YOU can count on one hand the number of baseball players it’s worth waiting through a rain delay of longer than two hours to watch perform. It just so happens that the Mets have one of them.
Pedro Martinez has become Mets-See TV – everywhere, that is, except on Time-Warner, where, no matter who’s in uniform, they are Can’t-Mets TV.
At the ballpark, he is theater, worth the price of admission, worth the inconvenience of enduring raindrops falling on the head on an unseasonably chilly night.
Broadway near Willets Point.
Maybe they would have waited it out anyway, those 12,000 or so fans who hung around through the deluge that pushed the starting time of last night’s game at Shea to 9:27. But maybe they wouldn’t have even bothered to show if, say, Victor Zambrano had been listed as the probable starter.
But it wasn’t Zambrano, proving that good things do indeed come to all who wait. It was, instead, Martinez, who has injected his team with a unique accent of charisma. He’s a reminder that they are, after all, baseball players out there.
He gives the fans something to talk about. More than that, even, something to brag about. It wasn’t only because the seats were wet that the fans were up on their feet for almost all of Pedro’s 100 pitches through seven innings last night; it was because they wanted to be part of it, be part of the show.
And it was that, all of that, even before Carlos Beltran smashed seventh-inning, 460-foot, three-run homer off the right-field scoreboard to give the Mets a 4-1 lead the bullpen protected for a 5-1 victory over the Phillies that boosted the club back to .500.
Jon Lieber was the same economical self he had been last year in pinstripes, including his Game 2 ALCS victory over Martinez and the Red Sox, holding the Mets to one run before departing for a pinch-hitter in the seventh.
But Pedro was masterful in keeping opposing batters off balance with an array of stuff that had them missing 71 mph curves en route to a six-strikeout, four-hit line. He was ahead of nearly every batter, using cunning and deception, if not raw power, to put the Phillies away.
Pedro has allowed 12 runs on 22 hits in 43 innings (2.51 ERA) in going 3-1. He’s struck out 52 and walked eight. And he’s kept the ball in the yard. Indeed, since Adam Dunn went deep on him in the first inning of the opener in Cincinnati, Martinez has gone 158 straight batters without allowing a homer.
There’s an enthusiasm to Pedro’s game that’s contagious. He’s having fun out there, the accumulated baggage of the last few years left behind at Logan Airport in Boston.
If the fans waited in the rain to watch Martinez deal, he became a fan too last night when Cliff Floyd lumbered in from deep left field to make a diving, rollover catch of Pat Burrell’s short fly to end the sixth.
Martinez bounced off the mound and ran toward second base. He first raised his right fist in the air, then threw both arms straight up in delight, waiting toward the middle of the diamond to congratulate Floyd on his way to the dugout.
The Mets and their fans have a bounce in their step that’s worth a two-hour wait anytime.
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Pedro power
Pedro Martinez, pitching to Phils at Shea last night, improved to 3-1 on season with another impressive performance. The numbers:
IP H R ER BB SO
7 4 1 1 2 6
