Remembering His Good Buddy Pedro Martinez

Hey, Pedro - remember when I called you a diva when I was running you out of town, then continued to talk shit about you later on?

We're good now, right?

Your pal, Shank

FORT MYERS, Fla. — He is Red Sox royalty, a Hall of Fame talent who already had won a Cy Young Award when he first came to the Red Sox from the small market of Montreal in 1998.

The buzz these days is that it takes a year for a star pitcher to acclimate to Boston — Josh Beckett, Rick Porcello, and David Price all come to mind — but it didn’t take long for Pedro Martinez. He was great at Fenway, right from the start.

Then Pedro says...

He signed autographs for 45 minutes after the session, then took a few minutes to talk about what it’s like for an ace pitcher (this means you, Chris Sale) to introduce himself to the Boston baseball market.

“I think it’s having to restart your mind,’’ said Pedro, cradling a baseball in his right hand. “For a guy like Price, he pitched in Tampa, where it is quiet and not a lot of attention. It was the same for me in Montreal. It took me almost a year to finally settle in and finally understand what to expect and what I wanted to do.

You were saying, Shank?