Few would argue that Pedro Martinez is the best pitcher in the game today. (AP) 1999 Totals W-L ERA K/9 23-4 2.07 13.2 5-year totals W-L ERA K/9 86-39 2.78 10.4

Aces of diamonds

They're even more valuable than you think

By Gordon Edes, Globe Staff, 03/31/00

Home run hitters, Pete Rose once moaned, drive the Cadillacs. Since even backup catchers travel in style now, Rose probably would have to amend that statement to say the home run hitters get the Mercedes dealerships. They also get the chicks, according to a popular TV ad that ran last summer.

But if it's a World Series ring you're after, the bashers are not your best bet. The last home run champion to play in a World Series was Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt, and that was for the Phillies 20 years ago. You have to go back to the 1985 Kansas City Royals and Steve "Bye Bye'' Balboni to find a World Series champ with a 35-home run hitter.

CURT SCHILLING Injuries have kept Philadelphia's ace from being as good as he can be. 1999 Totals W-L ERA K/9 15-6 3.54 7.6 5-year totals W-L ERA K/9 63-46 3.26 9.6

But since the 1961 expansion, pitchers who led their leagues in winning percentage have gone to the World Series 27 times, 15 times in the American League, a dozen times in the National.

The game may be homer-happy _ a record 5,528 baseballs were launched out of major league parks last season _ but for October memories, there's nothing like an ace.

"An ace dominates you,'' said Dave Stewart, the Toronto Blue Jays' assistant general manager who routinely destroyed the Red Sox and their ace, Roger Clemens, when he pitched for the Oakland A's.

"He changes losing streaks into winning streaks. He's the guy who starts the first game of the playoffs and the guy who starts the last game of the playoffs. He's the guy who lets everyone know on his team that everything's OK. He's the one who tells his team, `If I'm out there against the other team's No. 1 guy, I'll be the last one standing.''

The epitome of an ace in 1999, even though his team fell one step short of the World Series, was Pedro Martinez, who won 23 games, twice more in the postseason, and had an earned run average of 2.07, less than half the league average of 4.86.

"He's one of the greatest pitchers in the history of the game,'' said Jim Leyland, the former manager of the Pirates, Marlins, and Rockies now working as a special assistant for the Cardinals. "I guarantee you, when Jimy Williams gets in his car to go to the ballpark on the days Pedro pitches, he knows he's going to win that day.''

Consider this: Mark McGwire or Pedro Martinez? Apples and oranges, you say?

Maybe, except by this measure. In games in which McGwire homered last season, the Cardinals went 24-32, a .429 winning percentage. In games in which Martinez started, the Red Sox went 24-5, a winning percentage of .828. All the Red Sox had to do was a little better than split the games Martinez didn't start, and they finished with 94 wins.

"We people have a tendency to want to put a person in that [all-time] category before his time,'' said Hall of Famer Bob Gibson, who in 1968 had a season even more spectacular than Martinez's, winning 22 games, including 13 shutouts, and registering a 1.12 earned run average, third-lowest in big-league history.

"If he quit today, then what would he be at the end of a career? That's when you have to assess it. You can't do that now. But does he have some of the best stuff you've ever seen? Yep, 'cause he does. But you need to wait before making judgments.''

There is no model

How to define an ace?

"I don't know how many of them there are,'' said Phillies righthander Curt Schilling, who would make most everyone's short list, "but I've always believed they're like the days of the week. If you can't name them off the tip of your tongue, then they're not an ace.

GREG MADDUX Atlanta's ace had a huge second half after a slow start in '99; four time Cy winner. 1999 Totals W-L ERA K/9 19-9 3.57 5.6 5-year totals W-L ERA K/9 90-35 2.47 6.8

"It's something you have to earn and you have to maintain. It's not, win 20 games and be an ace. It's going out there and having the other team saying, `Oh no, this guy is throwing today,' which I'm sure is what is done when Pedro pitches. Randy Johnson. Kevin Brown. Greg Maddux. Mike Mussina. Guys like that.''

The ace comes in every variety of packaging. There is the 6-foot-10-inch Johnson, the Arizona lefthander who seems as if he can almost reach inside a hitter's shirt before releasing his ferocious fastball. Maddux, the methodical Atlanta artist, pitches as if he lives inside a hitter's head. Clemens, the tough Texan, now relies on his splitter as much as his fastball to buckle a hitter's knees. And Martinez, the diminutive Dominican, has the stuff and the will to break a hitter's heart.

"He's a freak of nature,'' Schilling said of Martinez. "He's small, but he has the long arms and big hands that go with being a power pitcher. Because English is his second language, people don't understand that Pedro knows how to pitch. He understands how to pitch. I've watched him time and time again, and above his stuff is the fact he knows how to pitch.''

Sports Illustrated recently noted that Whitey Ford is the only pitcher in the Hall of Fame who is under 6 feet tall. Martinez is listed at 5-11, and that's generous. It's also irrelevant, according to Don Gullett, a barely 6-footer who threw a 95 mile-an-hour fastball in pitching both the Reds and Yankees to the World Series.

"It all depends on how a guy is put together and how he goes about doing his job,'' said Gullett, now the pitching coach for the Cincinnati Reds. "Pedro Martinez probably throws harder than anybody around, other than Randy Johnson. And look at the contrast.

"What Pedro has is a God-given gift. The guy that small, he creates that type of velocity by using his entire body. It's not all arm. It's the physical leverage that he gets from his legs and his torso, the torque he gets. Plus, he also has tremendous arm strength.''

Attitude is essential

The Yankees, who have won three of the last four World Series, finished eighth in the American League in home runs last season, but their fourth starter was a five-time Cy Young Award winner, Clemens. At 37, he may not be the ace he once was, but his place is secure on the All-Century Team, not to mention Cooperstown.

KEVIN BROWN This L.A. hurler has been the ace of three different staffs the past three years. (AP) 1999 Totals W-L ERA K/9 18-9 3.00 7.9 5-year totals W-L ERA K/9 79-44 2.66 7.5

Besides Clemens, the Yankees have a perfect-game pitcher in David Cone, a new Mr. October in Orlando Hernandez, and a lefthander, Andy Pettitte, who would be a No. 1 on lesser clubs. Throw in their unhittable closer, Mariano Rivera, and is it any wonder they've won 18 of their last 19 postseason games?

The team the Yankees beat in the Series, the Atlanta Braves, was outscored by six National League teams last season, but still won its eighth straight division title and fifth pennant of the '90s. How? Miss Gandy's third graders can recite the reasons faster than their multiplication tables: Maddux, John Smoltz, and Tom Glavine, complemented over time by Steve Avery, Denny Neagle, and now Kevin Millwood, who may be the ace-in-waiting, especially with Smoltz out for the season after elbow surgery.

Not every good pitcher, Leyland emphasizes, can be an ace.

"A lot of guys pitch successfully until the bright lights are on all the time,'' he said. "There are only so many guys confident enough to do that.''

The ace, Gibson said, embraces the burden of being depended upon by his teammates.

"I don't know if that's a responsibility you have to take on, but it's an attitude you have,'' said the man who beat the Red Sox three times in the 1967 World Series, including Game 7. "Some guys don't want the pressure.

"But as an ace, you still have to pitch and win without your good stuff. I've got to be out there. That's an attitude you have. You learn that you go out there no matter what, because the team needs you.

"A lot of guys are so good, even when they're going half-speed they're still better than the other guys. [Martinez] happens to be one of them.''

An element of fear

An ace, Schilling said, can win a game even before he steps on the mound.

"I believe that absolutely,'' he said. "I thought, when I watched Pedro come in that game in Cleveland, I thought the game was over.''

MIKE MUSSINA Baltimore's two-time 19-game winner is heading into free agency this year. 1999 Totals W-L ERA K/9 18-7 3.50 7.6 5-year totals W-L ERA K/9 84-45 3.68 7.6

Schilling was referring to what already has passed into legend in Boston, the fifth game of the Division Series against the Indians when Martinez, despite a strained muscle in the back of his shoulder, came out of the bullpen in Jacobs Field and threw six hitless innings against the highest-scoring team in half a century.

"It's not that the Indians gave up,'' Schilling said, "but there's a defeatist attitude when you face a guy like that. It's like what's happening on the PGA Tour with Tiger Woods. Instead of figuring out what you're going to do with your bat, you say, `What are we going to do tomorrow, because there's no way we can win today.'

"An ace has an aura. He doesn't have to have his `A' stuff to win. He wins on most days even when he doesn't have his best stuff. Before the season starts, if you ask me how many games I'm going to win, I can't tell you. But every time I get the ball I honestly believe I'm going to win that night. Something weird is going to have to happen for me not to win. That's the way I've always felt.''

Schilling may be accused of having a pitcher's bias. Not so Hal McRae, the former outfielder who starred on the terrific Kansas City Royals teams of the '70s and '80s. An ace, McRae said, makes as much of an impact on his own dugout as he does on the opposing dugout.

"We were talking about it in the cage,'' said McRae, now the hitting coach for the Phillies. "Teammates get up for the ace. They play better defense. They're more alert. Their concentration is at its peak.

"The opposition fears the ace. They know it's going to be a tough ballgame. The opposing manager fears the ace. He hates to run his ace against your ace. He'd prefer to use him the day before or after, so he doesn't waste a good effort by his ace and lose.

"It gives your club a lift when your No. 1 pitches. You know you can beat anyone. You know you don't have to score eight runs and still have a better-than-average chance to win today. Maybe today you won't have to grind quite as much. Over the long haul of 162 games, if you feel like you've got to grind every day, it's going to wear you down.''

An ace doesn't wear you down. If his name is Pedro Martinez, he can lift up a team, a town, a Red Sox Nation.

"Guys like him,'' Gullett said, "come along once in a lifetime.''