Vintage Pedro? No, but he reached back and delivered

October 07, 2004|Dan Shaughnessy, Globe Columnist

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- If things go according to plan, Pedro Martinez's next start will be Tuesday or Wednesday night in New York and a lot of wiseguys will be wearing T-shirts that say, "Who's Your Daddy?"

The Sox' "other" ace did not dominate, but he did his job last night. Pedro shut down the Angels on six hits and three runs in seven innings, beating Anaheim, 8-3 to give Boston a 2-0 Division Series lead with a chance to eliminate the Halos at Fenway this weekend. Martinez's 116-pitch effort ended his four-game losing streak and should silence critics who questioned his status and stuff in the wake of his September slump.

"I ate my ego," he said, when asked about being Boston's No. 2 starter for this series. "I swallowed it. To me, any time they give me the ball I am special. I am No. 1 . . . And enough of the trash that we [Curt Schilling and Martinez] don't get along. We get along great. Please don't try to break that up, and make stuff up. That's not true."

Martinez's performance was a relief for the Nation. Pedro's supposed to be the other bookend holding up the Red Sox rotation. He's supposed to be the second barrel in the Sox' shotgun staff. No team still playing baseball has two starters as good as Curt Schilling and Pedro Martinez, and that's why the Sox think they are going to the 2004 World Series.

But there was unusual concern regarding Martinez before the second game of this series. After seven seasons and 117 Red Sox victories and all those standing ovations and Dominican flags, Sox fans held their breath, not knowing what to expect when Pedro took the mound.

Odd. The man has won two Cy Young Awards for Boston. From Day One, he was more popular than Roger Clemens in our town. His clock-stopping, six-inning, playoff no-hitter out of the bullpen in Cleveland in 1999 was the stuff of children's book legend. By any yardstick, he is one of the top pitchers in the history of the franchise. He won 16 games this year and ranked second in the American League with 227 strikeouts.

But the certainty and the swagger dissolved in September. Pedro lost his last four starts and gave up 20 runs in his final 23 1/3 innings of the regular season. As a result, Sox fans and assorted armchair psychologists (like talk show folk and nitwit columnists) pondered the erstwhile ace's crisis of confidence.

The theories:

Pedro's pride (Pedro is a proud man in case you missed the one million prior references to this point) is hurt because he's yielded the title of "ace" to Schilling, who was superior in every way this year. There's certainly evidence of some jealousy and some Sox watchers have tried to read body language in an effort to prove there's tension between the two.