the era you play in. I always wanted to face the best hitters I could face, and the numbers show that hitters were the most dangerous during the time when I pitched. Our peaks overlapped, and my peak was higher. I wish no pitcher ever had to face a juicing hitter just the same as I wish no batter ever had to face a juicing pitcher or lost a spot on a roster because a teammate took the easy way out. Those who opted to take PEDs altered the game and hurt its integrity, and I cannot condone that.
It was my era, and I’m glad it was. I was always up for being tested in the biggest battle, and I think my era will go down as the biggest challenge in the history of the game.
Was that a negative?
Yes, for baseball.
For me, it was a positive.
Today I have a normal body, the normal body of an aging man.
I took a few Advil, but that was it.
The baseball writers now have their work cut out for them. They have to decide which of the players of this era they should vote into the Hall of Fame. A cloud hangs over those years. I’ve made it no secret how I feel about how certain sportswriters have handled their voting responsibilities—many of them have done a poor job. And my advice to them is to be careful.
To me, Bonds and Clemens had a legit chance to make it to the Hall of Fame before they were mentioned as being linked to steroids. But how far back were they doing it? I don’t know, and I’m not sure anybody’s ever going to know.
It’s a dilemma. And I’m sure the writers and I agree on this one and only thing—the subject of steroids is an ugly one. I hate talking about them.
Do you mind if we get back to baseball?
21
Body of Work
I HAD MY first six-pack, my jeans were looking good, my chest was big—oh, mamacita, Pedro was in the house.
“I got everybody,” I announced after I pulled into Fort Myers for spring training in 2002.
I thought I had the inside track on winning team body mass index honors.
Nobody had worked harder than I did over that winter. For six, seven hours a day, I worked out with different trainers, doing not just my usual core, leg work, and running but adding in upper-body work: pull-ups, 90-degree push-ups, seated rows, the rice bucket, wall dribbles, prone flys, front lat pull-downs, straight-arm pull-downs, triceps push-downs, dumbbell curls, triceps kick-backs, reverse curls—all designed to protect and encase my torn rotator cuff with a muscle mass that would shield it from the wear and tear of a full baseball season and keep it from giving me pain. I arrived weighing 191 pounds in February 2002, six to eight pounds more than my usual weight. All of the new mass was above the waist.
I had to settle for third place. My BMI was 8, a personal best, but a couple of show-off infielders, Nomar and Rey Sanchez, were at a ridiculous 4 percent.
I was styling and in a much better mood too. A winter away from the debacle that was the 2001 Red Sox had lifted my spirits. Nobody thought shoulder surgery would become an option for me, and I was dedicated to eliminating the possibility. Ramon was out of the game at 33 years of age. We had slightly different cuff tears, but he lasted just two seasons after his surgery. I had turned 30 over the winter. For some people, age 30 is a bigger milestone than for others, but for a pitcher, it marks the turning point in a career. For the rest of the ride, a 30-year-old pitcher must put in extra work to keep up and to delay the inevitable day when some body part gives out.
In 2001 I had made only 18 starts and pitched just 116⅔ innings, with just three starts and 13 innings to show for myself after the All-Star break.
Even with three Cy Youngs to my name, I couldn’t let my finish to 2001 be my lasting impression.
I couldn’t stand the possibility that the Dodgers would find some small amount of pleasure knowing that I had broken down before reaching 30. It was unacceptable to me that they might have been right and I was wrong. Anyone who works out a lot knows that you need something to latch on to while you’re alone with your thoughts and looking for motivation to continue.
I had mine, in spades.
New ownership had taken over the Red Sox. I could smell that change was in the air and I liked where things were headed, but I made s
ure to keep my nose out of most of their business. When the sale was finalized on February 27, 2002, they fired Dan less than 24 hours later. I was sad to see Dan leave. He had traded for me twice, and we were always able to talk out our differences. I always felt he appreciated me and had my back.
The change I most eagerly anticipated came less than a week later. From the day I walked into camp I ignored Joe Kerrigan. Then, on March 5, the new owners brought the hammer down on him.
There were rumors that the Red Sox were going to hire Felipe Alou as the next manager, which I would have loved, but my first choice was anybody but Joe. When the owners walked into our clubhouse and introduced Grady Little as our new skipper, everyone on the team let out a yell and gave him a standing ovation loud enough for the reporters outside the clubhouse to hear. Grady had been Jimy’s bench coach in 1998 and 1999 and was a popular, laid-back man, somebody we all knew and trusted.
Nobody was happier than me. I stripped down, hopped onto a chair, and shouted, “Grady, welcome aboard,” and wiggled my johnson in his honor.
Later, Grady said he felt honored by the display.
“I took it as a pretty respectful gesture to tell you the truth—that he had thought about me enough that he was glad I was there,” said Grady.
At the time all Grady could do was laugh at the sight.
“Petey, you’re crazy, man,” he said.
Buff too, but the downside to my new upper-body muscle mass was that I had much less command of my pitches. My velocity was no problem. I was throwing 93, 94, easy, but my control and command were horrible, completely erratic. I threw ball after ball after ball. I also felt this tingling in the muscles of both my arms after I threw. The muscles felt as if they were taking over my body, and they would make me shake.
“Chris, this isn’t me, I’m not used to this,” I told Chris Correnti, my trainer. “I’ve got to drop, I can’t do heavy weights anymore.”
I threw some clunkers in spring training. I didn’t know it, but Chris was getting pressure from baseball operations. They thought he might have overseen a flawed program that overemphasized weight training and robbed me of my pinpoint command, a significant setback for both me and the team.
Neither of us knew for sure that we hadn’t made one massive mistake, but we agreed that I had to stop with the upper-body program and get back to my regular routine, focusing on maintenance and flexibility. Over the course of the next two weeks my control and command began to gradually improve, and I dropped back down to around 185 pounds, the weight I stayed at for the remainder of the season.
Derek Lowe, or “Big Bird” as I liked to call him, was in the rotation from the start for the first time in 2002, and I was happy when he asked me to mentor him. He asked me about grips, finger-holds, and finger-pressures, a lot of nitty-gritty pitching tips. But where I tried to help him the most was with the mental side of starting. He would joke with me, saying, “I can’t throw 95 miles per hour like you, and I would love to be able to throw a 2-0 changeup down and in to a right-hander, but your pitches are 10 on a scale of 1–10 and mine are 4s and 5s.”
“Big Bird, it’s okay, let’s talk about your strengths. What can you do, what have you tried before, and what’s worked? Try that. What’s the worst that can happen? A guy hits a home run? So what?
“You need to be fearless and throw your pitches with conviction—don’t worry about the results, don’t worry about anything.”
When we would play catch or long-toss side by side, I showed him that he should not just be playing catch, he should be working on his delivery and being able to repeat it.
“Watch the flight of the ball, notice its break when you adjust your grip, make every pitch count.”
My program became his program. He had to be accountable every five days when it was his turn to pitch, but there were no excuses for not getting his work in, in between starts. If he mentioned that his shoulder was aching or his back was hurting, I told him to keep going—unless it was a sharp pain, it wasn’t broken.
A pitcher’s program, both in spring training and during the season, is not something that takes more than a couple of hours a day. That’s not a lot, so it should not take some kind of superhuman effort to keep your focus, work hard, and avoid half-assing it out there. There’s always time to squeeze in some fun during your day and don’t forget about that, I’d tell him, but take your work seriously. I tried to impart the important things: inner toughness, confidence, and the mentality of a fighter.
Derek spent the next decade as a full-time starter. He never missed a start or spent any time on the disabled list, and he also never had a better season than 2002. He finished with a 21-8 record, 2.58 ERA, and 0.974 WHIP, the best marks of his career.
I got off to a slow start, even if my numbers didn’t reflect it.
I pitched our season opener at home and stunk it up: seven earned runs on nine hits and two hit batters. Grady had a quick hook for me that first game, getting me out of there two batters into the fourth inning.
After the game, everyone was concerned about me, but all I could do was counsel patience. Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy made a point of mentioning that I still had not won a game since I cursed myself by calling out the Bambino the previous year. I was so happy to see him in the clubhouse in Baltimore after my second start, when I allowed no earned runs on just three hits over six innings for the win.
I took a baseball and wrote on it “1st W (02) (I believe in God only)” and flipped it to him.
“Here you go, Shaughn.”
I had a hard time putting together a string of starts like I was used to in that first half, when every few games I’d lose my control and be unable to regain it. More important to me was the fact that my shoulder felt great and I was beginning to trust it again. I began to get a handle on my body, which still felt new to me. My first-half numbers were pretty good: 11-2 with a 2.72 ERA, 0.960 WHIP, and .205 batting average against. Derek’s first half was even better: 12-4, with a 2.36 ERA, 0.924 WHIP, and .198 batting average against.
As I entered the second half of the season I started to feel more and more comfortable, enough to start ragging on Derek.
“D-Lowe, you better get to it now because I’m getting it,” I warned him.
Chris chimed in, “That’s how Cy Cy Cy does it. Get your mind ready, Derek.”
I used to always tell Derek that he was done mentally after the first half of a season and that he needed to stay consistent.
Derek didn’t drop off the map in the second half, but he dropped off some, going 9-4 with a 2.83 ERA, 1.033 WHIP, and .225 batting average against. Those were still fine numbers, but I put together a much more Pedro-like second half: 9-2 with a 1.61 ERA, 0.873 WHIP, and .189 batting average against. In one stretch from late July to early August, I put together a career-best scoreless streak of 35⅓ innings.
However, our success was having little impact on the team’s.
We lost our AL East lead to the Yankees in mid-June, and we fell further and further behind as the season went on. We picked up my old Expos teammate Cliff Floyd in July, but we couldn’t get anything going. By early September, we were seven and a half games out and Grady called a team meeting in New York.
Grady didn’t raise his voice, but he laid into us for not preparing for games as diligently as we should have been and not playing as hard as we should have been.
Now, we all liked Grady, but I felt it was necessary to speak up for the team. Here it was September and we had yet to be told when to show up at the ballpark, we didn’t have stretches consistently, and if guys weren’t playing, they’d walk in with an hour to go before game time. I told him that it was a little late in the season to be getting on us for behavior that had been allowed all season long.
“Grady, I don’t think you needed to go there, we’ve played well so far—you could’ve taken over this team from day one,” I said. I thought Grady could have taken more leadership with the team that first season because by
the end of 2002 I had put together a season that I was personally very proud of, but for the third season in a row we had not gotten into the playoffs.
Grady didn’t mind my input.
“I liked it when veterans spoke up and showed leadership,” he said.
My season ended on a high note. In Baltimore, after I won my 20th game, I threw a party in my suite: champagne, food, mandatory attendance for the younger kids, who then were free to go out on the town if they wanted to. I remember hanging out a lot with Casey Fossum then. I thought he was a great kid, skinny like I used to be, maybe even skinnier.
I always wanted to be the best pitcher in the game, and that season I had put myself back into the conversation, but the Red Sox were once again a second-place team, looking up at the Yankees. My postseason revolved around another awards snafu.
I finished the season with a 20-4 record over 30 starts and 199⅓ innings, with a 2.26 ERA, 202 ERA+, 239 strikeouts, and 0.923 WHIP (exact same as 1999).
My ERA, ERA+, strikeouts, WHIP, winning percentage, win-loss percentage, strikeouts per nine innings (10.8), hits per inning (6.5), and strikeout-to-walk ratio (6.0) all led the league.
Oakland’s lefty Barry Zito led the league in wins (23) and starts (35). He beat me in innings too, with 229⅓.
Zito won the 2002 AL Cy Young Award. I finished second.
I think I should have won that Cy Young, but that doesn’t mean I think Barry was a bad choice—I hope you understand that those two thoughts can coexist. Barry had a great season too, and he was gracious talking about it, noting that Cy Young was a right-hander like me, not a southpaw like himself.
But no, I didn’t win the Cy Young in 2002.
Second again.
22
A Little Cranky, That’s All