Before Pedro became “El Grande”

He was a slender, 20-year old right-hander when he was summoned from the Dodgers’ bullpen for his initial big league action. The 1992 Dodgers were in one of their worst seasons in some time. They entered the Sept. 24 contest versus the Cincinnati Reds at 31 games under .500 with little left on their regular season schedule.

The size of the Dodger Stadium crowd with an official paid attendance of 18,707 reflected the significant downturn from a team that won 91 games the previous season to one that had already had lost 91 in 1992.

Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda was calling in rookie Pedro Martínez for basically mop-up duty. The Dodgers trailed 8-4 to the Reds. The goal was for the rookie not to give up any more runs, and save the team from having to use additional arms.

The setting was new, but there was at least one really familiar face for the rookie. Big brother Rámon Martínez, four years his senior, was already in his fifth season with the Dodgers. Ramon had already been an All-Star and 20-game single-season winner.

But the mound was now his domain, not big brother.

Taking One for the Team

The buzz that had electrified Chavez Ravine a year earlier was no longer reverberating through Dodger Stadium. The game in which Pedro Martínez entered was a fairly nondescript one in many ways. Neither team hit a home run that night. The Reds scored six runs in the seventh inning to take the 8-4 lead. The Reds scored their eight runs on 13 hits before Martínez entered the contest as the Dodgers’ sixth pitcher of the night.

Martínez was set to face the top of the Reds’ batting order in the eighth inning.

He retired Reggie Sanders and Willie Greene before Barry Larkin was the first major league player to get a hit off Pedro, on a single to left. Pedro followed the Larkin single by earning his first strikeout. Tim Costo watched strike three fly past him without taking the bat off his shoulder.

Pedro was through his first inning in the big leagues.

In the ninth, Pedro allowed a base hit to Dan Wilson, and walked Paul O’Neill but forced three groundouts to escape without any damage.

Pedro’s final line in his major league debut: two innings, two hits, one walk, one strikeout, no run, 29 pitches.

He saved Lasorda from needing to use a seventh pitcher, but the Dodgers took their 92nd loss of the 1992 campaign.

Before He Became El Grande

Pedro would appear in one more game in 1992. He faced Cincinnati six days later. This time he took the mound as the starting pitcher in the contest at Riverfront Stadium.

He pitched six innings and allowed only two runs on four hits. The Dodgers could not muster enough support, and Martínez took the loss as Cincinnati took the game 3-1. The control and power arm he would later become famous for was present in this outing. He struck out seven Reds and issued one walk.

While he was impressive in his start, Martínez remained in the bullpen. He made 65 appearances in 1993, all but two out of the bullpen. He proved quite effective, earning a 10-5 record with a 2.61 ERA and striking out 119 batters over 107 innings. He finished ninth in the 1993 National League Rookie of the Year voting – well behind teammate Mike Piazza, who claimed the award.

His 1993 performance was strong enough for other teams to take notice. When teams talked trade with the Dodgers that off-season Martínez’s name would come up. On Nov. 19, 1993, the Dodgers made a deal with the Montreal Expos, trading Martínez for Delino DeShields, who had been the Expos’ starting second baseman and a runner-up in the 1990 NL Rookie of the Year voting.

Becoming Pedro

After leaving the Dodgers, Pedro came out of the bullpen only three more times in a regular season game – once in 1994 and twice in 1999 – during his Hall of Famer career. In the 475 appearances and 17 years that followed his debut, Pedro established himself as one of the most dominant pitchers in the history of the game. Costo was only the first of Pedro’s 3,154 career strikeouts.

There were two other notable participants in Pedro’s debut. Teammate Piazza, who had made his own debut 23 days prior, went 1-4 that night in September 1992. Piazza won the National League Rookie of the Year Award in 1993 and appeared in the All-Star Game for the Dodgers the next six years in a row. Across the diamond for the Reds starting at shortstop was Larkin, then 28 and in the prime of his career. Larkin batted third for the Reds. His hit against Pedro was one of two hits he delivered for the Reds that night while scoring once and driving in another. All three are members of a much more elite group now as elected members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

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