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Miller's camping trip
FORT MYERS, Fla. -- It was the frostiest 80-degree day ever. Nomar Garciaparra is angry and hurt. Pedro Martinez feels disrespected by certain members of the Boston media.
Do icicles form when the sun is shining?
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Pedro Martinez feels the Red Sox have at least a trio of aces in their starting rotation. (AP) |
Welcome to spring, Boston Red Sox -style. You knew it was going to be tense. You knew it was going to be wild. After last week, finally, for certain, you knew it was going to be A-Rod-less.
Did you bring a wool hat and mittens?
"Am I pissed? Am I still mad?" Garciaparra asked, repeating a question on his first day at spring training. "I don't know if I'm all those things.
"I'm definitely hurt by a lot of it. You spend your whole career with one team, you do what you do, and you find out on television that you're almost traded. How would you feel?
"That's how I found out. The great thing is, I'm here. The chair is familiar, and it's still warm."
The chair, a picnic table bench outside of the clubhouse at the Red Sox's minor-league clubhouse, was still warm because 15 minutes earlier the Great Pedro was holding court from the same location on his first day in camp.
Martinez talked about, among other things, why he stopped talking on most days last year -- and why he intends to keep the same policy this year. He says he has been less appreciated in Boston, by certain segments of the population, than in other cities in which he has played.
"Last year, yeah," Martinez said. "Not by the fans. Not by people on the team. By people in the media. Some people have disrespect for Pedro Martinez the person -- not only the player, but the person. That's the reason Pedro stopped talking a little bit."
Welcome to camp, new manager Terry Francona. You have a team that darn well could win the World Series this year ... or burst like a poisoned appendix. Martinez is entering the last year of his contract and has no idea whether he will be back with Boston next year. Garciaparra remains wounded over the Red Sox openly courting Alex Rodriguez while they were still married to Nomar.
Both Martinez and Garciaparra vow they will play their little red socks off this summer. Of all the junk floating through the air here, that's the one thing you can pretty much grab onto with confidence.
The rest, who knows how it will turn out?
All that's missing in this circus is the elephants.
And just think: The wacky Manny Ramirez, who was in line just ahead of Garciaparra at the departures gate over the winter, isn't even here yet.
"Nomar is a true professional," Martinez said. "I know there was a lot of talk regarding Nomar Garciaparra and Manny Ramirez. Manny Ramirez is in la-la land. I haven't talked to Manny in about a month-and-a-half, so I don't expect that to affect Manny.
"Manny doesn't know where he's standing. But one thing he does know is how to hit and how to play this game.
"Nomar is very professional. He understands the business part of it. I'd be upset as well if I wasn't told I was going to be in trade talks, because a player like Nomar deserves to at least know he's going to be talked about in trades. He's not going to snap because of it. I believe Nomar would never be the kind of guy to open bad things in the clubhouse."
Garciaparra, dressed in a white New England Patriots Super Bowl champions T-shirt, shorts and designer shades, left no doubt that he feels Red Sox management stuck him out on a deserted island this winter. The only thing he didn't do Tuesday during an open and honest discussion with reporters was name the 10 compact discs he would take to that deserted island.
"I pretty much got all of my information off of television," Garciaparra said. "That's what I based things on. What you guys were writing, I stopped reading it after awhile."
The assumption here is that he stopped reading not because of mangled participles and poor metaphors, but because the burning question of whether he would wind up with the Chicago White Sox or Los Angeles Dodgers was causing him to do a fast burn.
"A couple of times, I didn't know whether I'd have to rent a place in Tucson (where the White Sox train) or Vero Beach (spring home of the Dodgers)," Garciaparra said. "I'm glad I still had my connections in Fort Myers so I could get a place here."
Notice, he didn't say he's glad "the Red Sox set me up with a fabulous house on Sanibel Island." Or, "the Red Sox asked whether I preferred beach or golf-course living for six weeks."
Someone asked whether it would make things better if the Red Sox sent Garciaparra's new wife, Mia Hamm, roses every day. That elicited a laugh from Garciaparra, who remained good-natured throughout the session, though a better question might have been whether the Red Sox sent him his own personal copy of Ray Charles' Hit the Road, Jack over the winter.
Garciaparra said he wasn't going to discuss the situation anymore after Tuesday and, for his own sanity, that's probably his best decision since picking up a baseball glove for the first time as a kid. Simply because there is so much material here.
Such as, the Red Sox lowering their offer over the winter from the $16 million a year over four years that Garciaparra declined last spring. When it looked like Miguel Tejada was going to sign with Baltimore for $9 million a year in December, as the A-Rod talks swirled, the Sox offered Garciaparra $48 million over four years -- $12 million a year.
That was an insult, too, Garciaparra said.
"When it came out and how I found out and how it was done ... it was kind of interesting," he said. "When I found out was when all of the talks were going on with Alex. That's when I found out.
"We asked, 'Is this true?' Is this happening? What's going on?' That's when the offer came. That was pretty much how it came about.
"I was thinking that (Boston's) priorities obviously are not for me, they're for someone else. That was pretty evident the whole winter."
With Curt Schilling aboard -- fresh from signing a two-year, $25.5 million contract extension with Boston that begins in 2005 -- Martinez, who is scheduled to earn $17.5 million in the last year of his deal in 2004, undoubtedly will be carefully assessing the organization's priorities as well. He says he is not placing a deadline on Boston to sign him to a contract extension by opening day, and even said he will give the Sox every opportunity to work a deal with him after the season if he's headed for free agency.
"I'm just going to go out and compete like I have to, like a professional," Martinez said. "If they don't want to sign me, I'm pretty sure someone else will give me an opportunity. If they do, I'll be happy to take it."
Just for the record, we're pretty sure someone might want to give a free-agent Pedro Martinez an opportunity, too. Someone such as ... the Yankees? You can feel all of New England shuddering from here.
Both Martinez and Garciaparra said they would like to finish their careers in Boston. Both say they worked out like madmen over the winter and are in excellent shape. Both think that the team assembled here this spring is the Boston club that could become the first since 1918 to cover itself in glory in the World Series.
Martinez thinks this is the best pitching staff Boston has assembled since he arrived in 1998. Certainly, he said, the best rotation since then -- when Pedro won 19 games, Tim Wakefield 17, Bret Saberhagen 15 and Steve Avery 10.
"Right now (with Schilling) we have two Pedro Martinezes," he said. "Three with Derek Lowe."
Then he paused and reassessed.
"We probably have three-and-three-quarters with Wakefield," he teased. "I just say between Wake and Derek Lowe ... Wakey looked better than I did the last month (in 2003), so I have to say we have four or five. Everybody can carry the load."
Said Garciaparra: "We have a phenomenal team. I'm excited about our team."
And in the end, on paper this spring, they do have a phenomenal team. You can lay odds on which superstar(s) will be gone in 2005 -- Martinez, Garciaparra, Lowe, Jason Varitek, David Ortiz and Scott Williamson all are without contracts for '05. You can debate the team chemistry and whether the rift between Garciaparra and the front office will be fatal. And you can argue whether Ramirez really is from New York, or from Pluto.
But if these Red Sox stay healthy -- and here I mean mostly physically, partly mentally -- this season could be even more epic than last in this latest installment of Boston vs. the Yankees.
Things were icy around Ted Williams more often than not, too, and it didn't derail his Hall of Fame career. No matter what you think of them personally, Pedro and Garciaparra are special players with Hall of Fame talent and Hall of Fame work ethics.
Which is why, when Garciaparra says that his loyalty toward the Red Sox uniform remains untouched despite his fractured relationship with the Red Sox front office, it's not difficult to believe him.
"That uniform represents so much more," Garciaparra said. "All of those other great ones who have worn it. It's a tremendous honor and it's a tremendous thrill for me."
Miller's previous camp stops: Red Sox in Fort Myers | Yankees in Tampa | Astros in Kissimmee | Phillies in Clearwater