Pedro Power

Author: Alan Topalian

Imagine for a moment that you are a novelist, perhaps the greatest the world has ever seen. You pore over the most minute details of your work, and are a complete master of your trade. You create work that no one ever imagined possible, using your incredible talents and skills to perform unprecedented literary tasks that baffle practically everyone that attempts to comprehend them, yet leaves them shocked and awed and begging for more of your magic.
Now imagine that your team of editors enters the picture, and systematically manages to reduce your work to rubbish unfit to even be a trashy supermarket romance novel. All the effort, brilliance, and near perfection of your work has gone to naught, simply because those who are supposed to support you are horribly inept and risk trivializing your revolutionary and historic accomplishments. Now, perhaps, you can better understand the tortured soul that surely is Pedro Martinez.
I am not insinuating that Pedro has not earned his share of wins and accolades through the years; he has earned three Cy Young awards and has enjoyed two 20-win seasons. The potential tragedy, however, is to be found in the increasing possibility that Pedro's near-immortality may be numbered. He no longer can consistently reach the upper-nineties with his pitches, and his days of total domination may be reaching an end. Although he remains the best pitcher alive, the Red Sox remain a horribly inferior team to the Yankees.
If the Sox cannot surpass the Yanks with the greatest pitcher ever, it will be one of the most enormous wastes in sports history.
I do not argue that a great athlete who retires without winning a championship has marginalized his accomplishments; rather, I argue that I am slowly beginning to realize that if a team that has not won a championship in eighty-five years cannot do so with the best pitcher alive, it would be unbelievably depressing.
Brazilians refer to soccer as "the Beautiful Game" because of the artistic and creative merit of their style of play, especially in comparison to the styles of other world soccer powers. Pedro brings the same dynamic to baseball, performing with such grace and ease that his performances embody the clichÈ of "poetry in motion."
Indeed, anyone who has followed the Red Sox over the past five seasons has been treated to a wondrous display of pitching talent unmatched by any other in the game, as no other hurler can come remotely close to matching his combination of power and movement.
In last night's opening day performance, Pedro was his usual incredible self, throwing seven innings of three-hit, one (unearned) run ball, leaving with a secure 4-1 lead. In a bizarre sequence of follies, the inept bullpen managed to ruin the entire game in surrendering five runs in the bottom of the ninth. To Tampa Bay. After Carl Crawford's (2002: 2 HRs) two-out, three-run, game-winning blast ended it disgracefully, another masterful opus by the greatest performer I will ever witness will fade into obscurity as just another no-decision.
Sorry, Pedro. You deserve so much better.