Pedro falls short in Game 6

NEW YORK — It might have been impossible for MLB jerseys this pitching matchup to live up to the kind of hype the New York media can spin out of a Pedro Martinez-Andy Pettitte meeting, with a chance to clinch a World Series at Yankee Stadium on the line.
Or perhaps the Yankee order just swings the bat too well for any game of this magnitude to be, in the end, about someone else’s pitcher.
“The thing I saw with Pedro (tonight) is he didn’t have a good fastball,” assessed Phillies manager Charlie Manuel. “His fastball wasn’t as good as it had been the last two times out.
“He’s better than that.”
The Game 6 scenario was exactly what you might have laid out back in April, if you could have written a script for how the biggest game of the 2009 Major League Baseball season should play out.

The biggest stage — Yankee Stadium in November — the defending champs from Philadelphia, and the pitcher with the most tempestuous relationship with the Yankees and their fans in all of baseball.
Pedro Martinez.
The problem is, Hideki Matsui doesn’t read English very well.
The big Japanese slugger blasted a two-run homer off Martinez in the second inning, and a two-run single in the third and hanging the loss on Pedro on a six-RBI night for the World Series MVP Matsui.
“I guess you could say this is the best moment of my life right now,” Matsui said.
With perfect hindsight, Manuel was asked if he considered pulling Martinez for Matsui’s second at bat, after he had homered off of Pedro in his first one.
Whatever the reason, it was not meant to be for Martinez, who never mustered his best stuff and hit the showers after only four innings Wednesday night in the Bronx. He was tagged with the Game 6 loss — his second of the series after going six innings in a 3-1 loss in Game 2 — and on perhaps his last big game start in Yankee Stadium, Pedro was out the door before the first bottle of champagne had been cracked in the Bronx.
“Pedro, he knows how to pitch,” drawled Manuel, an old baseball man who has forgotten more about the art of hitting than most will ever know. “I had to let him… It wasn’t time for me to take him out.”

That time would come an inning later however, as the Yankees hitters turned a memorable night for Martinez into one he’d like to forget.

“He pitched me tough, plunked me in the leg,” said New York’s Mark Teixeira. “He was still gettin’ it up there at 90 miles per hour. But give our guys credit. Sometimes you can’t say the pitcher had a bad day. Sometimes you have to say the hitters had a good day.”
Amen to that, brother.
The Yankees handed the ball to their iconic left-hander, and 37-year-old Andy Pettitte became the first pitcher in history to start and win all three clinching games in the post-season, dousing Minnesota, Anaheim and Philly in order. No one has clinched more playoff series than Pettitte’s six, nor started more playoff games (40) or pitched more post-season innings.
The three-time Cy Young winner, one of the great pitchers of our time, positively bathed in the New York spotlight these past 10 days. He started two games here, which provided more than enough of the media attention he craves.
“I mean, what else would I want?” Pedro asked on Wednesday. “I'm doing the job I love. I'm doing something that not everybody gets to do.”
He opposed Martinez, a 38-year-old who said the other day (in Spanish) that he had “frog’s blood” coursing through his veins.
“Two old goats out there doing the best they can,” was the way Martinez described the matchup.
Martinez lasted four innings, Pettitte five and two-thirds.
And a good pitching matchup turned out to be all about the hitters.