{"id":66,"date":"2004-12-17T14:59:25","date_gmt":"2004-12-17T22:59:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2004\/12\/pay-dro.html"},"modified":"2008-01-25T14:21:37","modified_gmt":"2008-01-25T19:21:37","slug":"paydro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/12\/paydro.html","title":{"rendered":"Pay-dro"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Pay-dro&#8221; was the headline in the Post yesterday after the Mets signed ex-Red Sox ace Pedro Martinez. And were it not for <a href=\"http:\/\/sportsillustrated.cnn.com\/2004\/baseball\/mlb\/12\/17\/pedro.redsox.ap\/index.html?cnn=yes\">this charming article<\/a>, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2004\/12\/17\/sports\/baseball\/17yankees.html?ex=1260939600&#038;en=f71caaca5d6458f5&#038;ei=5090&#038;partner=rssuserland\">news of Randy Johnson&#8217;s apparently imminent trade to the Yankees<\/a> surely would have overshadowed the Mets&#8217; big week.<\/p>\n<p>In the Sports Illustrated\/CNN piece, Pedro wastes no time slamming Red Sox management. I&#8217;m sure the Mets are psyched to have this come out. (What&#8217;s the truism about running off with someone who was cheating on his or her partner in order to be with you &#8212; don&#8217;t be surprised when he or she then cheats on you? Can we predict that Pay-dro will be a pain in the ass?)<\/p>\n<p>The best Pay-dro moment comes when he urges the Mets to sign free agent Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek, effectively dissing Mike Piazza in the process:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Asked what other free agents he thought Boston would sign, Martinez said &#8220;they&#8217;ll be stupid not to do Varitek. Varitek is the next one gone. [General Manager Theo Epstein] is going to have the biggest problem with him.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Epstein has said signing Varitek is one of his offseason priorities. The catcher is reportedly seeking a five-year contract worth more than $50 million, with a no-trade clause.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I hope he is gone,&#8221; Martinez said of Varitek. &#8220;I hope &#8216;Tek is on my team.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Asked whether that meant he wanted to get rid of current Mets catcher Mike Piazza, Martinez said, &#8220;I do want Piazza, too. Piazza is a good hitter. We can move him to first or somewhere. &#8230; I want &#8216;Tek. &#8216;Tek is a good player, a good catcher.&#8221;<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Nice move, Pay-dro!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Pay-dro&#8221; was the headline in the Post yesterday after the Mets signed ex-Red Sox ace Pedro Martinez. And were it not for this charming article, the news of Randy Johnson&#8217;s apparently imminent trade to the Yankees surely would have overshadowed the Mets&#8217; big week. In the Sports Illustrated\/CNN piece, Pedro wastes no time slamming Red [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}