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Jeff Wilpon's a scumbag and I am shocked shocked shocked.
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Pedro Martinez says in new book that Mets COO Jeff Wilpon urged him to pitch hurt
D.J. Short
May 2, 2015, 12:03 PM EDT
Tyler Kepner of the New York Times has some interesting teasers from Pedro Martinez’s new book, “Pedro,” which is set to be released on Monday. In one of them, Martinez claims that Mets COO Jeff Wilpon urged him to pitch hurt during his first season with the team in 2005.
Martinez writes that his toe was hurt and that Manager Willie Randolph had told him he was done for the season. But, he said, Wilpon, now the Mets’ chief operating officer, wanted to sell tickets for a matchup against the star Marlins left-hander Dontrelle Willis. Martinez said he protested the order and offered to give back the rest of his contract.
“While I’m the boss here, you’re going to have to do what I say,” Wilpon said, according to Martinez, who gave in and pitched. He lost the game, which drew 25,093 fans, and said the injury prolonged the toe problem. Other parts of his body broke down the next season, and Martinez was inactive for the Mets’ run to Game 7 of the 2006 National League Championship Series.
“I couldn’t help but think about how when I was healthy in 2005, our team wasn’t that good,” Martinez writes. “But as my health declined, I was urged to pitch a meaningless game at the end of 2005 that wound up shortening my recovery time for 2006 and led me to a hospital where doctors performed a three-hour arthroscopic procedure to repair my shoulder.”
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The Mets were only on the fringes of contention in 2005, but they rode Martinez hard down the stretch despite his nagging injury. He threw 122 pitches in a shutout against the Braves leading up to this particular outing. While he ended up making the start against the Marlins, he was pulled after just 75 pitches and Willie Randolph said after the game that he was “really banged up.” It turned out to be his final start of the season. It’s worth noting that his toe issue dated back to 2004 during his time with the Red Sox and there had long been questions about how long his shoulder would hold up.
Wilpon has denied Martinez’s claim and said that decisions on player health “have always been put in the hands of our baseball people.” He’s not going to get much benefit of the doubt from some Mets fans and others, but Martinez said in an interview that he puts more blame on himself than Wilpon and that he should have listened to his body.
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http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/ ... itch-hurt/
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Pedro Martinez Tells His Story
MAY 1, 2015
By TYLER KEPNER
The transformation of Pedro Martinez — from ferocious competitor to baseball sage — is now complete. In the last few months, Martinez, the former star pitcher for the Boston Red Sox and four other teams, has analyzed the postseason for TBS, been elected to the Hall of Fame on his first try, joined MLB Network and, this week, become an author. The intellect behind the fire is on regular display.
“A lot of people, when they saw me competing, they never saw the human being behind it,” Martinez said in a recent interview. “I’m totally different than they think, and I don’t know if they took the time to notice that I was totally different when I wasn’t pitching. Some people now are starting to put the pieces together.”
Martinez and his co-author, Michael Silverman of The Boston Herald, assemble those pieces for more than 300 pages in “Pedro,” published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and set to be released Tuesday. From his boyhood in the Dominican Republic — where he used the heads of his sister’s dolls for baseballs and lived in a home with no refrigerator, TV or closets — to his final game, for Philadelphia in the 2009 World Series, Martinez chronicles a wild ride.
“I think it’s important for kids to understand that there’s going to be adversity, and that even if you’re not looking for adversity, it will show up,” Martinez said, explaining why he wrote the book. “It’s important that they see hope, and they see that they belong and there’s no need to believe anybody that tells them, ‘No, you can’t.’ ”
When the Los Angeles Dodgers told Martinez he was too frail to start and traded him to Montreal, Martinez won a Cy Young Award. When the Expos could not afford him — and sent him to Boston, where he did not want to go — Martinez won two more.
When the Red Sox waited too long to offer a three-year contract after their 2004 championship, the Mets gave Martinez four years. His first New York season was mostly successful — until, he said, Jeff Wilpon forced him to pitch in a game in late September when the Mets were far out of the race.
Martinez writes that his toe was hurt and that Manager Willie Randolph had told him he was done for the season. But, he said, Wilpon, now the Mets’ chief operating officer, wanted to sell tickets for a matchup against the star Marlins left-hander Dontrelle Willis. Martinez said he protested the order and offered to give back the rest of his contract.
“While I’m the boss here, you’re going to have to do what I say,” Wilpon said, according to Martinez, who gave in and pitched. He lost the game, which drew 25,093 fans, and said the injury prolonged the toe problem. Other parts of his body broke down the next season, and Martinez was inactive for the Mets’ run to Game 7 of the 2006 National League Championship Series.
“I couldn’t help but think about how when I was healthy in 2005, our team wasn’t that good,” Martinez writes. “But as my health declined, I was urged to pitch a meaningless game at the end of 2005 that wound up shortening my recovery time for 2006 and led me to a hospital where doctors performed a three-hour arthroscopic procedure to repair my shoulder.”
Continue reading the main story
In a statement through a spokesman, Wilpon denied that he told Martinez to pitch hurt.
“Pedro was always a great competitor and deserving of being in the Hall of Fame,” the statement said. “This particular excerpt in the book is false as those kinds of decisions have always been put in the hands of our baseball people.”
Martinez said in the interview that he did not blame Wilpon.
“When you’re going to get hurt, you’re going to get hurt,” he said. “I don’t have anybody to blame but probably myself for not listening to my body. I think I was brave to pitch games, but I think I took it to extremes that day.”
Martinez was 32-23 with a 3.88 earned run average in 79 starts for the Mets over four seasons. He stressed that he enjoyed “every aspect” of playing for the Mets.
“I was paid to pitch, so I went and did that,” he said. “I did it whenever you asked me, whenever I could. I wanted to do it for as long as I could, and that was my limit.”
His actual limit, it turned out, came the next season with the Phillies, and ended, appropriately, at the new Yankee Stadium. Martinez had some of his most memorable moments in the Bronx, including the seventh game of the 2003 American League Championship Series, a few days after he had tossed the Yankees coach Don Zimmer to the ground in a brawl.
Although Zimmer, then 73, tearfully took the blame, Martinez writes that the incident is his only regret. Fans sent him death threats, he writes, and it was not safe for his family to travel to New York for Game 7.
“I don’t think I ever faced a game where my mind was so distressed by everything that was going on,” Martinez said in the interview. “The game, actually, got me more relaxed than anything, to get to the game and know that I was able to pitch and not have anything happen to me. After having bodyguards in the room and everywhere I walked — and my food had to be pretty much checked out by everybody — that was a sense of relief.”
Of course, the Red Sox lost Game 7 after Manager Grady Little let Martinez give up the lead in the fateful eighth inning. That story is recounted in the book, a feisty memoir of a career that, at its peak — and without the help of performance-enhancing drugs, Martinez says — was among the best ever.
“During those five or maybe six years, I didn’t feel intimidated by anybody regardless of what they were using or how they were doing it,” Martinez said. “I felt like I belonged and I could get you out.” |
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/sport ... ports&_r=1
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