Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Pedro Martínez won three Cy Young Awards and led the Boston Red Sox to the 2004 World Series championship.
Background
Martínez has the second highest winning percentage in modern baseball history, and the third highest strikeout rate and strikeout-to-walk ratio.
Martínez became a special assistant to Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington in 2013. He joined the TBS broadcasting team for that year's postseason coverage and later became an analyst for the MLB network.
In January 2015, Martínez was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. A few months later, he released a candid, controversial autobiography titled Pedro.
Religion
“I pray everyday just to stay healthy,” says Pedro. “I say, ‘God, in Your hands I lay my spirit. Because if anything happens, it’s because God wanted it to happen. He’s God and He’s the Mighty One. He’s the only one that knows what we really are.
Views
Quotations:
Before, if I wasn't in baseball, I wanted to become a doctor.
I believe that if you're healthy, you're capable of doing everything. There's no one else who can give you health but God, and by being healthy I believe that God is listening to me.
I wasn't playing mind games with anybody, I just said what I said. I am responsible for it, but I wish everybody would fall asleep for that one and let me go out there and do my thing.
Connections
Martínez grew up in the Dominican Republic in the Santo Domingo suburb of Manoguayabo. He was the fifth of six siblings living in a palm wood house with a tin roof and dirt floors. His father, Pablo Jaime Abreu, worked odd jobs. His mother, Leopoldina Martínez, worked for richer families, washing their clothes. When Pedro was old enough to work, he held a job as a mechanic.