When the Red Sox did not re-sign Pedro Martinez after the 2004 season I was apathetic. Maybe I was a little sad to see Pedro go, but overall I didn’t really care all that much. Red Sox General Manager Theo Epstein had made the decision to let him sign elsewhere, and at the time anything Theo did was fine by me. Epstein had just handed Sox fans our first World Series in 86 years, and he had done it behind one of the gutsiest trades- the Nomar Trade- in recent memory. So, see ya, Pedro. It was good knowin’ ya.
From there, Pedro fell off my radar screen as a baseball fan. He signed with the Mets, a team overshadowed by the Yankees and a team I couldn’t care less about, and limped into retirement on mediocre pitching and a handful of injuries.
In Boston, the Sox kept winning and proved Theo right. Manny, Papi, and Schilling carried the spotlight without any trouble, and I didn’t miss Pedro at all.
But then this summer I started coming to a realization- I had forgotten how good Pedro was. Every once in a while NESN would play an old, flashback game of one of Pedro’s dominant Red Sox performances. As I would sit on my couch, I would watch this tiny, little Dominican man absolutely annihilate the opposition.
In one game against the Devil Rays in 2000, Pedro hit the first batter of the game, Gerald Williams, who proceeded to charge the mound and land a punch on Martinez. Pissed, Pedro went on to pitch a complete game shutout, striking out thirteen, and giving up only one hit, breaking up his no-hitter in the bottom of the ninth. It was Pedro at his finest.
Then, after seeing his interview on Thursday before Game 2 of the World Series, in which he stated that he was “the most influential player that ever stepped in Yankee Stadium,” my realization was complete- I love Pedro Martinez. I had just forgotten over the past few years.
Looking back, there were two main reasons I loved Pedro while he was with the Sox, and those reasons haven’t changed a bit since he left.
1999 and 2000
Over his career, Pedro was one of the best pitchers to ever play the game with hisdominance of Major League Baseball reaching its peak in the 1999 and 2000 seasons. In 1999, Pedro had one of the best pitching season of all time, going 23–4 with a 2.07 ERA and 313 strikeouts (earning the pitching Triple Crown). For his performance, Pedro unanimously won his second Cy Young Award and came in second in the Most Valuable Player ballot (a controversial vote that he should have won). Then in 2000, Martinez went 18-6 with a 1.74 ERA and a 0.74 WHIP, constituting arguably an even better season than the one before. All in all, over the two-year span between 1999 and 2000, Pedro allowed 288 hits and 69 walks in 430 innings with 597 strikeouts, a 0.83 WHIP, and a 1.90 ERA. Numbers like that are unfathomable in baseball today. There is not a pitcher in the game today that could even come close to putting together two seasons of such historical magnitude. He was absoluetly incredible to watch.
Loved in Boston, Hated in New York
Pedro fully embraced the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry, and Sox fans, including me, loved him for it. He taunted the New York media, challenged Yankee players, and fought with Yankee coaches- most notably when he threw the elderly Yankees Bench Coach at the time, Don Zimmer, to the ground in a brawl in 2003. He took on the whole city in 2004 in the “Who’s Your Daddy?” game, and even brought Yankees fans to their feet in 1999 when he one-hit New York in one of the greatest games ever pitched in the old ballpark. His goofy, even childish, personality made him adored by Sox fans and a great teammate in the club house. He made Boston fans smile and Yankee fans cringe, and for that he will always be my favorite Sox player of all time.
