A great piece on Pedro Martinez ran in the Boston Globe on Friday in celebration of Pedro going into the Hall of Fame Sunday. The whole thing is worth a read, but a couple of the anecdotes were particularly hilarious.
Pedro Martinez once shattered a mannequin’s head to prove a point
Gregory J. Fisher-USA TODAY Sports
1. Pedro Martinez once destroyed a mannequin because he didn’t like what he was being asked to do.
Over time, rivals began calling [Martinez] “Senor Plunk,” and the Expos feared the consequences of his perceived headhunting. Angry opponents charged him, touching off brawls, endangering everyone involved.
[Manager Joe] Kerrigan’s plan required Martinez to pitch a simulated game against a mannequin, while Kerrigan barked instructions from behind home plate. Martinez wanted no part of it. He fired his second pitch into the mannequin’s skull, scattering splintered plastic and stuffing all around Kerrigan.
“Everybody started laughing,” Harper remembered.
Everybody, that is, but Kerrigan.
2. Pedro Martinez was perpetually late.
No one cured Martinez’s tardiness, however. After the Sox swept the Anaheim Angels in the 2004 American League Division Series, they scheduled a workout at Fenway Park. Martinez arrived at 5:30 p.m. and found the clubhouse empty.
“What’s up?” he asked a staffer.
“The workout was at 1 o’clock,” Martinez was told.
“Oh,” he said, “I thought it was at 4 [o’clock].”
3. Pedro Martinez wanted a chance to face Babe Ruth (and maybe plunk him)
Despite several flare-ups over his contract status, Martinez’s final years with the Sox proved to be consistently productive and brought him ever closer to helping the club vanquish the so-called Curse of the Bambino, or, as he preferred to describe it, “more than 80 years of heartbreak.”
He attacked the challenge as if his mother depended on it.
“Wake up the damn Bambino and have me face him,” Martinez once declared. “Maybe I’ll drill him in the ass, pardon me the word.”
Clearly, Pedro should be everyone’s favorite baseball player of all time.
