Pedro Martinez inducted into Hall of Fame; joins Juan Marichal as only

No matter his American tendencies, Martinez’s core will always be Dominican. I told you I was going to speak what I felt in that moment.

There’s no reason, Martinez said, to bring up talk show host Colin Cowherd, fired Friday by ESPN for derogatory comments he made about the educational background and intelligence of players from the Dominican Republic.

“I got it all covered today”, he said. “He needs to get to my level to answer him”. He called commissioner Rob Manfred “mi amigo”, Johnson “my brother from another mother”, sprinkled other bon mots, intentional and not, throughout the speech.

“I feel a lot of pride for having played there – as much as in Boston, New York and Philadelphia – you can say I’ve done the whole Eastern division.” he said.

As incredible as Pedro Martinez was on the mound, he was at his finest Sunday, a man who took something so complex and made it perfectly simple. I miss him a lot, ” Biggio said, before addressing Caminiti’s wife and three daughters. I’ve never heard of him. And he wanted me for a third time, but I was too old.

If you noticed two patches on Pedro Martinez’s shoulders during Sunday’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony, they were Martinez’s show of respect for the United States and his native Dominican Republic. “Well, that’s the same way you have to come out of it, ‘” said Martinez. “Yes, we don’t have the resources to be more educated”. It’s usual, you know?

“The 10 years that I spent in Seattle was really like my apprenticeship, if you will, on understanding how to pitch and then somewhat evolving into the pitcher that I was going to become”, said Johnson. Or Denny McLain if you absolutely insist we go nuts over a deeply-flawed statistic like assigning a team victory to an individual. From Jamaica Plain, from all the Dominican enclaves in the Northeast, they came armed with big smiles and hundreds upon hundreds of Dominican flags.

I hope he gets a real chance this time.

“Thirty percent of the Dominican people are in the government and in industries”. We don’t want to look down.

Martinez, engaging and entertaining during his 45-minute session with reporters, splitting it evenly with the Spanish-speaking and English-speaking media, divulged that he made a special detour to the Hall of Fame museum.

Pedro visited Ruth’s statue in Cooperstown this weekend.

It would be two more years before Martinez and the Red Sox would break the Curse of the Bambino. If there is one continuing thread in “Pedro”, the terrific, book co-written by Michael Silverman, it is Pedro’s enduring resentment that he had been unfairly treated here, undervalued there. “Maybe I’ll drill Babe Ruth”.

There is a prominent Mets representation among the new displays at the Hall of Fame.

Martinez said he cooked up the idea of saluting Marichal when he woke up at 6:30 a.m. on Sunday realizing that it was Father’s Day back in his native country. “We’ve moved on now”. Both teams have really surprised me with how they’ve played and how consistent they are. “It was the most devastating time of my life”. For Latinos and Dominicans, it’s not every day you get a Hall of Famer. It is the epitome of upstate New York. Rodriguez certainly has the numbers for the Hall of Fame, but after he was suspended from baseball last year for performance-enhancing drug use, the odds are stacked. Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling, Jon Lester from the Red Sox. I want to encourage you, if nothing else, know that your children’s desire and passion to play baseball is something they can do without a competitive pitch.

Still, he said, “I’m proud of the polka music on the eight-track tapes”.

I was high school-age during Pedro’s peak, and those seasons coincided with my last couple years of playing organized baseball. I wanted to face the best. That’s OK. The pitchers in this recent era aren’t allowed to throw as many innings as back in the 1960s (how did Koufax’s career end, by the way?). “David was all over the baseball”.