Pedro Martinez

I recently visited America’s most beloved ballpark with my precocious 11-year-old

Cousin, Alex “Bode” O’Connor.  (On your next visit to Fenway, please take the ballpark tour, which begin daily at 9am. It was a highlight of our trip).  Our tour guide peppered us with a barrage of fun facts including the reason for the “Green Mon-stah” and lone red seat in the sea of right-center field bleachers marking the landing site of Ted Williams’ prodigious 502 ft home run. (The longest ever hit in Fenway).  Our guide went on to share with us Williams’ impressive career numbers and how, beginning with Ted’s tenure in LF, the Sawx had decades of HOF patrol in front of the Monstah with Yaz and Rice following the Splendid Splinter. Impressive indeed.

Williams, the last .400 hitter (.406) and the owner of 521 career HR’s despite having missed 5 seasons due to volunteering to serve in both WWII and Korea, has a long litany of impressive stats some bordering on mythical proportions. When young Alex quizzed our guide on the greatest hitter that ever lived and his choice to be cryogenically preserved at the time of his death, the guide quickly dismissed that as pure myth. Hmmmm.

So, it is in the spirit of fact vs. myth that I read the June 24^th Boston Globe article about the fearless dominance of 3-time Cy Young winner, Pedro Martinez. A story is recounted from Kevin Millar concerning a 2003 series with the hated Yankees in the Bronx. Millar, facing Roger “I never tell a lie, unless it’s about my steroid use” Clemens, is hit in the hand by a pitch. Clemens later says that Millar should learn how to get out of the way. Martinez decides to take matters into his own hands asking Millar which one of the Yankees should pay for Clemens’ act. Millar defers to Pedro. “Petey” hits both Soriano and Jeter in the hand, sending both to the hospital. According to Millar, after the game Martinez adds the following warning to Clemens: “you hit one of my guys and I’ll hit two of yours.”

The Globe article goes on to extol the virtues of Pedro as a fearless leader and team motivator who followed his threat to “Roid Roger” with the following statement for Yankees owner, George Steinbrenner.

“Georgie-porgie, he may buy the whole league, but he doesn’t have the money to put fear in my heart”.

Wow. Perhaps the top, badass comment ever uttered by a 5 ft 11 in, 170 lbs major leaguer. What could possibly ever tame this fearsome gladiator of the mound?

Well, the answer is simple. It was the 4-year, $53 million contract the New York Mets gave the tough guy. Now, he would have to back up his words by picking up a bat and stepping in the batters box. Guess what happened? The lion that roared in Boston as the Sawx fearless leader became the lamb that forgot how to protect his mates in Flushing.

In his last 4 years as the “Boston Bad-Ass”, Pedro hit 48 batters (2001-2004). In his 4 years as the enforcer of the blue and orange, he hit a total of 22 (2005-2008). In his final season on the AL (2003) he hit 16 batters (career high) in 217 innings pitched. In his first year in the NL, pitching the same amount of innings, he hit 4 batters.

As a Mets fan, one grows accustomed to free agent signings never producing in Flushing as they have in their past. Pedro, like Williams, posted some numbers in Boston bordering on mythical proportions. But, when a traveling Mets fan reads a Boston newspaper’s account of the badass, tough guy Pedro, plunking hitters to help fearlessly lead his team, it becomes easy to see why a Fenway tour guide can easily classify a cryogenically preserved Splinter as a myth.