SI Vault: The Power of Pedro: How Hall of Famer Martinez mastered pitching - SI.com
The Hall of Fame's Class of 2015—Craig Biggio, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz—will be inducted in Cooperstown on Sunday, July 26, and in their honor, we're reaching into the SI Vault for features on these all-time greats. Today's pick: Tom Verducci's March 27, 2000 feature story on Martinez, who was coming off one of the greatest pitching seasons of all time: 23 wins, a 2. 07 ERA and 313 strikeouts in 213 1/3 innings, and his second Cy Young award. On a baseball diamond so scraggly that an impoverished goat would find it unappetizing, a schoolboy and the master cross paths while running sprints in centerfield. "El Duro" is all the boy dares say. Pedro Martinez returns a nod and a smile. El Duro is the loose equivalent of that obsequious Americanism, the Man. El Duro means "the Hard One. " When a baseball flies from the long, grotesquely concave fingers of the Boston Red Sox righthander, Martinez seems to possess the properties of misch metal, an alloy of iron and rare earth elements. "Look at this," says Martinez to a visitor. He offers up his right hand, the very hand of God, as it were, if you happen to be among an extremist sect of Web-based Red Sox zealots, such as those who commune on www. Source: www.si.com
