Pedro

by Pedro Martinez

  That same day he did, and right away he started to throw two or three miles per hour harder. For a 37-year-old pitcher, finding extra hop on a fastball like Curt’s was a major advancement. When Koufax visited our camp that spring, he gave Curt a little tutorial on it. The only issue was that after about a week Curt’s ankle began to hurt after he rolled his right foot off the rubber as he delivered the pitch.

  He was told that he was pinching the joint and a bone bruise had developed. If he kept pitching like that, he would get necrosis, or dead bone. Curt didn’t stop. A couple of weeks later he got diagnosed with necrosis and needed his first injection. He wasn’t willing to stop hooking the rubber, however, and for every start in 2004 he needed an injection of Marcaine in the ankle in order to pitch.

  In the playoffs, it all caught up to him in his “Bloody Sock Game.” In hindsight, maybe he should have stuck to asking me for advice on my cutter and not tried to copy me by hooking the rubber. That was a big change for a pitcher of his age and with his body type, but it was also an example of how athletes are always looking for an extra edge in order to get better.

  I did not have a particularly good spring training that year. I couldn’t pinpoint why, but I just didn’t feel sharp, and I could not fully command the cut fastball I was trying to ease into my repertoire. I was inconsistent and often ineffective. That’s a problem for a starter. My spring training ERA—6.75—set the tone for my individual results in 2004.

  I pitched the season opener in Baltimore and was nothing better than mediocre: I gave up three runs, two earned, in the second inning, and went scoreless the rest of the way, leaving after six innings with five strikeouts. We lost, 7–2, and after the game a big deal was made about me leaving the ballpark early.

  I did not stick around to answer questions from the media, that is for sure, but to this day I don’t remember leaving early. I showered quickly and then went to the family room, where I stayed with my family. We were going to feast on a bag of crabs I had bought earlier in the day at the Inner Harbor. Whatever I did wrong, I know Tito took a lot of heat for it, because he fell on his sword for me in his first game as manager, saying that he didn’t explain the rule to me about not leaving. Honestly, I don’t remember if I did leave early or not, but I know I apologized later to Tito for it. He didn’t appreciate what I did, but there wasn’t any fallout from that in general.

  We didn’t talk a lot, but I had a fun time playing for Tito. Like Grady, Tito understood that it was just easier to use Chris Correnti, my trainer, as a go-between since Chris and I were always together, figuring out how to get me ready for each start.

  Tito was notorious for the big chunk of bubblegum and tobacco he would stuff in his mouth before each game. He would be spitting out the shiny brown juice for nine or, God forbid, extra innings. By the end of a game, everyone had Tito’s spit juice on his shoes, one of the most disgusting sights I ever saw as a big leaguer. But we were happy campers. The starters stayed healthy, and the team chemistry was great, thanks in large part to how Tito eased into his new job like a natural-born Red Sox.

  When it came to my own results, 2004 was not a stable year for me. My command and control were just not there. My walks went up, and my home runs almost quadrupled, from seven in 2003 to 26 in 2004. My ERA, 3.90, was my career-worst for a full season, and I had 227 strikeouts in 217 innings, my lowest rate since 1996.

  I would come out throwing my fastball at 85, 86 miles per hour sometimes, which used to worry Theo Epstein. When I came out throwing that low, Theo wanted the person in charge of the radar reading on the Fenway Park scoreboard to jack it up to 89, and if I got it up there, to push it to the low 90s. Theo, who ordered this to be done for other pitchers too, didn’t want the other team thinking, Hey, we got this guy, he’s pitching in the upper 80s tonight, plus he didn’t want to embarrass me or have me try to reach back for something extra too early in the game.

  I wasn’t embarrassed at all by my velocity in 2004. It was there when I needed it. I had learned in 1999 how to pitch without a fastball, and I was healthy in 2004.

  But I began the year on a distracted note.

  Fernando had held talks with the Red Sox in spring training about a new deal that would keep me from entering free agency, but it got all hung up on chitter-chatter about insurance policies for my shoulder and all this other nonsense that left me feeling pessimistic. I did not want the talks to extend into the regular season, but I agreed to a one-month extension. That was a worthless wait, and at the end of April I called it off.

  “I’m just really sad for the fans in New England who had high hopes that at this time I could say, truly, that I was going to stay in Boston, but now they’re going to have to compete with the rest of the league,” I told the Boston Herald. “It’s not going to be [a distraction] because I’m not going to allow it. It’s over with and I’m just going to continue to play baseball like I would normally do.

  “I was just wasting time, having something else on my mind. So now I get rid of one [distraction] and concentrate on baseball and that’s it.

  “That’s from the bottom of my heart. The fans in Boston, I know they don’t understand what’s going on, but I really mean it from my heart—I gave them every opportunity, every discount I could give them to actually stay in Boston, and they never took advantage of it. Didn’t even give me an offer.”

  I was not the only one in this situation. Derek Lowe, Jason Varitek, and Nomar Garciaparra were also in the last years of their deals. We never sat down to discuss it, but we all knew the dark side of baseball—the business side—could worm its way into your head and put you in a bad place if you allowed it. I tried to get back into my game as best I could.

  In my first start after declaring free agency, I got hammered—six runs on four innings in Texas—as my ERA jumped above 4.00. I spent the rest of the season trying to settle in. I’d go through a stretch when I’d show flashes of dominance or at least an accurate facsimile of my old self—like the one complete game I threw all season, a shutout of the Rays in August, or a few one- and two-run outings—but there would be just as many games where I would give up four, five, even seven or eight runs.

  We were a second-half team in 2004. Our team chemistry began to spark as the season progressed. Morale soared in late July when Tek got into Alex Rodriguez’s grill with his mitt and Fenway had its first Yankees–Red Sox fight since Karim Garcia Day the previous October. This fight had nothing to do with me for once, but to see Tek get upset like that gave us all a jolt, and it helped us to realize that the Yankees could be had and that we were capable of taking them down.

  Nomar was traded a week later.

  I took that trade very hard.

  When I signed with Boston, knowing that the Red Sox were going to lock up Nomar was key to my decision to sign on long-term. By 2004, Garciaparra, along with Varitek, Nixon, Lowe, and Wakefield, were the only holdovers from my first year. I knew his status with both the team and the fans then was messed up, and I always wished I could have done more to smooth out those wrinkles. Nomar was always a class act, both off the field and in the clubhouse with his teammates, and I always figured he was an untouchable. But new owners and new management were in charge in 2004. If they had asked me, I would have told them they were crazy to even consider dealing him. They never asked, but everything works for a reason sometimes.

  Trading Nomar created a firestorm in the media, but in return we got a base stealer, Dave Roberts, and a good defensive shortstop and first baseman in Orlando Cabrera and Doug Mientkiewicz. After the All-Star break, we surged and played .658 baseball, going 50-26.

  The Yankees never went away, especially on my watch. I made four starts against the Yankees, three of them at Yankee Stadium. The vitriol level inched down some from the previous October, but once I poked my head out of the dugout the fans spotted me and began taunting me. There were a lot of “1918” chants at Yankee Stadium that season. I had silenced them in my first start in April, when I threw se
ven scoreless innings and allowed just four hits. My second start was a slight fallback, a no-decision quality start in which I gave up four hits and three runs in seven innings.

  That was the game when I used the baseball to let Gary Sheffield know that the Yankees did not need more than one Bernie Williams in their lineup. In the first inning, Sheffield had called for time and got it when I had already begun my delivery. Calling for time at the last second was one of the 19 tricks Bernie would use on me to get me off my game, and I always hated it. When Sheff and the umpire finally agreed that it was permissible for me to throw a pitch, I hit the bull’s-eye: right in Sheffield’s numbers. He yakked at me as he took first base. It took me exactly zero effort to not say or do anything, to not betray any sign that I had two working ears. He knew what I did. It was just baseball.

  That season I became convinced that I was tipping my pitches to the Yankees and that they were relaying signs on location. I saw Bernie Williams and third-base coach Willie Randolph look at me directly, and then I saw Bernie look at Willie, who was pointing with his finger. I got it. I changed my delivery. When I was pitching out of the stretch, I changed my arm movements so that I would pause at my belt, a new hesitation that I hoped would screw up their intel. When you face another team too many times, they are going to pick up on something you’re doing, and in 2004 I was still searching for ways to get past the Yankees.

  Derek Lowe was surprised when he saw me change things up for the Yankees.

  “That was the first time I ever saw him change for a situation,” Derek said. “He was like, ‘These guys are hitting me, I need to make a change. Am I tipping my pitches?’ And that was the first time I ever went, ‘Wow, you’re fine. If you were tipping your pitches, they would’ve figured it out 12 years ago.’ So that was the first time he actually succumbed to, ‘Well, these guys got my number.’”

  Late in the season I was struggling. Once again, I wound up with back-to-back starts against the Yankees in September. I got hit hard, first for eight runs at Yankee Stadium and then for five runs on nine hits in a game at Fenway Park where Tito kept me in into the eighth inning.

  After the Fenway game against the Yankees, I was naturally disappointed by my performance, but even more so, I was worn down by the drumbeat of the Yankees–Red Sox rivalry. I had had it. I was trying to make my adjustments on the mound, but I was fed up, bored, irritated, snippy. What did the media want me to say? How could I talk about the rivalry in a new way? What could I possibly utter that would satisfy the microphones and the cameras?

  The interview room at Fenway Park that season was a cramped, hot room just outside our clubhouse. The Yankees’ media crew was as big as the Red Sox’s and when I stepped into the room and the TV camera lights snapped on, I could hear jostling in the back as reporters elbowed their way in, some yelling that they couldn’t see or hear me.

  The room finally quieted down, and I gave the media what they came for.

  Out came the truth.

  “What can I say? I’ll just tip my hat and call the Yankees my daddy. I can’t find a way to beat them at this point.”

  There, I said it. It was another Pedro quote about the Yankees, one that I think is overrated. Personally, I thought “Wake up the Bambino” and “Georgie Porgie” before that were better. Even my “mango tree” quote, which grew out of “daddy,” was way better. A “daddy” reference for me was nothing more than an old winter-league saying from the Dominican. If you can’t get a guy out, then he’s your father: he owns you. That’s what I meant, but everyone ran with it as if I’d lost my marbles, or worse, as if I’d lost my edge.

  “That surprised me—not the brutal honesty, but letting someone else in, letting your guard and shield down that he was invincible, being vulnerable publicly like that,” said Theo. “It surprised me and scared me—shoot, we were trying to beat the Yankees. It didn’t make me feel good.”

  Believe me, I didn’t take two bad losses to the Yankees as a sign that I needed to hang up my cleats. Chalk it up to one more example of the cultural and linguistic gap that had plagued me my entire career. The media had what they wanted, something new from Pedro’s mouth to use for fodder. I had no idea that the fertile and creative minds of Yankees fans would turn it into “Who’s your daddy?” or that my “daddy” quote would turn out to be my biggest chart-topper.

  In fact, I think there is a different Dominican expression for when something like that happens: when life gives you lemons, you make mango juice. In 2004, despite all the questions from Yankees fans about who my daddy was, the Red Sox had an answer that finally shut them up.

  26

  Top of the World

  THE YANKEES WEREN’T my only daddy down the stretch in 2004.

  I had not been all that sharp in the first half with my 3.67 ERA, but in the second half that jumped up to 4.17. In my last four starts, which included the two against the Yankees, I went 0-4 with a 7.71 ERA. Hitters were jumping all over my flat and erratic stuff, hitting me at a .306 clip and posting a .954 OPS against.

  Our rotation, bullpen, and offense were deep enough to absorb my down year. People tried to get me to say that I should have been the number-one starter in the playoffs, but I could not. Curt had finished strong, and he had a better year than me too.

  The chatter about who was number one began to remind me of how whenever Roger Clemens and I started the same game, the media wanted to make it into a grudge match, as if we were jumping into the same ring with each other. I wasn’t competing against Roger, and I wasn’t competing against Curt either. I always wanted to win, to show everyone how good I was, and as the 2004 postseason began nothing had changed. I knew that my results were off, but I also knew that the team needed me to make it all the way that postseason as much as the other starters—if not more. And I knew, too, that this could be the end of my seven years in Boston. I didn’t want it to end, period, but I also didn’t want to finish that year with a poor showing.

  My rotation rank, my contract status—of course these things ran through my mind. I wasn’t dead. But they didn’t fuel my inner fire more than the burn I had to finish this season on top of the baseball world with a World Series title. Dan Duquette had promised me that he was going to make the Red Sox a good team. He built the foundation, and Theo took it from there. Now that I was on the doorstep, ready to step in, I had all the motivation I needed not to stumble. I began my postseason quietly, not bothering with the traditional day-before press conference.

  Curt got us the win in Anaheim in the first game, and I got us the win in Game 2: three runs on six hits in seven innings.

  “I was number one today,” I told the media afterwards. “That’s all that matters to me. I don’t believe in what the experts from out here have to say. I am just here to do my job. I get paid to do my job, and I do it anywhere they choose to put me. I actually shut my mouth, I ate my ego, because I wanted to let go on some of these experts around here talking trash, and I swallowed it, because to me, anytime they give me the ball, I am special. I am the number one. It doesn’t matter how many days I have to wait, and to me it was an honor to see Curt Schilling win. He pitched better than me; I am admitting it. I respect that as well, so enough with the trash-talking. We get along really well. I have never been mad because he pitches any game. He has been outstanding against not only this team but any team we played. We get along great. Please don’t try to break that up, making up trash, talking—or making up stuff that’s not true.”

  I thought I made it clear that the team came first. It was the start to a good postseason for me, both from the mound and on the quote sheets, which seemed to matter a lot to the media. I became more invested in keeping my teammates happy, which is one reason why I thought they needed to meet my new friend, Nelson de la Rosa.

  I met Nelson that summer in Providence, where my cousin and I used to spend some downtime. Nelson was from the Dominican, where he was a well-known actor who had also made inroads in Hollywood. Cinephiles still speak with
reverence of the crackling electricity between Nelson and Marlon Brando in The Island of Dr. Moreau, particularly the scene where Nelson, perched on the arm of Brando’s chair, tenderly sponges Brando’s powdered head. Then there was Nelson’s scene-chewing part in Rat Man, the 1988 Italian splatter classic in which he owned the title role as a rat-human clone terrorizing a gorgeous fashion model.

  Beyond his expressive eyes and deft physical skills, Nelson’s cinematic career was no doubt shaped by the fact that, in his stocking feet, the adult Nelson stood 29 inches tall. Plus, he had a distinctive almond-shaped head and wizened face, which was prematurely wrinkled because of his particular strain of dwarfism.

  Nelson had never been to a baseball game in the United States. Late in the season, I got him some tickets, and he couldn’t have been happier.

  In September, I took him into our clubhouse. Kevin Millar was one of the first to meet him, and I thought his eyes might pop out of his head. But he picked up Nelson and carried him like a football into Tito’s office. Kevin stood him up on Tito’s desk, and Nelson stood there, not moving a muscle. Tito had no idea what he was looking at. He pulled his head back and gave Nelson a real funny look, like What the fuck is this? He started to peer around behind Nelson’s back, looking for the windup knob. Then Nelson jumped and pulled up his hands suddenly. Tito screamed, “Holy shit!”—as if Nelson had just stabbed him with an ice pick.

  “This sounds terrible, but I didn’t think he was real. I thought he was a windup doll, his skin was kind of waxy,” said Francona. “I almost kicked him, and I remember thinking, Holy shit, what if I had kicked him?”

  Derek Lowe remembered being frightened by Nelson.