A Head-Hunter? : Expos’ Martinez Struggles With the Reputation

The care and feeding of a young pitcher is one of baseball’s most uncertain endeavors. A tender sprout depends on firm support, shelter and proper nutrients. Well-nurtured, a young pitcher may become a hearty perennial. But so much can go wrong. Baseball is not a garden; it’s a jungle.

The Montreal Expos’ Pedro J. Martinez, 22, is one of baseball’s most promising young pitchers. In the past season-and-a-half, he has accomplished what many thought impossible: distinguish himself from 41 other Martinezes playing pro ball.

Martinez’s 92-m.p.h. fastball has something to do with that. This season, Pedro ranks among National League leaders in ERA, strikeouts and opponents’ batting average. The Expos are one of the most capable clubs in cultivating young pitchers, and in management’s eyes, Pedro is an exotic and delicate hothouse flower.

But the rose has a thorn.

Martinez also leads the National League in two negative categories--hit batsmen (10) and brawls incited (three). Opponents have tried to prune him down to size. They have charged at him on the mound, aimed retaliatory pitches at his teammates and questioned his character, privately and publicly.

The pounding, both physical and psychological, has taken a toll on Martinez, whose frail 160-pound body, large dark eyes and polite manner suggest an earnest schoolboy. Although raised in the Dominican Republic, Pedro is fluent and comfortable with English.

“Has this season been hard on you?” I ask him.

“It’s more of a personal thing,” Martinez says. “I don’t really like to have enemies on the other teams. I’m a friendly man. I don’t like to hurt anyone.”

A surge of emotion wells up.

“I’m not from here,” he says. “I’m looking for a living, trying to support myself and my family the best I can. I’m not trying to hurt anybody. I wouldn’t like anybody to hurt me, so why should I want to hurt someone?”

Martinez tells a story about himself, as a first-year pro in 1989, at the Dodger Academy in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

“One day a coach saw me running in the stadium. He say, ‘How far you been running?’ I say ’27 laps.’ He say, ‘Next time I find you running I fine you $500.’ I was only 137 pounds. He was telling me not to run because they wanted me to gain weight. At the time I was making $700 a month. Five hundred dollars was a lot of money.”

“So what did you do?” I ask.

“I say ‘OK.’ But I know I have to keep running to keep in shape for pitching. They let me run sprints and five laps. I wasn’t comfortable with that. So I pay the security guard at night to let me run. He would be watching for me, and I would be running.”

“The guard saved you 500 bucks.”

“I pay him; I give him 20s and 50s. But I got my running in.”

The point of the story? Some National League hitters might suggest Martinez has no regard for rules. But others who know Pedro interpret it another way: Pedro is no fighter. He’s a runner.

Throwing inside is considered a fine and necessary attribute for a pitcher. Throwing deep inside, so that a batter might be hit in the arm, hip or lower back if he doesn’t move--a brushback--is considered nasty but acceptable. Throwing a brushback at a batter’s head--a beanball--is considered immoral and marginally criminal. A routine brushback will make a batter nervous and discourage him from crowding the plate. A beanball can shatter a batter’s face or skull, as well as his career.

The difference between the pitches is roughly that, somewhere between verbal harassment and assault and battery with a deadly weapon. But a problem arises in determining intent. Nobody is sure--except the person throwing the ball--whether the pitch is meant to be a brushback or a beanball. The umpires and league presidents think they know, but they don’t.

Batters usually point to the outcome and the situation: A pitch at the head probably was meant to be a beanball, and a pitch at the head immediately after a home run definitely was meant to be a beanball.

However, pitchers never admit to throwing beanballs and rarely to brushbacks. They explain such pitches as accidental and inevitable lapses of control. Martinez characterizes his hit batsmen as accidents.

“There’s no rule in baseball that says you are not allowed to pitch on the inside corner or close to batters,” he says. “You don’t hit someone on purpose, which I’m not trying to do. Why doesn’t the media say anything when I hit someone with a breaking ball? Half of my 10 hit batters were on breaking balls. But when I hit someone with a fastball they have to think it’s intentional.”

When he is on, Martinez prefers to challenge hitters inside rather than nibble at the outside corner, which accounts for his relatively low walk total. “I’d rather let them hit the ball,” he says. “I never try to hit anyone, but if I’m on the outside of the plate I can be hit, even with my fastball.

“I’m a power pitcher. I’m supposed to go in and get people out. If I keep throwing over the middle and away, they hit it. I’m not a sinker pitcher like Greg Maddux. I don’t have the experience. Everybody thinks of me like a Cy Young. I’m not Cy Young. I’m just in my second year in the league, and I’m learning. If I was a veteran that always knocked people down, that is a different thing.”

Despite his protestations, Martinez finds himself caught up in a timeless debate. Is he intentionally throwing at batters? Or is he accidentally wild?

Los Angeles Dodgers pitching coach Ron Perranoski, under whom Pedro played last season, points to Martinez’s 30 walks in 104 1/3 innings, a mark of control.

“How could he have few walks and lead the league in hit batters?” Perranoski asks.

“That’s a good question,” I say.

“That is a good question,” says Perranoski, eyebrows raised.

After a June 14 brawl, Pittsburgh Pirates Manager Jim Leyland complained about Martinez. Pirates pitcher Blas Minor had hit Larry Walker, after Pedro had hit Carlos Garcia in the hip. Six players, including Pedro, were ejected. “He’s already hit eight or nine people,” Leyland says. “I’m tired of people making excuses for him. It’s a damn shame. Somebody is going to get hurt.”

The perception in some National League dugouts is that Martinez throws at people. It is rooted in an April 13 incident, when Cincinnati Reds outfielder Reggie Sanders charged Pedro after being hit in the eighth inning of what had been a perfect game up to that point. While some concluded that Sanders simply had not understood the situation, others saw in Martinez a pitcher willing to sacrifice a perfect game in order to dominate the inside of the plate. San Diego Padres outfielder Derek Bell called him a “headhunter” after he touched off a brawl April 30 by charging the mound to get to Pedro. “I don’t know if he’s intentionally throwing at someone’s head or not,” Padres batting coach Merv Rettenmund says, “but he’s coming up there too often. He’s not supposed to do that.”

It has gotten so that Pedro’s reputation precedes him into each National League city, Expos catcher Darrin Fletcher says. “Probably the first thing they think of is--this guy hits batters,” Fletcher says.

Expos outfielder Lou Frazier says Martinez’s name comes up in conversations with his friends on other teams.

“The first thing they say is ‘If Pedro throws inside, I’m going to get him,’ ” Frazier says. “I don’t know if they’re joking, but that’s their first reaction.”

“What do you say to them?” I ask.

“I tell them he’s not throwing at anyone,” Frazier says.

Pedro’s travails are a source of acute anxiety to his parents, three brothers and two sisters. His mother, Leopoldina, who lives in Los Angeles with his older brother, Ramon, frets until his games are over and she has heard that Pedro has not been in another brawl. Ramon, 26, a starter for the Dodgers, talks with Pedro frequently.

“I tell him to be careful,” Ramon says. “I don’t want to see anything happen to him.”

Pedro’s manager, coaches and teammates ferociously defend him. They say he has been victimized by overwrought and obsessive news accounts of his incidents--one Montreal headline referred to Pedro as “Senor Plunk”--and that in any event, he is not throwing at batters. They characterize him as “effectively wild” and explain his hit batsmen figure and occasional high brushback as a result of mechanical problems with his delivery. They say some problems are expected in converting from a relief role with the Dodgers last season to a starting role.

Expos Manager Felipe Alou describes the coverage of Pedro as “a delirium for the negative.” Last winter, Alou was not enthusiastic about the deal that brought Martinez to the Expos for second baseman Delino DeShields, but Alou has become a passionate advocate of his fellow Dominican. He would like to refocus the perception of Pedro; however, his task might be difficult as long as the Expos’ press notes refer to Pedro as “Ejecto-King.”

“Pedro is 22 years old, and he is holding his own as a man,” Alou says. “There were many questions about him. Could he throw strikes? Could he make the adjustment to start? So now all the positive this man has done is thrown in the . . . . Nobody asks me about his change-up or his fastball, just this . . . about hitting people. This kid could strike out 250 batters, but nobody knows that. He’s on his way to 200 innings.”

Expos outfielder Moises Alou wishes Pedro’s detractors could know him personally. “He is a great guy, the kindest person,” Moises says. “He is the last guy you would think would throw at somebody. He’s just a very good human being. I don’t see why people think he is throwing at people. He is not.”

The daily instruction of Pedro falls to pitching coach Joe Kerrigan, a former big leaguer with an analytical approach. Kerrigan explains Pedro’s hit-batters figure in the dry language of mechanics. “He rushes his body, drops his arm, flattens his wrist and gets a wide sink, where the ball moves on a flat plane from left to right instead of boring down,” Kerrigan says. “He tries to overthrow pitches. It’s almost a relief mentality where instead of pitching he goes back to throwing. Pedro has to learn that good delivery goes along with good location.”

“How is he going to shake the reputation?” he is asked.

“We don’t talk about it,” Kerrigan says. “We’re just concerned with mechanics, the consistency of his curveball and keeping his arm up on top. To us, inside the clubhouse and industry, he is not that type of pitcher. He knows himself.”

It was Kerrigan’s idea to have Pedro practice pitching inside to a foam-stuffed dummy following the April 30 brawl. Pedro complied, pumping pitch after pitch past the unblinking dummy, clad in an Expos uniform. Pedro never hit the dummy, but he was of a mind to do so.

“I felt really embarrassed to be working with the doll in front of everyone, like I’m not normal,” Pedro says.

“Did it help?” I ask.

“Definitely,” he says. “I’m pitching better inside. I’m not throwing over people’s heads now. But nobody realizes that yet.”