WHEN GOOSE “GANSO” Gregson saw quit in my eyes, he was shocked.
The last thing he and the 32,029 increasingly restless fans who came for the twice-rain-delayed Opening Day game at Fenway Park in 2003 wanted to see was me getting my hat handed to me. In the fifth inning, the Orioles were in the middle of a seven-run barrage that I had absolutely no answer for. I had given up three runs in the first inning, but I had gone three scoreless after that. I thought I had my act back together, but then came the fifth. The Orioles scored two quick runs, and Ganso, my friend from the Dodgers’ minor leagues who was serving as our pitching coach because Tony Cloninger was battling cancer, stepped quickly out of the dugout and approached me, frowning.
“For the first time with my eyes I saw a pitcher that was about to quit on the mound,” said Ganso. “I was looking in the eye of a kid I remember as a 17-year-old who had told me he was better than everybody out there. He would fight God when he was on the mound.”
Not that day. I had less fight in me than I had command or control of pitches, which was nothing to begin with.
Instead of putting his arm around me and giving me the usual pitching coach’s “Hang in there, Pedro,” Ganso started yelling at me.
“You’ve got two choices, Pedro—you can quit right now or fight back,” he said.
I looked down and nodded, kicking the dirt. Words were worthless at that moment. Ganso and everyone else in the stadium waited for me to show them some fight.
They saw me give up a bases-loaded walk and a two-run single.
Ganso came back to the mound. My day was done. People told me that I got booed when I left the mound, but I did not hear them. The only boos I remember hearing at Fenway came in that June 1998 game against the Mets when nobody knew I was battling a stomach problem. Five years later, they were angry because they knew too much of my business.
“Hey, is this what we’re getting for 17 and a half million dollars,” shouted one fan, reminding me that five days earlier the Red Sox had picked up my 2004 option worth $17.5 million. As I reached the top of the dugout steps, I stopped and gave him the stare I usually reserve for a batter who has just taken too good of a swing at my changeup.
“I just wanted to take a close look at the person who said that,” I said at the time. “I hope I see him again the day he claps and I’ll look at him again, just keep him in mind as a person.”
I never pitched a worse game than April 12, 2003. Ten runs, nine hits, four walks in 4⅓ innings—that’s hard to top, and thank God I never did.
But everything that happened in the fifth inning—the quit in my eyes, the rude reminder of my salary—set the tone for a year in which I was cranky as a baseline, compounded by frequent bouts of petulance and sullenness.
The postseason in 2003 took that crankiness to an entirely different level, but from spring training on, I became consumed with my personal plight. I had a hard time taking my eyes off myself.
I was signed through the 2003 season, but the club held my 2004 option. They had until November, well after the 2003 season ended, but I didn’t want to wait that long. I knew that I had to, but I decided that I was worth being the exception to the rule.
I knew, technically, that the Red Sox did not have to do anything for me.
I felt, profoundly, that they should, as a matter of both respect and logic.
I knew that not knowing if this was going to be my final season in Boston was going to be a distraction, one that would be impossible for me to ignore.
Actually, I wanted more than the 2004 option. I wanted not only for the Red Sox to pick up the option, but also to have another three years tacked on to carry me through 2007.
There were a lot of meetings that spring: on Red Sox principal owner John Henry’s yacht one night, at lunch at the old-fashioned Veranda restaurant in downtown Fort Myers, and at Red Sox president and CEO Larry Lucchino’s house, which was in the same complex as mine. He brought his sweet mother, Rose, into the dining room one night.
I pretended to be affronted.
“Oh no, you can’t have your mama sit in on the negotiations, that’s too unfair, too good for you guys—I can’t deal with your mama at the table,” I said.
“She’s just here to say hello, Pedro.”
“Then that’s a break for me.”
We had a couple of meetings at Larry’s place. Once, after Fernando made a presentation about our extension idea, the Red Sox revealed their thoughts about my future. Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein started to tell me that he thought my arm angle had dropped and that the team was concerned about my durability, and Larry started talking about different extension concepts that revolved around protecting the Red Sox’s interests in case I broke down.
I left that meeting underwhelmed about the chances of receiving an extension. Fern and Larry and Theo must have met half a dozen times that spring. The Red Sox asked me to please not bring up the talks with the media, which was fine with me.
We started the season in Toronto, where the team let me know that they were picking up my option. At $17.5 million in 2004, I would be back atop the money heap for pitchers, with the single-largest single-season mark.
The team released its own statement, saying, “There is a long-term benefit to having a happy, focused Pedro Martinez,” and that after the season the club would resume talks with me to reach the “mutual goal” of having me return to the Red Sox.
We issued a statement too: “I am thankful and glad that they picked up the option, I’m also thankful that we both left the door open for negotiations in November after the season. Hopefully then we can get something done. I am glad that it’s over. Now I want to focus on baseball.”
Like everything else in my career, that was easier said than done.
I don’t think anybody was thrilled about the outcome of the extension-option talks.
Theo thought baseball operations lost the value of the club option by having to exercise it before showing I was healthy, Larry sensed I was unhappy about not getting the longer extension, and I didn’t appreciate the way the media reported on the Red Sox picking up my option. They made it sound not only as if I was a whiny kid who got his way with overindulgent parents but also that I couldn’t stop sulking about not getting the contract extension.
When I got back to Fenway Park and heard from that fan that I wasn’t worth all that money, I started to make my own calculations. I had kept my mouth shut. I had given the team my word, but when all was said and done, the media had influenced the fans to believe that I had somehow bullied the Red Sox into doing a favor for me.
What good would it do me to open my mouth the rest of the way?
After that home opener, I informed the media that I was no longer on speaking terms with them.
“I’m not blaming anybody—I just don’t want to talk, that’s it,” I told them. “I’m tired, and I just don’t feel like it.”
One wiseguy wanted to know who was going to be their liaison with Manny, a role I had served in since he had entered his own cone of silence the previous year.
“Now find your own way to talk to Manny,” I said.
The ban was indefinite.
“Not now, maybe not at the end of the year, maybe not ever.”
Or until early June.
Our big new 2003 addition took a while to emerge: David Ortiz.
Around Christmastime in 2002, I called both Theo and Larry to recommend that the team sign Ortiz, who had just been released from the Twins. “He’s a terrific guy, very beloved here in the DR, a very good player who got screwed by the Twins,” I told Larry.
Eventually, in January, David signed on.
The first baseman-DH’s job was newcomer Jeremy Giambi’s to lose, but by the end of May he couldn’t lift his batting average above .200. David was not only producing in his limited playing time but also beginning to regret his decision to sign with Boston. I told Grady Little, our manager, that I wasn’t going to pitch unless David played in my games. Grady was happy to he
ar it. He wanted to play David more, but Giambi still had diehard fans in the baseball operations department.
Finally, David’s bat won over everyone.
I had to go on the disabled list again in the middle of May when a lat issue cropped up. I didn’t disagree with the decision, but I wasn’t alarmed either. It was a tweak, but not a bad one. At that point, I was 4-2 with a 2.83 ERA and .205 batting average against. Those weren’t close to my 1999 and 2000 numbers, but it was early still. I responded well to the rest, but I had a blowup with the media in early June, when Sammy Sosa was caught with a corked bat. Sammy and I had never been that close, but I jumped to his defense for a couple of reasons. When the stories came out, a good portion of the media decided to run Sammy’s comments in English just like he spoke, in its raw form, so that he sounded like he was illiterate. And then the ferocity of the media as they attacked Sammy—they made him sound like a criminal. I was in a foul mood already that summer, but this sent me over the top.
I knew racism when I saw it.
There was no reason for the English-speaking media not to clean up Sammy’s quotes. I felt embarrassed. The media needed to be held accountable for the impression they made when pointing out one man’s poor attempt to speak a second language. Would you brag about being able to speak English to a person who couldn’t? I found it offensive. I got on a chair in the middle of the clubhouse in Pittsburgh and got pretty graphic, bending over, taunting the national media, letting them know that even though they were behaving like fools with us Dominicans now, they were going to have to pretty much bend over and take it from us, because we were going to continue to grow and dominate baseball—there was no way they could stop us, no way the game could go on without us.
“We may be Latin, a minority, but we are not dumb,” I said. “I’m not defending him because [corking a bat] is illegal,” but if this had happened to Mark McGwire, I pointed out, “it would still be a big deal but not like this.”
I wanted there to be a campaign to reverse the smear job on Sammy since X-rays of his other bats turned up no more cork.
The Red Sox media in Pittsburgh that day seemed pleased just to have me talking again, so they kept rattling my cage and I went on and on about the media coverage, ripping Fox and ESPN for the smug attitude of their on-air talent.
“Those two [ESPN reporters], you can read jealous, you can read envy, you can read anger. Even that guy at Fox, this guy said, ‘Hey, let’s go, smile,’ as if that’s something that’s supposed to be fun. Shit, I’m going to go and hunt the guy down.
“One guy turned so red, he looked like a lobster, a steamed lobster.”
I finally did calm down a little and brought it all back to Sammy before reminding myself of something.
“I know Sammy from my heart and I know Sammy as a person, and Sammy does not express himself well and does not know how to communicate well enough. But I know him and I know he can speak, I know in my heart he wanted to say something else.
“They should have had someone to translate and have Sammy talk from his heart, how he feels. We are in America, I understand, we don’t speak the language, but we are doing the best we can to express ourselves. I am not defending him, because it is illegal [using a corked bat]. But I have never cheated, but I have been fucking robbed.”
I was talking about Zito winning the Cy Young the year before and Pudge winning the MVP in 1999.
“I was robbed too, and no one stood behind me. The Cy Young could have gone either way, but some guys decided not to vote for me. Why did no one make a campaign for me?
“If I were Roger Clemens, would he have won the Cy Young last year? I want someone to stand up for me.”
I made a reference to Zito being a cute, guitar-playing white Caucasian who had a campaign behind his victory run by the same people who were campaigning against Sammy.
I finally got down from the chair.
The Sammy story gradually died down. It looks like I was wrong about Sammy not being a cheater in other ways, since his name has been added to the likes of McGwire, Bonds, and Clemens as accused steroids users, but I had a stronger case about the Spanish-English translation issue. Latino ballplayers have always resented the fact that teams hire translators for Japanese ballplayers but not for Spanish-speaking ballplayers, who are left on their own. For a quick English learner like me, that wasn’t a problem, but it’s a problem for the majority of Latin players, and nobody complained about it until I did. I was pleased when the MLB Players Association listened to me and created a new rule that any Latino player who wanted a translator for an interview was permitted to request and receive one.
On June 11, I came off the disabled list, and my hunch that it had been nothing serious was confirmed. The team eased me back into the rotation, a transition that was made smoother when the team brought in Dave Wallace, another of my favorite ex-Dodgers coaches who had been so kind and supportive to both Ramon and me when we were coming up with Los Angeles.
The pitching coach is always with the starter during any side session or before a start, and his first day on the job in Boston, there was Dave in the bullpen as I began a side session.
I gave him a shit-eating grin.
“Just like in Great Falls, huh?” Fastballs in, fastballs away, changeups, back to fastballs away, get a few breaking balls over, nice and easy, learn mechanics, learn delivery, get a feel for the baseball, control the ball—that was exactly what Dave had taught me in his visits to Great Falls back in 1990, and I had not altered the routine since.
Unlike Joe Kerrigan, Wallace always had my trust. Like Guy Conti and Ganso, Dave knew when and how to push my buttons. I think there were coaches who were afraid to come near me and talk, especially on days when I was pitching, because I had that “stay the hell away from me” look so often. Dave spent time asking me about my brother and all of my family so that when the subject turned to baseball, it was a natural transition.
I had one start in Texas in 2003 where I was really struggling. I had thrown 111 pitches in six innings, and Dave came over to me at the end of the bench, where I was sitting and staring hard enough to leave burn marks on the outfield at The Ballpark in Arlington, Texas. He put his arm around me and said, “You can get as pissed off and mad at me as you want, but this is what we’re doing—we’re taking you out now. It’s for your own good.”
I knew he thought I wasn’t listening.
“Thank you, Dave.”
I wasn’t as difficult as I let on—if I trusted you.
Early in July came another one of those Yankees series where, until the next one, the fate of the free world rested upon the outcome. I was down to pitch the finale, matched up against Mike Mussina once again. Two days before my start, Roger Clemens drilled Kevin Millar with a pitch. I didn’t care whether it was intentional or not. He hit one of my players, so without saying anything to anyone, I filed that one at the top of my to-do list.
I crossed it off right away.
The first batter of the first inning was Alfonso Soriano. He got nicked, but I swear, that one was just up and in. Soriano was always leaning in, and he swung right into that ball. He got hit, but the umpire said it was a strikeout, so I was fine.
Jeter was up next, and after he worked a 1-2 count, including a foul, I sailed one in on his hands and got him good. Both Soriano and Jeter had to leave the game early to have X-rays taken at a nearby hospital. Before reporters came in and I denied everything, I told some teammates, “At least I gave them a discount on an ambulance—they both got to go in the same one.” I know that I surprised Lowe with that comment. He told me that since I never announced what I was going to do and then always denied it afterwards, he figured that when I hit batters it was an accident 90 percent of the time. He was 100 percent wrong about that. From 1997 on, when I hit a batter, it was 90 percent intentional. I always thought it was classier to keep everyone guessing for as long as I could, even guys on my own team.
“That pissed me off big time,” said Yankees
manager Joe Torre, who was certain I hit both Jeter and Soriano on purpose.
Of course, when Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was asked about it, he was his usual blustery self. He did not call me out for being an ax murderer, but he did suggest that Major League Baseball should launch an investigation into my evil ways.
When I heard about that, I told reporters, “Georgie Porgie, he might buy the whole league, but he doesn’t have enough money to buy fear to put in my heart.” Steinbrenner never said anything publicly about my response, although a year and a half later, when he was pursuing me to sign with the Yankees, he let me know.
At the time, though, it was just one of those sayings that came to me right on the spot, in pure English. I had heard Jimy Williams call George “Georgie Porgie” back in 1999, and I thought it was great, but I hadn’t thought of it since. But that comment about money and fear—that is one of those sayings that was a unique response, the kind that just come to me sometimes whether or not there is a reporter with a tape recorder around or not. I wish I had written down more of those thoughts.
I was not a fool, though. I knew that sometimes my expressions or the sheer repetition of them could annoy people, even my own teammates.
Once that season, Wakefield was starting a game in St. Petersburg, Florida, at Tropicana Field, and as usual there was nobody in the stands. Even the Red Sox fans who followed us on the road back then had taken off this series, so the place was dead. I was a little more hyper than usual that day, feeling extra chatty, so I was really giving it to the Devil Rays hitters. Yak, yak, yak to every batter, and I’d just keep saying their names over and over. The place was so quiet, I guess my voice was carrying pretty loudly, and it started to bother Tim. He stopped and stared at me at one point in an inning. When he came off the field, he told me to knock off all the jockeying.
I laughed. I thought I had been helping the team, I didn’t think it was something he needed to take so seriously.
“If you can hear me, you’re not concentrating enough,” I said. “You should be able to block me out. What would you do if 60,000 people were chanting your name?”
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