May 1st, 1991: My mom got free tickets to the Royals game that night so her and I went out to Royals Stadium to take in the game. The Royals were playing the Tigers that night.

Typical Royals game, the Royals were losing going into the 9th inning. Tigers don’t score in the 9th and while the teams are changing sides they start showing the bottom of the 9th inning of the Rangers Blue Jays game on the jumbotron where Nolan Ryan is working on a No-hitter.

Play resumes in the Royals game and people start booing when the feed from the Rangers game is turned off.

Mike Henneman is rolling along through the Royals hitters when suddenly Sparky Anderson pops out of the Tigers dugout and takes a long slow stroll to the mound.

Since there’s a timeout while Sparky is meandering out there, the Royals turn the feed back on to the Royals game where Nolan Ryan is working on the last batter of the game (Roberto Alomar).

While Sparky is standing around taking his time talking to Henneman, Ryan blows Alomar away with his 16th strikeout of the night and the crowd goes wild.

At this point Sparky heads back to the dugout and the Tigers finish putting away the Royals.

I’ll never forget Sparky stopping the game so that we could see history.

While it was undoubtedly a bad decision by Little to put Pedro back out there, the fact is still that PEDRO coughed up those runs. OR does that not count?

“Also, although it wasn’t literally a Game 7, his six inning of no-hit relief in the decisive Game 5 of the 99 DS is about as dominant a post-season pitching performance as you will ever see.”

I think Don Larsen disagrees with you.

For comparison, the top 3 active pitchers today in career complete games: Greg Maddux (109), Randy Johnson (99), and Curt Schilling (83). Three phenomenal pitchers with long careers – two no doubt HOFers and a man who will likely make it in – and only Maddux (barely) has thrown 1/7th of the complete games Young did.

Fernando vs. Nolan Ryan. Look at the bottom of the 5th. Score tied 1-1. Dave Anderson reaches on a single, Fernando bunts and Ryan throws the ball into the stands. Anderson to 3rd, Fernando to 2nd. With Steve Sax up, Ryan throws a wild pitch – Anderson scores, Fernando to 3rd. Sax gets on with an infield single (probably a bunt – I wonder if Ryan misplayed this one too) and Fernando stays on 3rd. Next batter flies out to right, but apparently not deep enough to score Fernando. So with one out, runners on 1st and 3rd, Steve Sax steals 2nd. Now runners on 2nd and 3rd and Ken Landreaux singles. Both runs score (Fernando is unearned) and Landreaux goes to 2nd on the throw home. Pedro Guerrero is intentionally walked (side note: Pedro hit 15 home runs in June of 1985, at the time that was the record for most home runs in a month). Brock singles, a run scores. RJ Reynolds strikes out. Two down, runners on 1st and 2nd. Scioscia singles, a another run scores. Dave Anderson comes up again and flies out to end the inning.

The point is, the whole inning would have been different if Ryan could have fielded a bunt, not thrown a wild pitch and also held Sax at 1st. Instead the Dodgers bat around and blow the game open.

Fernando struck out 14 that game, BTW.

I was only 9 years old. I sat in the right field bleachers for that game and I remember the big inning and the impression I have of Ryan is that he was bigger than anybody else on the field. I remember him coming out of the rightfield bullpen and walking tg the dugout before the game and he looked gigantic. On the mound, too, he looked huge even from where we were sitting.

The reason Pedro doesn’t have the same anecdotes that, say, Gibson does is that the Red Sox simply didn’t surround him with enough talent to put him in those situations when he was fully capable of taking advantage of them. Look at Pedro’s postseason career:

He pitched one game in 1998 – game 1 of the ALDS. He wasn’t brilliant – 7 innings, 3 ER, 8Ks – but he didn’t need to be, since the Sox gave him 11 runs of support and won handily. Unfortunately, they proceeded to blow the next 3 games and that was all for Pedro.

Now we come to 1999 and 2000 – Pedro’s absolute, unquestioned prime and what is likely the best two-year stretch of pitching in the history of baseball (Maddux in 1994-1995 is up there too).

In 1999, Pedro came out after 4 innings with an injury in his first start – and came back to throw six no-hit innings of relief against a monstrous Cleveland lineup that had been absolutely crushing the ball in the first three innings (8 runs), and he did this without his fastball. He then faced the eventual World Series champion Yankees in the ALCS and threw seven shutout innings with 12 strikeouts in Game 3, the only game of the series that the Red Sox won. In total, he threw 17 innings in that postseason, allowing 5 hits, 6 walks, striking out 23 and giving up not a single run. And he wasn’t even completely healthy the whole time. THAT is the Pedro Martinez that I would bet my life on.

In 2000, his most dominant year… the Sox missed the playoffs entirely.

They did not make it back until 2003, when Pedro was past his prime, no longer quite as overpowering and notorious for falling off a cliff, effectiveness-wise, past 100 pitches. The Grady Little game was the infamous result. So, in the end, his numbers don’t look as good as the great postseason aces of the past – but the fact of the matter is, he simply wasn’t given the opportunity to shine in his prime. And this argument is about people’s primes.

If we’re talking overall postseason career, then yeah, Gibson. But since we’re not, I’ll go with the most dominating pitcher I’ll probably ever see.