Goodbye Old Friend

I recorded the first few innings of the Mets-Nats game last night. I wanted to see how Pedro Martinez pitched. He had a good year last year: 2.82 E.R.A., 208 K's, .204 BAA, and he won 15 games. As good as he was I never really got the sense that he was dominant at any point last year. I think he's continuing a slow decline, which is unfortunate.

Petey and I go way back. The Sox acquired Pedro in the Fall of my Freshman year of college. My friends and I would walk to the park on game nights and buy bleacher seats to see him pitch. Often we would splurge for the more expensive lower bleacher seats, a mere $10 at the time, rather than pay the $8 price for the upper bleachers. We had many great nights watching Petey strike out 10+ batters while heckling the opposing outfielders. We got in Ken Griffey Jr.'s head one time and he started yelling back at us. It was great.

Last night Petey didn't have great velocity or control. He was topping out in the high 80 MPH range. He hit three batters. It wasn't fun to watch.

Pedro Martinez will end up in the Hall of Fame one day. He was absolutely brilliant for seven years. I hope that fans will remember that he dominated in the era of steroids, HGH, and other illegal performance enhancers. That should make his accomplishments all the greater. I hope that he is able to finish out his contract with the Mets and put up respectable numbers.

One final note: Nick Johnson has the worst mustache on a professional athlete that I've ever seen. It's about a 7/10 on the unintentional comedy scale.