Pedro

by Pedro Martinez

  “I don’t mean this with disrespect, but I just stared at him,” said Big Bird. “I didn’t know what it was. I mean, I knew what it was, but you’re just like, What in the world is going on right now? You’re looking at a baby walking around in a grown man’s body.”

  Nelson was used to being stared at by then. He was 36 years old and had made his peace, as best he could, with being known as the world’s smallest man. His life was never normal or easy, but he did okay with what he had. Our clubhouse accepted all types, and once he was around for a few wins, he became our good luck charm. Teammates would toss him back and forth like a football sometimes, and he’d put on some weird-looking clothes and come out to the dugout with this tiny red bat and start banging it on the water cooler. The “idiots” loved him.

  When we won the Division Series in Game 3 at Fenway, Nelson got into the center of the celebration. I held him up while my teammates doused him with a champagne and beer shower. He took a few sips himself, which was all it took to make him woozy. He fell asleep on the shoulder of his average-sized brother, who carried him around the rest of the night like a sleeping baby.

  In his Division Series game against the Angels, Curt’s ankle got worse, and the club’s effort to stabilize it for Game 1 of the ALCS in New York didn’t work. He lasted only three innings and allowed six runs on a night when Mike Mussina was on his game, and the Yankees had a 1–0 lead early in the series. They had not only beaten Schilling, but the injury was significant enough that it looked like our top pitcher that regular season might not pitch again.

  If they could get past me in Game 2, the Yankees’ odds looked pretty good.

  The animosity was not at the level of the year before. There were no death threats, but the Yankees had a 1–0 lead, plus their fans had sniffed out a weakness from me because of my “daddy” comment a couple weeks earlier.

  The “Who’s your daddy?” chants began as soon as Chris Correnti and I walked out to left-center field to begin my warm-ups and long toss. By the time I was through with my warm-up in the bullpen and had walked back to the dugout, more people were in their seats and the chants were booming down from the rafters. Chris and I gave each other a look, and I flashed a smile so small that only Chris could see it.

  Yes, it was a little surreal to be the focus of all that energy and noise, but as I walked to the mound to begin the bottom of the first inning and the chants washed over me like waves on a beach, I became clear-minded about the message behind them and then focused on my job.

  I was a little out of sorts at the start. Eleven pitches in, I had given up a run: Jeter walk, stolen base; Alex hit by pitch (no, not intentional); Sheffield RBI single.

  More chants.

  Sixteen pitches later, I had three outs on two strikeouts and a ground ball. We were down 1–0, and I had used up 26 pitches in my first inning—not a promising beginning.

  Over my next four innings, I gave up only a pair of walks and a pair of singles, but Yankees starter Jon Lieber had shown up that day with his A game, and we could not score a run.

  I gave up a two-run home run to John Olerud in the sixth inning, and that was it for me. I was done at 113 pitches, 10 fewer than the year before when Grady left me in. We got to Lieber for a run in the eighth inning, but we were 3–1 losers.

  Yes, there was a question or two about the game afterwards, but because I was the loser, I knew that everyone would want to know if I still felt as if the Yankees were my daddy.

  If I’d been in the habit of giving the media short answers, I could have just said, instead of talking about my mango tree, “I’m blessed,” which was the truth. Win or lose, I made enough money to support my family, and I was living a clean life. Was there anything else they wanted me to say except to acknowledge that I was blessed? The answer was no. No more questions, no more answers.

  We came home to a nervous Fenway down two games to none. The anxiety rose to a new level after we got slaughtered in Game 3, 19–8, a score that bore an uncomfortable resemblance to 1918, the last year the Red Sox won it all and also a go-to Yankee Stadium taunt.

  We understood better than anyone how dire our situation was, but nobody was curled up in the fetal position in front of his locker. We started to get looser before that Game 4, with a little help.

  Everyone knew about Kevin Millar’s emergency plea for everyone to gather around to have a tiny sip of Crown Royal before the fourth game. Nothing to lose, guys, down the hatch, let’s fight out there.

  I had some of that too, just enough to wet my lips, but Manny was cooking up his own secret sauce recipe, some Mama Juana.

  Manny’s wife was from Brazil, and one of her relatives had given Manny a glass jug filled with roots, bark, and twigs from Brazilian trees. The idea was to fill the jug with liquid refreshments of your choice, let the concoction steep for as long as possible, and then drink up—the twist with the twigs and mulch was that it was supposed to help a man maintain all the stamina and strength he needed when it came to making love. So before Game 4, Manny put some straight gin in the jug and let it soak in. Then he added a special boost: three tablets of Viagra. He ground them up first and then sprinkled them into the jug so the powder would dissolve in the gin, poured in some red wine and honey, and shook it all up. By then, a few guys had gathered around him, wanting to know what he had there. Ellis Burks was our elder statesman that season. It was his last season, and he wasn’t on the playoff roster, but he was with the team all the time, pretty much doing whatever he wanted to do as the reigning veteran.

  “Hey, Manny, what’s that?” Ellis asked.

  “Mama Juana, bro—this stuff will get you hard,” said Manny.

  “Oh man, I don’t know about you, but I’m not on the roster—I’m going to take a sip.”

  He took one, and I’m pretty sure that it took him no more than two minutes to report that Mama Juana was the real deal.

  “Oh shit, this shit works. Oh my God.”

  A bunch of guys on the roster came over then and took tiny little sips of Mama Juana. That Mama Juana worked, all right—we never lost again that October. Before every game the rest of the way—at Fenway, Yankee Stadium, and then Busch Stadium—that same jug of Mama Juana got passed around before each game. The only player who didn’t get offered the Mama Juana was the starting pitcher. We needed the starting pitcher to be sober and Viagra-free.

  I went from the center of attention in Game 2 to an afterthought in Game 5, which we won with another extra-inning walk-off, this one Ortiz’s 14th-inning RBI single. Thank goodness for David’s hit too. I’d had my worst-ever postseason start that game: six innings, five walks, four runs allowed on seven hits. On the last pitch I threw at Fenway Park as a Red Sox, Hideki Matsui lined out to right field. The bases were loaded.

  Curt made his courageous Game 6 “bloody sock” start, and in Game 7 I pitched one brief, odd, and unsuccessful inning of relief, but we held off the Yankees in each game. We left their clubhouse drenched in champagne and beer and reeking of cigar smoke—just like the Marlins had done in the World Series the year before.

  I would have been happy to pay the steam-cleaning bill for both jobs.

  We won a tight Game 1 against the Cardinals at Fenway, and then Curt came back strong in Game 2. The Red Sox sent me ahead to St. Louis during Game 2, so I could get plenty of rest for my Game 3 start, which came the day after my 33rd birthday.

  I appreciated the extra time to rest. I was at 237 innings and counting. That was already the second-highest innings total of my career. In Game 3 of the World Series, I went seven more innings to set my single-season high of 244 innings, 2⅔ innings more than I’d gone with the Expos in 1997 as a 25-year-old. This old goat didn’t need to be told twice to get to Missouri early, but I wasn’t that tired. I knew after we won the second game that a loss in St. Louis would be a momentum changer, and I needed to prevent that. I did not need to find any extra motivation from any external or internal sources. This was my first World Series start. I wasn�
�t going to waste it.

  Manny helped me early.

  First, he hit a solo home run in the first inning off Jeff Suppan. In the bottom of the first, I had another first-inning bout of rustiness and loaded the bases on two walks and an infield single. Jim Edmonds hit a fly ball to Manny in left, and my old teammate Larry Walker thought he could tie the game by going for home from third base. Manny, whose arm was much better than people ever gave him credit for, threw a strike to Jason for an inning-ending double play.

  I pitched five more innings, getting into a jam only once. I gave up a third-inning single to Suppan and a double to Edgar Renteria before Suppan (who had been drafted by the Diamondbacks from Boston in the 1997 expansion draft in Phoenix, where the Red Sox traded for me) did me a favor. On a ground ball hit to second base, Suppan decided to dash for home from third base. And then he changed his mind. David, playing first base, saw the hesitation and threw to Bill Mueller at third base for the swipe-tag double play.

  With my 98 final pitches as a Red Sox, I didn’t allow a run and allowed just three hits in seven innings.

  Game 4 was like a joke.

  Johnny Damon led off the first inning with a home run, Trot Nixon doubled in two runs in the third, and Derek dazzled, posting the same line as me: seven scoreless innings and just three hits allowed.

  One out to go and Edgar Renteria hit that soft bouncer right to Foulkie. It looked too easy. Even Foulkie did a double take. He looked at the ball in his hand like, Is this it? He flipped it to Doug Mientkiewicz, and all I remember after that were a million flashes going off all at once.

  Poof!

  I could die now. I could leave now. I could do anything.

  I waited to join the dog-pile. First, I went down on one knee, and I thanked God for all of my years in Boston. I had paid the price and reached my goal. David stopped for a second to thank God too, and then we were off running toward the pile, my arms stretched high to the sky, my face uplifted, the goofiest and most contented grin stretched across my face. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,” I said to heaven as I ran toward my teammates. Such a short run between the dugout and the dog-pile, yet long enough to remember who to thank and to experience ecstasy that exceeded what I had felt a week earlier in Yankee Stadium. I was numb until I jumped on the pile, where it became a noisy mess of screaming and hollering baseball players exchanging lung-splitting bear hugs.

  Back in the clubhouse, I ducked under the plastic sheeting because I needed to give more thanks to God before popping champagne—that was my rule. I also needed to call Carolina. We had broken up temporarily then, but I felt she should have been there. I think she would have been happy for me. I told her, “Everything is great here. This is it. There’s only one thing missing. That’s you.”

  I hung up, and then things got crazy.

  I grabbed a Dominican flag and wrapped it around me and used a smaller one as a do-rag. After I got good and wet, I told one interviewer that I had gotten my championship but that the 1994 Expos should have gotten one too. That’s how my mind works—it was hard for me to stay in the moment. I was looking back, to my Dominican roots and my baseball roots, especially the Expos, where I grew up as a pitcher.

  There was so much hugging and drinking and spraying in that clubhouse, I couldn’t keep track of any of it. Curt, David, and I were supposed to do a 10-second commercial for Disney World. They wanted us to say “We’re going to Disney,” but I just couldn’t wait for the cameras to roll. I started singing, “We’re going to Disney World, we’re going to Disney World!” Curt and David joined in, and that’s what they wound up using.

  Nobody slept more than a couple of minutes on the plane ride back to Boston. When we got to Fenway Park in the early morning, Red Sox fans greeted us there.

  The parade, which I don’t believe has ever stopped, began right then and there.

  The duck boat parade was everything that we idiots deserved. People lined the streets around Fenway, and I remember all the confetti, the greens, yellows, and browns of the trees, the sea of red, white, and navy blue clothing people wore in support of the Red Sox. People kept shouting, “Thank you, thank you!” to all of us. One man told me, “I’m going to take this jersey to my dad’s grave.” Another said, “Thank you so much, now my dad can rest in peace.” I was well acquainted with how devoted Red Sox fans were, but that day I realized that this love and passion went deeper than I thought. When we got to the Charles River, there were even more people gathered on the banks and on the bridges. I got hit in the forehead by a baseball somebody tossed from one of the bridges as we passed beneath it, but I felt nothing.

  We were living the dream.

  We had won the World Series.

  The only unanswered question for me was very personal.

  I got asked about it after my Game 3 start in St. Louis. When I had walked off the field after the seventh, my emotions were knotted up. We were on the verge of winning the World Series, but a wave of sadness spread through me, like a cloud passing over the sun.

  Why am I here in this situation where I don’t even know if this was my last game I will ever pitch with the Red Sox? I thought.

  I had been a good pitcher for them, a solid and stable player, and I realized that because I had not signed a new deal already, reaching that point was probably going to be a lot tougher than I’d ever thought.

  When the postgame question came about whether or not that was my last Red Sox game, I made what sounded like a confession.

  “I hope I get another chance to come back with this team, but if I don’t, I understand the business part of it. I just hope that many other people understand and understand that I wasn’t the one that wanted to leave. I’m only doing what I have to do. And they’re going to have their chances to get me back in that uniform—if they don’t get me, it’s probably because they didn’t try hard enough.”

  PART VI

  Since 2004

  27

  “Take That Computer and Stick It . . .”

  MY CHICKENS WERE quiet, the motorcycles had stopped zipping by outside, the merengue music had died down. With a new moon and no clouds, the deep, black sky above la finca looked alive, dotted by a thousand twinkling pinpricks of starlight.

  I had been roused from my sleep by a call from Fernando.

  A little before two in the morning on Monday, December 13, 2004.

  Decision time.

  The Red Sox needed my answer.

  The Mets needed my answer.

  I needed advice.

  Ramon was the closest I could come up with as someone who could help, but he wasn’t at la finca that night. Besides, he had never been faced with a choice like I had to make.

  Four years with the new Mets or three more with my old Red Sox.

  I walked slowly down the path in my slippers and shorts, the pitch-black outlines of the trees and bushes forming a jagged frame for the night sky.

  Fernando laid it out for me.

  “Pedro, here’s the dilemma we’re in. We got the fourth year guaranteed from the Mets, but they’re expecting an answer tonight. I’m going to call the Red Sox and let them know we’re about to go somewhere else.”

  I looked up at the stars again and played back the events since the parade, six weeks worth of tense meetings about my future.

  “I need a minute, Fernando.”

  I lowered the phone from my ear. The night sky held no answers for me.

  That’s when I felt the same sadness that I had felt seep into me in the dugout in St. Louis after my last game. I couldn’t imagine leaving Boston, especially after winning the World Series. That joy was not supposed to be abandoned, it was to be shared and relived. I had just bought a brand-new house in Boston, there were so many people I knew, dear friends I had there who I would have to leave in order to start a new life in a much bigger city. As a Met, I would be a star, but I wouldn’t be the only one. But in New York there would be so many distractions. As much as I bristled from the constant scr
utiny that came with being in the spotlight in Boston, I knew a part of me enjoyed the attention, or at least could handle it.

  As I imagined a new home, I could imagine feeling sad about leaving Boston, but it didn’t feel like permanent sadness. Nothing had come easily in our talks with the Red Sox. Progress had felt reluctant. The talks had moved slowly.

  Too slowly.

  “You know what, Fern? The Red Sox have had all this time to do something, and they waited until the last minute to get it done. Just tell them that we’re going in another direction. Go ahead. Tell the Mets we’ll take it.”

  I didn’t go back to sleep. I packed up a nice suit and headed to the airport from la fincaat five in the morning, once again. I had a plane to catch for New York this time, a physical to take, a contract to sign, and pictures to pose for. I was about to become a New Yorker—a Metropolitan New Yorker.

  A month earlier, in November 2004, when Theo needed help with his words, he pulled out his laptop and showed me his graphs and his tables and his charts with the trends, the tendencies, the percentages, and the numbers that all added up to a single arrow—me—that pointed in one direction—down.

  Down and out, it looked like.

  I didn’t need to hear or see more.

  “You know what?” I told Theo. “Why don’t you take that computer and stick it up your ass, young buck—I’m out of here. Talk to my agent. You have 15 days to get it done. If not, I’m meeting with anybody out there.”

  I had asked for the meeting, and I got it. Theo, Larry Lucchino, John Henry, Fernando, and I were all sitting on plush couches in John’s living room in Boca Raton, Florida.

  What a beautiful property: lush grounds, the nicest furnishings, everything done up to the hilt. Fernando and I were there to hear what the Red Sox wanted to do with me.

  Like always, Theo was very articulate and direct, but this time I sensed he was a little nervous. We never had a problem, and he always told me that he had been a fan of mine dating back to the night in 1995 when he was holding the radar gun behind home plate at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego and I took the no-hitter into the 10th inning.