How I helped bring big-league baseball back to Washington

Nobody has seen this in DC in a while. (AP photo)

With the first World Series game in Washington, D.C., since 1933 just hours away, it's time to share the tale of the role I played in making it all happen.

The year was 1994. I was a young stringer at the Washington Post, working the Sports desk by day and covering minor league, college, and high school games on nights and weekends. Baseball was my favorite sport, but the closest big-league team, the Baltimore Orioles, was an hour away. The second incarnation of the Washington Senators had left town for Texas more than 20 years before, and summers in DC were spent waiting for football season to start.

Then one day the phone rang in the Sports department (yup, people really called the Sports desk in that Jurassic era). It was an Orioles fan, irate that the team's D.C. ticket office had closed. I didn't know there was such a place, and asked him where it was; it turns out it was only a few blocks from the Post's 15th and L offices.

Where I took the call in '94 - since torn down.

During my lunch break, I walked over and checked it out. Sure enough, there were was a CLOSED sign on the door of an otherwise nondescript storefront on 17th and L, with posters of Cal Ripken and Brady Anderson in the window. Before online ticket brokers got heavy into the market, most folks got tickets the old-fashioned way -- at the ballpark or at an office like this one.

Now DC residents no longer had the latter option. A few angry fans milled around out front; a real mini-mutiny.

I wrote a story about the incident that was one of my rare front-page-of-the-Sports-section articles, and the result was a stream of phone calls into the Sports desk complaining about the closing.

They must have called the Orioles PR office too, because the store was quickly reopened. Staff writer and Orioles beat man Mark Maske got to write the follow-up story, but I didn't mind. It was cool enough that my reporting had helped spark action. Even Orioles owner Peter Angelos got involved.

Cal was a big DC draw in '94.

The incident proved what I already knew from covering the minor leagues for the Post; Washington was a football town, but there was still plenty of baseball fans in DC hungry for a big-league club. They were willing to drive an hour to Baltimore to see one, and helped fill several minor-league ballparks in Maryland and Virginia as well.

When the Redskins went from a perennial contender to an awful club in the mid-1990s, and the basketball Bullets and hockey Capitols were stumbling along at mediocre or worse, the yearning in DC for a winning team in ANY sport was high. During the MLB strike of '94, my minor league coverage briefly took over large portions of the Sports section when Baltimore's Class AA Bowie Baysox club made the Eastern Division playoffs. It was the closest thing to big-time baseball in either DC or Baltimore that summer. 

The best pro baseball club near DC, c 1994.

A little over a decade later, long after I had returned to my native Boston, Washingtonians finally got their own baseball team when the Expos relocated from Montreal as the Nationals. The Redskins still stunk, and slowly DC brought back the fans it had lost to the Orioles in previous decades.

Now, it appears, that transformation is complete. And when the first pitch is thrown tonight, I'll be watching with a little bit of pride.

After all, I helped show Washington could be a baseball town.

Another Hall of Fame honors Pedro Martinez for his deeds and recalls his classy words

Pedro earned his stripes in Montreal.

For Red Sox fans it was a single sound byte in a month-long stretch of magical, must-see video. Most probably didn't even hear it above all the screaming in living rooms, dorm rooms, and bars across New England. Fewer would recall it later.

Over the border, however, folks took notice -- and never forgot.

Pedro Martinez had just helped the 2004 Red Sox win their first World Series in 86 years. The triumph climaxed a seven-year run of domination by Pedro unseen before or since: a 2.45 ERA and 0.978 WHIP in regular-season play during an era when steroid-fueled sluggers ripped other pitchers to bits.

In his and Boston's crowning moment of glory, a champagne-socked Pedro took a moment in the raucous Boston clubhouse to thank the Montreal Expos fans that had embraced him as he grew to stardom with their team in 1994-97. The cash-strapped Montreal front office had sent Pedro to the Red Sox in a one-sided deal after his Cy Young season in '97, knowing it couldn't resign him. Now they were losing far more than a pitching ace.

Always an afterthought in hockey-crazed Canada, and saddled with a dismal stadium that citizens voted down replacing with a publicly-funded ballpark, Les Expos were moving south to become the Washington Nationals.

"I would like to share this with the people in Montreal that are not going to have a team anymore," said Martinez. "My heart and my ring is with them, too."

A moment shared.

He was speaking to a single Montreal reporter, but the 12-second clip soon went worldwide. The classy comments were Pedro's way of thanking those who had believed in him. Tommy Lasorda and the Dodgers may have thought Martinez lacked the strength and size to be a starter (swapping him to Montreal even-up for Delino DeShields), but Expos manager Felipe Alou and his organization gave Pedro the chance to prove he could. Now the country he departed after four years and a .625 winning percentage is thanking him back with its ultimate honor.

On June 16, Martinez will be inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame, along with former Blue Jays outfielder Lloyd Moseby and baseball historian William Humber.

In a conference call with reporters after receiving the news on Feb. 1, Pedro expanded on why the honor meant so much. After his 1994 trade from the Dodgers, where his big brother and teammate Ramon had always looked out for him amidst the craziness that is LA, Martinez established his independence in Canada.

"At the time, I didn't know what to do in the streets," said Pedro. "Montreal helped me to become a man, because not only was I on my own, but doing it in a place where I felt really, really safe and loved by the people and embraced by the people that did not care what color you were, what you were wearing, how much money you were making. They were there to make you feel comfortable. So Montreal means the world to me."

Alou gave Martinez a chance.

Martinez always felt, as did many of his teammates at the time, that the Expos could have won the 1994 World Series. They were in first place with the best record in the MLB on August 12 when the remainder of the regular season and entire postseason were canceled by the 1994 baseball strike. Pedro, in his first year with the club, was 11-5 and on a five-game winning streak when the strike hit.

That's why when he finally won his first championship a decade later, Pedro wanted Montreal fans to know he wished it had been with them. His Hall of Fame plaque in Cooperstown may include a Red Sox hat, but he will always be remembered warmly by Canadians as more than just a baseball star. His brilliance went beyond the numbers, on and off the field.

Boston fans understand completely.

Pedro Persevered -- and Sox Hope his Pupils Can Too

Pedro talks, and pupils listen.

News Flash: Pedro once struggled.

One of the delights of Red Sox spring training this year has been the return of former ace-turned-special instructor Pedro Martinez. In addition to working with young and veteran pitchers on their mechanics, Pedro has been a media darling -- smiling his way through numerous radio, TV, and print interviews.

Of all the sound bytes and quotes, however, the one that struck me as the most poignant has been largely ignored. During an early-morning interview on WEEI's Dennis and Callahan show on Feb. 19, Martinez was asked by Gerry Callahan if he thought he could help Daniel Bard regain his form as one of baseball's best setup men. "Yes," the future Hall of Famer said, before adding that he understood exactly what Bard had gone through during a disastrous 2012 campaign that included a demotion to the minor leagues.

Martinez, the Sandy Koufax of his era, relate to an epic slump? How could that be?

As a young Expo, Martinez doubted his abilities.

It was during his early career, Martinez said, and he was struggling as a starting pitcher with the Montreal Expos. He went to manager Felipe Alou and told him he didn't think he could cut it as a big-leaguer.

"Felipe said, 'Are you quitting?' and I said, 'No, I just don't feel I'm performing at the level I should,'" Martinez told Callahan and WEEI listeners. 

Pedro didn't specify exactly when the exchange took place, but looking at his career stats on baseball-reference.com, I figure it was most likely 1996, when Martinez endured a two-month stretch in which he went 3-5 with an ERA above 5.00 and appeared headed to a sub-.500 record for the season. 

In the midst of his travails, Martinez explained, came an incident that as he described it sounded like something out of "The Natural" or "Field of Dreams." 

Tommy Harper: Sage advice saves an ace.

"I was sitting down on the bench after a game, and [coach] Tommy Harper came up and sat down with me," related Martinez. "He said, 'You know what? The game's over.' I said, 'Yeah...' and he said, 'You know, I always come and sit here and listen to the organ after the game. The game is over, but the organ continues to play.'

"I said, 'What do you mean by that?' and [Harper] said, 'I know you're not having the best time right now, but do you know how it goes away? Just keep pitching.' I thought about it and said, 'But I'm struggling so bad I don't even want to pitch,' and he said, 'Just keep pitching. It will go away.'"

Martinez listened to Harper's advice, finished the year 13-10, and in 1997 led the National League with a 1.90 ERA -- starting his Koufaxian seven-year stretch with Montreal and Boston as the MLB's best pitcher. Harper saw much of it up close, first with the Expos and later as a Red Sox coach.

"That's baseball," Martinez told Callahan. "Everybody goes through a little funk sometimes, and he [Bard] is having one of those."

Bard follows the master.

So how can Martinez help Bard and other Red Sox pitchers rebound from last year's disaster? Pedro said that he has a good eye for mechanics, and believes he'll know when a tweak to a hurler's delivery may make a difference. This is what he did during his own career, closely watching great pitchers like Roger Clemens and Greg Maddux in developing his own physical and mental repertoire.

"I'm a combination of everything," Martinez explained. "I took a little bit of pretty much everyone and used it to build my own experience. I hope they do that the same way."

Perhaps John Lackey, coming back from a year off after Tommy John surgery, can also pick up a thing or two from Martinez. In the midst of his string of domination, Pedro suffered a torn rotator cuff in 2001 and missed half of that season. He returned the next year as more of a control artist than a flamethrower and still went 20-4 while leading the American League in ERA and strikeouts.

"I was a student," Martinez told the Boston Globe in another interview. "I wasn't just gifted. I had to study a lot."

Once the student, now the teacher.

If Lackey, Bard, and other pitchers on the Sox staff can listen to their new teacher as well as Martinez did to mentors like Harper, Pedro's hiring may be one of the best moves the Red Sox made this offseason.