That was the plan, the computerized insole, but there was not enough time for it to be ready for spring training, which also happened to be the inaugural World Baseball Classic. I had told the Dominican Republic that of course I would pitch for them as long as I was healthy. When I got to spring training and my toe wasn’t ready, not even close, I had to drop out of the WBC. It killed me to do it, and I got killed for doing it too, with the media in the DR claiming that I had broken my promise to represent my country. I simply wasn’t ready. Nike finally delivered the carbon-fiber insert, and I could pitch, but I wasn’t right. My toe was an issue all year in 2006—my velocity diminished when I couldn’t drag my toe. My results looked fine—5-0 with a 2.72 ERA in my first six starts—but then the aches and pains began moving up my body. After my toe went, my calves started to go, first the right, then the left, and then the hip went downhill as well.
I made my return to Fenway Park in late June. I had a hunch I was going to be well received, and I was glad to see almost all of the familiar faces. In the media scrum the day before my start, I looked around and didn’t see the radio reporter Jonny Miller.
“Where’s Jonny?” I asked.
Somebody told me he was home, sick.
I looked at Dan Shaughnessy.
“Why don’t you ever get sick?”
When I pitched the next day, the fans gave me an entirely gratifying standing ovation, but by then I was a mess physically. I gave up six runs on seven hits in three innings, and I had to get out of there.
I went on the DL for the hip, but it could have been for the toe or the calves just as easily.
Chris and I gave it a month of rest and rehab, and I went back out on July 28. It wasn’t pretty: in seven starts, my ERA was 7.84, and batters were hitting .276 against me. I kept going out there, though, until my body reached, literally, its breaking point.
After throwing a 1-2 pitch to Tim Hudson in the bottom of the third, I felt not only a pull behind my shoulder but also the sensation of my entire shoulder lurching forward as soon as I released the ball. Hudson’s RBI double was the sixth run I had allowed that inning.
Willie came out.
“Willie.”
“Pedro, you can’t pitch, you’re not okay.”
“Now I know I can’t throw.”
“I’m going to take you out.”
When we got back to the dugout, I told Willie, “Guess what, Willow? I think I blew out my shoulder.”
“Oh man, don’t tell me that, Pedro.”
I was right about blowing out my shoulder. A piece of bone from my shoulder was pulled off by my cuff. The only way to fix it was to go in there, shave off the bone, and staple the ligaments back together.
The pain was intense, especially for the next few days. I couldn’t move my arm, which swelled up; I had to keep it in a sling. I had the surgery while we swept the Dodgers in the Division Series, and then I had to watch the Cardinals squeak by us in the seventh game of the National League Championship Series.
Because we were winning, I kept my mouth shut, but I was tamping down a great deal of anger. I couldn’t help but think about how when I was healthy in 2005, our team wasn’t that good. But as my health declined, I was urged to pitch a meaningless game at the end of 2005 that wound up shortening my recovery time for 2006 and led me to a hospital where doctors performed a three-hour arthroscopic procedure to repair my shoulder.
I had my first-ever surgery on my pitching arm two weeks before my 35th birthday.
My professional mortality was staring me in the face and was uncomfortably close.
That was tough enough.
Far tougher, I discovered, was dealing with my father’s mortality.
Diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2006, Paolino Martinez’s health began to decline steeply as I recuperated from my surgery.
Over the duration of my recovery, it began to dawn on me how tightly our destinies were interwoven.
29
Fading to Black
THE SLOW, DRAWN-OUT death of my father guided me like a beacon toward the soft landing to my career.
The fury that I had carried to the mound my whole career began to slowly burn itself out. The more my dad needed me, the less I needed baseball, until finally the decision to walk away from my life’s passion became almost easy.
I can only imagine how much more difficult my juggling act between the personal and professional would have been had I been healthy when I entered the 2007 season. Emotionally, it would have been a chore, but physically, I don’t see how it could have been any worse.
Rehabbing from the October 2006 shoulder surgery took everything out of me. Two weeks after surgery, I began rehabbing with the gentlest of shoulder rotation and movement exercises. We had to be careful. Start slowly enough so the bones would have time to fuse together, yet not so slowly that the shoulder would stiffen even more than it had from being immobilized for so long. My God, every time I moved it I could swear there was someone standing behind me, stabbing and then twisting a knife into my shoulder. The recovery time was at least eight months to get back on a mound, which meant a return sometime after the 2007 All-Star break.
By January, Chris and I had opened up shop in Port St. Lucie. Long seven-hour days began to show results before I could pick up a baseball. I could ramp up the intensity of my workouts, but the pain in the shoulder was unlike anything I had ever experienced.
Chris and I would do a casino set of exercises—just pick a card from a deck of 52 and do the corresponding routine. I got to number 52 one day, the 13 of diamonds: diamond pushups. That’s when you splay your hands out on the floor and touch the tips of your forefingers and thumbs together in the shape of a diamond.
I started, but at some point I blanked. Next thing I remember, Chris was looking down at me, saying, “What happened?” I had lost control of my bladder and had vomited.
We called it a day.
That’s when I knew that this surgery had kicked my butt. If this rehab didn’t work, I wasn’t going to try it again.
While I worked, my dad’s condition was quickly deteriorating. He couldn’t take the chemotherapy, and the brain tumor began to take over. I had brought him to Weston, Florida, where he stayed at my mom’s house. They were like a brother and sister by then and wanted to be together, just a couple of old friends. We, meaning the kids, had always kept trying to get them to go back together. Our “Parent Trap” plan never fully succeeded, but we got close enough.
I bought a large sofa for him, and every day around noon he would be on it, starting a long afternoon nap. I’d make the hour-and-a-half drive from Port St. Lucie after my workouts were over and join him on the sofa, the two of us taking a siesta together.
In early August, I was doing well enough to start a few rehab assignments in rookie and A ball. My velocity was not good, around the low and mid 80s, but I could maintain it, and we all felt it would start to improve as the season went on. The Mets called me up to begin working with the big-league team just before I got the call to come back to Florida.
Dad’s dying, my sisters told me. He’s asking for you. “Where’s Pedro? Am I going to die and not see him?” I rushed back. He had slipped into a coma. When I got to him, he was hooked up to life support, and the doctor told me that they were waiting on me to make the decision to disconnect him from all the tubes and wires. It would be very expensive to keep him in this state, he said.
I asked what the chances were that he would wake up from the coma.
Three percent.
“Okay, that’s what we’ll work toward. Don’t worry about the money.”
That same night, about 2:30 in the morning, he woke up. My sisters were outside the room, crying, while I sat in a chair by his side, trying to stay awake and fight off a fierce sense of loneliness. I felt anesthetized. I could not feel baseball, I could not feel life, I just wanted my dad to get better. Looking back, I can see how the experience matured me. Faced with the responsibility of making a life-or-death
decision with my own father took a great deal out of me, but it led me to a sharper awareness of what mattered. Being with my dad and family, not baseball, felt like the right place to be, the only place.
And that’s when I began to pull away from playing the game of baseball.
From the summer of 2007 until my father died on July 23, 2008, I became consumed by tending to his needs while fighting toward my own return to health. Dad’s tenacity helped. He went through stages when the tumor released its grip on him, and he would present this mirage of someone who had made a full recovery. He understood how sick he was. When he woke up from that coma and regained some strength, he told us, “Please get me out of here, get me back to my land, my country. I want to die in my house, I want to die with my people.”
We brought him back to Manoguayabo, where he recuperated in his sister’s house, just outside la finca and the mango tree. Back home, he had this spurt where he was fully healthy: walking around, visiting all his family members, having a driver take him to all his favorite places.
Meanwhile, I was able to return to baseball. On September 3, 2007, I was back in Cincinnati to start my season, and it went okay. I allowed two runs on three walks and five hits in five innings. I could only go 76 pitches, but I got a little better the rest of the way. I had a couple of pretty good starts: one against the Phillies, when I allowed one run and struck out nine with no walks in six innings, and then my fifth and final start, against the Cardinals, when I allowed two earned runs, struck out eight, and walked one in seven innings.
It was too small a sample size to be as encouraged as I was. I went 3-1 in 2007, with a 2.57 ERA, striking out 32 and walking seven in 28 innings.
I spent as much time as I could with my dad while maintaining my workout regimen that winter, but I discovered that I could not find any motivation. I worked at it, but my heart felt hollowed out. My dad continued to have as many good days as bad days before the balance started tipping toward the latter.
I got to spring training in 2008 and was nothing special. I started the second game of the season in Miami, but one batter into the fourth inning, I strained my left hamstring. That one took a long time to recover from: two full months. As I rehabbed, the reports from the Dominican were getting more dire: Dad’s passing out, he’s losing his memory.
The calls from home got more frequent and frantic as my dad’s condition continued to yo-yo back and forth.
I was catching a plane in Orlando to fly to Atlanta when I got a call from my cousin.
“Uncle Pablo’s passed away—we think, we’re not really sure. He’s dying.”
I couldn’t say or do anything. I had just put my bag in the overhead compartment, and I stood there staring at it, with the phone in one hand. Finally a man who had been watching me said, “Excuse me, I don’t want to bother you, but whatever the matter is, God has it in his hands—do what you have to do.”
And then the flight attendant walked up to me and asked, “Sir, are you going to take the flight, or do you want to get off?” I was so confused. I didn’t know what to do. I got off the plane.
I had been sharing everything with Omar, who saw me break down more than once in our talks. Like the true friend and brother he had become, he led me to the right decision.
“Petey, I know you, you’re not okay, you’re thinking about your dad—just go home. I’m praying for you and your family. Go see your dad—whenever you need the time, take it. We’ll find a way to do something up here, don’t worry.”
He was not dead, just in really bad shape. He had refused food and water all day. I sat down and cradled his head in my arm and took a big pot of water he enjoyed drinking from and brought it to his lips.
“Dad, it’s me. Are you thirsty?” He mumbled something.
“Here, let’s drink some water.” He drank all of it.
He emerged from his fog long enough to tell me that I needed to go back to the Mets. So I returned, and almost as soon as I got there I got calls saying he was back in the hospital, in intensive care this time. I couldn’t keep track anymore, my head was spinning. I was still pitching too, but with a sore shoulder. I went on the DL in the middle of July, and soon after, I was sitting in the dugout, rubbing a ball at the start of a game, when Charlie, our clubhouse manager, poked his head into the dugout.
“Pedro, your cousin wants to see you.”
As soon as I got to the hallway and looked at my cousin, I knew my dad had died.
The funeral was a national story, which meant that I was hounded by the media as soon as I returned home. My private had become public. Before I could see my father’s body, the press caught up with me outside the funeraria. I answered questions that left me wondering if any of them had ever experienced the loss of a family member.
Are you sad? Are you crying?
“Yes, I am sad and I am crying. We all feel badly. This is a family time, and we want to be left alone. If we want to cry, we want to cry, but without all of you around. You can see everyone here is sad—he was a good man, who was loved by everybody. What else do you need to know?”
I kept myself from snapping at anyone, and they let me go so I could be with my family and cry over my father.
After the funeral, I came back and made 11 starts. The terrible results—5.18 ERA, 53 strikeouts, and 26 walks in 64⅓ innings—reflected where my head and heart were. For the first time in my career, I was unable to push aside whatever was on my mind before I stepped onto the mound. I couldn’t focus. I had no idea what pitch I wanted to throw, and I didn’t care that I had no idea.
As far as pitching was concerned, the year was a waste.
My passion for pitching flickered and finally was snuffed out in 2008. From 2006 until 2008, I tried to pitch, and I also tried to be a son and a leader of a wounded family, but I could not do justice to anything. I had to pretend like nothing was wrong, because the paying customer each night didn’t know and didn’t care what was going on with my personal life. That had always been the case with me. I had always shielded my private life from the demands of my public life, and the balance had worked perfectly. By 2008, the balance had shifted permanently.
There are baseball players and athletes from every sport, as well as entertainers in every field, who are battling family crises right now. Most of them have put on a mask that betrays nothing. That mask is necessary if they are to perform and succeed, even when there is no pressing off-field issue, because the mask allows them to focus, draw upon their skills and talents, and go to battle.
Along the way I lost my will to battle. I did not want to be in the game anymore. I did not want to win, and I did not want to pitch.
30
Last Pitch
THE TIGHTEST FAMILIES are the most resilient ones, and the Martinez family bounced back from my father’s death quickly. Because he had been so sick for so long and had been able to return home to die with dignity and surrounded by those he loved, there was no shock to deal with, only sadness. Gradually our grief subsided. When it had dissolved to the point where I felt clearheaded, I confronted my heart.
I had put off a decision to measure my passion for baseball until after the 2008 season was over.
To my own surprise, I discovered that I wasn’t ready to quit on baseball after all.
I was healthy after finishing 2008. I had pitched only 137 innings over the past two seasons, and I did not pitch well down the stretch in 2008, but I finished with my shoulder feeling strong. After a couple of months of working out, my goal was for the 2009 World Baseball Classic to become my “audition” for the 2009 season. Part of me desperately wanted to pitch for my country’s team, something I had never done before and had dreamed about since I couldn’t afford to go to Puerto Rico when I was 12 years old. In 1984, Ramon had pitched for the Dominican national team in the Olympics in Los Angeles as a 16-year-old. I had been injured at the time of the 2006 WBC, a simple fact that too many of my fellow citizens could not fathom or embrace. I was eager to show my countrymen ho
w much I wanted to pitch for them, and I knew that there would be plenty of scouts there curious to get a look at where I was.
The plan was a sound one except for one thing: I didn’t account for the scenario of our team getting bounced so early. We lost two of three games—we beat Panama but lost two one-run games to the Netherlands. I made two appearances in relief, didn’t allow a run in six innings, struck out six, and walked none—a performance good enough to entice teams to let Fernando know that they wanted to see more.
I wanted the Mets to sign me, but after they signed Oliver Perez for three years, they didn’t want to risk much more on me. They mentioned a $1 million deal to me, but I was looking for $5 million. Once I heard manager Jerry Manuel express his opinion to reporters that he didn’t need any more pitchers, I knew I wasn’t going back to Queens.
At this point in my career, I didn’t want to just go play for anyone. I was healthy, but my frustration level was still high enough that I wanted to walk into a good situation where there were no internal issues and the team was in contention. The National League was still an attraction, as was remaining on the East Coast.
I hoped the Red Sox would call me or at least show up for my tryouts in Estadio Quisqueya in the heart of Santo Domingo, but they did neither. Same with the Marlins. Other teams I had an interest in were the Cubs, Yankees, Indians, and Rangers.
Nobody knew me better than Eleodoro Arias, so I got him to help me prepare for my workouts. I had pitched a couple of days in a row, a Monday and Tuesday, when I heard that the Yankees scout wanted to see me throw Wednesday. I wasn’t going to throw three days in a row and risk an injury, so I told him nope, you’ve got to come back on Friday. I heard the scout got upset about having to stick around. At that tryout, I topped out at 92 miles per hour and sat around 90 or 91, a very encouraging velocity. There were more than 100 people in the stands watching me, and I got a standing ovation when I was done. Afterwards I heard that the gun the Yankees scout used had my fastball at 85, with the changeup at 84. That could be why the Yankees expressed interest in me pitching in their minor leagues to see how I looked before offering me a big-league contract. Mariano Rivera and CC Sabathia each called me up and told me that the Yankees needed me, but when I heard about the minor league offer, I was like, “Hell no.”
Pedro Page 31