Blogging on Meds

(Man of all seasons. Pedro on opening day of Spring Training 2008, Doug Benc. Right, “Take that old man!” Pedro mushes Don Zimmer in 2003 ALCS Game 3 brawl.)

My hero Pedro Martinez makes his season debut tonight against the Marlins. P-Mart aka Hydro aka Pedey aka the Best Pitcher of My Lifetime loves tropical humidity, so expect to see 10 strikeouts over 6 or 7 complete. Anyway, NYMag runs an in-depth Mets story this week, and Pedro comes off as the craziest, coolest dude:

One cloudy morning, Pedro Martinez and Orlando Hernandez, the halt and lame portion of the Mets’ starting rotation, work out in a back field. The Dominican and the Cuban exile share a reputation for playoff valor, hissy fits, and ruinous injuries that have left the Mets bereft at crucial moments over the last two seasons. The two are pals from way back and diva soul mates.

Martinez watches from the other side of the fence with some concern, but remains in a happy mood. He plays long toss with a bull-pen catcher, sporadically throwing it over the catcher’s head, perhaps on purpose. As the catcher fetches, Martinez shouts, “¡Arriba, arriba!”

Three Cy Youngs and 209 wins in, Martinez is clearly nuts, Brian Wilson–in–a–sandbox nuts. But this spring it’s a happy nuts. Martinez spent all of last year manically rehabbing the shredded tendons in his pitching shoulder. He won three of five starts in September, only to see his teammates spit the bit. Now in the final year of the four-year, $53 million contract that heralded the Mets’ renaissance, Martinez seems hell-bent on enjoying himself.

When El Duque mopes over to Martinez’s field to throw to some minor leaguers, Martinez playfully screams, “¡Vámonos, vámonos!” El Duque does not pick up the pace. Then Martinez chants, “That’s how we play baseball here, that’s how we play baseball here!”

Now it’s Martinez’s turn. Things look immediately brighter and weirder. It’s blustery out, so Martinez, gardener and cockfighting enthusiast, breaks into a mournful version of Bob Seger’s “Against the Wind.” He only knows the title line. “Against the wind, against the wind,” he sings atonally.

On the mound, Martinez flings off his cap and waves for the pitcher’s cage—in place to prevent $13 million-a-year pitchers from being disabled by line drives—to be removed.

“C’mon, there’s no crying in baseball, let’s play baseball,” he says. As he warms up, Wilpon gingerly steps on a riser behind the backstop for a better look. His bodyguard, derisively known as his manservant among Mets observers, lurks a few feet behind him in a loud shirt and loafers without socks. Even with the acquisition of Santana, a Martinez bull-pen session is an all-hands-on-deck franchise priority. Willie Randolph arrives to watch as Martinez works easily, throwing mostly breaking pitches. “We got game, we got game!” he shouts to no one in particular. For twenty or so pitches, Martinez expertly works his pitches up and down and all around the strike zone.

Then Mets spare part Jose Valentin steps into the batter’s box. Martinez launches five erratic but crisp fastballs, then a ridiculous curve. Valentin reflexively bends his knees while his backside bails out of the box.

Wilpon gently taunts Valentin. “Jose, you could move in a little.”

Valentin laughs and says, “Nah, that’s Pedro Martinez. He throws the hee-haw.” Valentin makes the motion of a ball coming into his rib cage. “No way.”

His work complete, Martinez saunters off as John Denver sings on the PA, “Life ain’t nothing but a funny, funny riddle.” Peterson shakes his hand.

“Great pitching, Pedro,” says Peterson.

“Don’t call me Pedro,” chides Martinez. “Call me Picasso.”

“Okay, Pablo,” says Peterson with a smile.

Actually, Peterson thinks Martinez now pitches like a first-rate forger. “When he was young, he’d pitch a Pedro,” explains Peterson. A Pedro was characterized by thirteen or fourteen strikeouts, many on Martinez’s rising fastball. “Now he may pitch a Rembrandt or a Van Gogh, whatever he needs.”

What Peterson is saying without saying it is that post–shoulder surgery, Martinez has to rely on guile and adapting his stuff to each batter’s weakness. Before his rotator-cuff tear, Martinez’s “out pitch” was a virtually unhittable fastball thrown at 95 mph. That’s gone now. In his September comeback, the radar gun never broke 90. So he throws curves and changeups, sneaking in his not-quite-fastball when batters aren’t expecting it.

Martinez has always been a proud and eccentric man, and the transition from power pitcher to crafty veteran is a touchy subject with him. After one practice, reporters asked him about his pitches’ topping out in the mid-eighties. He answered politely, but as the throng started to drift away, he said to no one in particular, “Let me ask you a question. Why is everyone so hung up on my velocity? I can name you ten guys in the minor leagues who hit 95. Guess what? They’re still in the minor leagues.” He squirted moisturizer on his hand from a container in his locker with the word pedro taped across the top. “You know when I’m happy? When I strike out a guy with a 78-mile-an-hour changeup.”

He has a point. “Even when he had that 95-mile-an-hour fastball, he pitched like a junkball artist moving the ball up and down, inside and out,” a former pitcher told me. “He always had a plan on how to set up batters, even when he was young.” Ron Darling, the former Mets pitcher who is now a broadcaster for the team, urged me to watch on video the six innings of no-hit ball Martinez pitched against a tough Indians lineup back in the 1999 playoffs. “His shoulder was killing him, he had nothing on the ball, and they still couldn’t touch him,” said Darling.

A few mornings later, it was Martinez’s turn to throw again. Afterward, he was in a melancholy mood. Sitting in a practice-field dugout not far from his black Aston Martin, which occupies a better parking space than Minaya’s or Randolph’s car, he talked fatalistically about what he had left. When I asked him about his rehabbed shoulder, he was succinct. “It feels really good,” said Martinez, trying not to sound too hopeful. “If it goes, I’m done. No more rehab.” He gave a sad half-smile. “It makes my life easier. You just go out there, leave it all out there, and hand yourself to God and see what happens.”