One man is the picture of human buoyancy. His face is unlined and untroubled, his eyes expressive and welcoming. He sees his life as a gift, a fairy tale, something dreamed up for effect. He has to work for his greatness, sure, but the work is simply a way to ensure the gift gets the proper audience. Still, he laughs and goofs and cracks up his teammates, making jokes that often are at his own expense. On the days he isn't pitching, he might do what he did in Toronto a while back: tape a string around a baseball and toss it repeatedly onto the roof of the dugout, pulling it back just before the fans, eager to be in on the joke, can grab it. There's no deep meaning attached, but the fans' frustration serves as the perfect metaphor: That's precisely the way opposing hitters must feel when they stand at the plate, working themselves into a hopeless fervor as they attempt to play along with Pedro Martinez.
This other man, well, he's a different story altogether. This other man is gravity. His face is stern and angled, its narrowness punctuated by crevasses of intensity -- the crags of baseball's Olympus. In the deep-set eyes you see the burden of responsibility and commitment, the cumulative weight of every game he has ever pitched, every pitch he has ever thrown. On the mound, the face becomes a gallery of contortions, each one issuing the same message: No one gets out alive. In a game in early May, San Diego's Sterling Hitchcock hit him with a pitch. He got so mad, half the team had to come out to restrain him. In the process, he tossed aside his manager, nearly knocking him to the dirt. The next day the manager asked, "Do you remember a word I said out there?" Randy Johnson had to tell Buck Showalter that he didn't even remember Showalter being out there, much less the words he used.
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