Martinez Lets Arm Do His Talking

Dave Wallace met Pedro Martinez in a sugar-cane field in the Dominican Republic. Wallace was looking for live arms for the Dodgers, his search bringing him to the skinny kid with the loose arm and the down-turned eyes.

A few months later, Wallace and Martinez sat behind home plate in a minor league ballpark in Salt Lake City, watching a lineup of older players light into Martinez’s rookie league teammates.

Great Falls lost, Wallace recalled it as 15-1, Martinez charting every pitch for his start the following night.

When it was done, Martinez handed Wallace the clipboard, and as he did, snapped something about taking his revenge the following night.

Fourteen years later, as Wallace stood before his locker Monday afternoon at Busch Stadium, where his Boston Red Sox will play the St. Louis Cardinals tonight in Game 3 of the World Series, he grinned at the image of Martinez, then 18, so angry his spiny shoulders shook.

“He went out the next night and struck out 15 of those guys,” Wallace said. Martinez, who turned 33 Monday, gets the baseball again tonight, again from Wallace, now the pitching coach for the Red Sox.

“My only take on it is, for the guy to have the career he’s had in Boston, talking about the postseason and the World Series, I would have to think he would embrace the moment,” Wallace said.

In a clubhouse crowded with light, entertaining personalities, Martinez has become the exception. Though teammates swear by his spirit, by his every-fifth-day commitment, they’ve also acknowledged a growing distance between them and their pitching ace.

Martinez’s ability to locate the lone dissenting voice in a chorus of praise is legendary. He pitches not swept away in his previous achievements, but driven by the occasional slight, real or perceived.

“There’s always an argument,” Red Sox reliever Alan Embree said. “He takes exception to the argument.”

According to those close to the Red Sox, Martinez was, at the least, curious and at most hurt when the club thought it had to acquire Curt Schilling, in part to add a co-No. 1 to an annually shallow rotation, in part to guard against the possible departure of Martinez, whose contract expires after the World Series.

He has had his tense moments with the Boston media and with Red Sox ownership, and was holding the ball when Grady Little let the New York Yankees back into the American League championship series a year ago. He has shoved batters off the plate with high, tailing fastballs and famously slung Yankee bench coach Don Zimmer to the dirt, an incident for which Zimmer later apologized. He once called out Babe Ruth and, last week, incited the “Who’s your daddy?” chants that rang through Yankee Stadium.

For several years, rumors have gathered about the condition of his right shoulder, the fear of which was said to have led the Dodgers to trade Martinez 11 years ago. He did not miss a start this season, but his 3.90 earned-run average was a career high and he lost nine games, more than he’d lost in the previous two seasons combined.

And, of course, free agency awaits and the Red Sox have allowed it to arrive without an extension. General Manager Theo Epstein would not address Martinez’s situation specifically Monday, saying only, “I would like to have all these guys back, but that’s an issue for another day.”

That leaves Martinez and what could be his final start for the Red Sox, pitching for the lone matter left unsettled in a lifetime spent playing bigger than his stature would seem to allow.

Those who knew him in the years after Wallace’s first encounter say Martinez has become less engaging, more hardened with age. A few in Montreal still refer to him as Petey, the childlike nickname recalling a time when he was the little kid with the huge heart and the nasty streak. He’s all of those things now, except the little kid appears to have wearied of something.

It has become his habit to skip interviews between starts. He is available only on the nights after he pitches, and on Monday declined again to answer questions.

They don’t pay him to talk, and the Red Sox don’t insist he does. They pay him to be Pedro, on a late-October night with nothing on the line except everything they’ve ever dreamed about, fighting off the Cardinals and whatever else he feels is standing there.

Wallace has seen it before. That big, tough lineup in Salt Lake City, back when Martinez didn’t stand much wider than a fungo bat? “The first guy,” Wallace said, “hit the dirt.”