And these days virtually nobody beats Pedro’s best. In a game that lately seems little more than a glorified home-run derby, Martinez has emerged as the last enforcer–a pitcher so dominant that he is being compared, not to his era’s best, but to baseball immortals like Sandy Koufax. The gulf between Pedro and his pitching peers is becoming a chasm: in 1999 he led the American League with 23 wins (next best is 18), a 2.07 earned-run average (next, 3.44) and 313 strikeouts (next, 200). Given today’s smaller ballparks, harder baseballs and bulked-up hitters, says Sox pitching coach Joe Kerrigan, “Pedro’s season arguably may have been the single best by any pitcher this century.”
With the 2000 season in full swing this week, Martinez has his eye on another historical matter, a World Series triumph for the Red Sox, whose championship drought has reached 81 years. “I’m really sorry for all those fans who never got to see the Red Sox win,” says the Dominican Republic native. “But I feel it’s getting close–closer and closer.” Martinez has developed a deep affinity for Boston, discovering an unlikely Latin current in its rabid fans. When he pitches, Fenway Park is filled with delirious fans waving the flag or bearing the face-painted colors of Pedro’s homeland. “They’re so close and loud it feels like the Caribbean,” says the pitcher, who labored in obscurity for four years in Montreal before being traded to this baseball hotbed after the ‘97 season. Martinez tries not to get caught up in the fan frenzy. “I don’t want to lose track of the game at any point,” he explains. “I concentrate on what I do so they can clap and cheer and have all the fun.”
That’s on the days he pitches. On his off days, he is Red Sox class clown, flashing his irrepressible smile, shimmying to “Mambo No. 5” and chattering away with what is far more gentle tease than trash talk. Like when a photographer uses the mantra “you’re the man” to coax Pedro through some preseason poses. Martinez puzzles, “I’m the man? No, you must be the man ‘cause I’m doing whatever you say.” His relentless jabber can occasionally fray nerves, as it did in the middle of one game last year. A band of his teammates retaliated with a sneak attack on the dugout steps, leaving Pedro bound, gagged and lashed to a post. “I can be a little loud,” concedes Pedro, who answers to a host of nicknames, including “Petey,” “Cobra” and “Little Lizard.” “Everyone knows I’m around. I’m always on the move. I got to turn on the radio, play a joke or just mess around.”
He’d love the freedom to go out and mess around more in the Boston community, but a Pedro sighting can cause something between a major commotion and a mini-riot. “I earned being treated like a star on the field and I enjoy it,” says Pedro. “Out of uniform, I don’t even want to talk baseball. But it’s hard here [in the States] because people see the player, but don’t see the person.” Still, he remains very approachable, especially to youngsters. “If for some reason I can’t sign autographs for kids, I dump my head way down and pretend I didn’t hear them,” he says. “Because when they establish eye contact, you can’t say no if you have a heart.”
No one doubts Pedro’s heart. Certainly not after the deciding playoff game against Cleveland when, despite an ailing back, he pitched six no-hit innings to beat baseball’s best-hitting team. He was also the lone pitcher to defeat the world-champion Yankees in the ‘99 postseason. But Pedro may have attained the pinnacle of pitching against New York a few months earlier; his one-hit, 17-strikeout gem is considered by many the greatest game ever hurled against the Bronx Bombers on their home turf. “When you can do that against the very best,” he says, “you wonder, ‘What could I do against the mediocre?’ "
All year long Martinez not only beat baseball’s best, he absolutely preyed on them. Pedro was undefeated, 8-0, against playoff teams. In the all-star game, he struck out a record five in a row, including Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa back-to-back. American League sluggers fared no better during the season; its top four home-run hitters managed just two for 26 against him, with no homers and 16 strikeouts. Perhaps most incredible of all, he gave up only nine home runs all season–none with a runner on base. (By contrast, the National League’s top pitcher, Randy Johnson, gave up 30 homers.) “Every time you go out to catch Pedro, you know this could be that special day,” says Boston catcher Jason Varitek. “I kick myself when he gives up that first hit, thinking I somehow messed it up for him.”
Yet because Martinez is barely 5 feet 11 and appears slight, almost frail (up close, he is far more sinewy), he looks like he would be overmatched facing today’s hitting goliaths. Most of the current pitching elite stand tall on the mound and have the advantage of firing down at hitters. Randy Johnson, for example, is 6 feet 10. Strikeout ace Curt Schilling is 6 feet 5 and Hall of Fame-bound Roger Clemens is 6 feet 4. But Pedro is blessed with pinpoint control of three pitches: a 95-mph fastball, a knee-buckling curve and the best change-up in the game. With his ability to throw any pitch in any location, batters face him without a clue. “I’d buy season tickets just to watch him pitch,” says Sox veteran pitcher Bret Saberhagen, for years one of the game’s best. “No matter what the situation, he never gives in to a hitter. He’s never going to lay it over the middle of the plate.”
Kerrigan says he monitors rather than mentors Martinez so as not to “interfere with the brain waves.” He credits much of Pedro’s success to his pitching intellect: an ability to quickly identify hitters’ flaws and to exploit them. Those hitters will find no solace in the news that Pedro says he is healthier (no nagging injuries) and fitter (he added swimming to his training regimen) than he was last season. And happier, too, with his older brother and idol, Ramon, now slated to be the No. 2 Red Sox starter alongside him. It was Ramon, already a star with the Los Angeles Dodgers, who urged his teenaged brother, above all, to learn English before he leaped to the pros. “He came better prepared and adjusted a lot more easily than me,” says Ramon, a stolid contrast to Pedro.
The only question now is whether Pedro is prepared to take the next big step. After two straight playoff appearances, expectations in Boston are higher than Fenway’s Green Monster. And they haven’t been dampened by a succession of baseball cogniscenti picking Pedro to lead the Red Sox to that elusive championship. But Pedro thrives at center stage. And nothing appears to faze him, not even the legendary “Curse of the Bambino,” which dooms the Red Sox to eternal failure for selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees 80 years ago. Pedro just flashes his winsome smile and says, “We’re going to make a lot of people very happy.” And who can doubt a man with perfect pitch?
