Frank Martin - Remember Who You Are: What Pedro Gomez Showed Us About Baseball and Life

What PEDRO GOMEZ Showed Us About Baseball and Life

A BOOK OF ESSAYS, EDITED BY STEVE KETTMANN

Copyright 2021 by Wellstone Books

Cover art by Mark Ulriksen

Book Design: Alicia Feltman of Lala Design

Picture Editor: Brad Mangin

For updates on book events, coverage, etc.:
www.TheGomezRules.com

Printed in the United States of America

FIRST EDITION ISBN:

978-0-9600615-1-8

Wellstone Books is an imprint of the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods

www.wellstoneredwoods.org

858 Amigo Road, Soquel, CA 95073

Distributed by Publishers Group West

19622021

Sandi and Pedro

Dante, Rio, Sierra, Pedro and Sandi

Sierra and Pedro

BY STEVE KETTMANN

M y first reaction was to be mad at Bob Nightengale for calling on a Sunday evening. My six-year-old daughter, Coco, had just made herself a salad, start to finish, for the first time, gathering the miners lettuce herself, washing and spinning it, mixing up a dressing of olive oil, lemon and honey. We were at the kitchen table and Coco was raising her fork. Just then Bob texted. And called. And texted again. I tried to ignore him, so I could focus on sharing this little milestone with Coco. A voice inside my head wouldnt let me: The Gomez Rules did not allow it.

Bob and I had in common a great friend named Pedro Gomez, and if another friend of Pedros called and wanted something, the rules were clear: You picked up. Maybe Bob, a USA Today baseball writer, needed my help on something. Maybe it was about Pete Rose or Jose Canseco. Id worked closely with both on book projects. So I called Bob back and will never stop hearing the catch in his voice as he asked me, Are you sitting down? Then Bob told me that Pedro had died, suddenly, at home in Ahwatukee, Arizona, shortly before the Super Bowl. He was fifty-eight.

I immediately called Pedros wife, Sandi, and we talked in hushed, shocked voices for a while. For me as for so many others who loved Pedro, his death hit first as the story of a husband and father, a man who always talked about hitting the Lotto in marrying the love of his life, Sandi, and a proud father who talked constantly about his three children, Rio, Dante and Sierra. The first ripple of pain came with knowing what a void his loss would leave in their lives.

Then came the selfish part of grief, for so many of us, the feeling of having a part of ourselves ripped away. It was as if a vital organ had suddenly been lost that channeled our capacity for joy and enthusiasm for life. Pedro was in love with life and in love with all his friends. He made sure you felt that, every time you connected. That was true if youd met him once years ago or, like me, been one of his best friends for decades. (Its your wife! Sandi would kid Pedro when I called the house yet again in the 90s.)

Its hard to pull many recollections from the deep fog of those first days after the stunning news, but at some point that week my wife, Sarah, and I packed up our 2003 Honda Accord, snapped Coco and Anas into their car seats, and set off for an eleven-hour drive to see Sandi and the family in Arizona. Along the way the scenes kept flashing at me. I thought of the time I decided to surprise Sarah for her birthday by taking her to Tegel Aiport in Berlin, where we lived, without telling her we were flying to Venice. Two days into our stay, she ran into Pedro in the lobby of our hotel. He did his best to sell her on the idea he was surprised to see her. Obviously at some level she knew Pedro and I must have cooked this whole scenario up, all of us running into each other in Venice. But when Pedro sold something, he sold it all the way.

No, what are you doing here? Pedro kept repeating to Sarah in that small lobby, unleashing the full Gomez conviction and a blinding blizzard of charm. We laughed over that one the whole next day, during the requisite gondola ride, Sarah and Sandi and Pedro and me (hey, it was fun, even if Pedro went Cuban a little on the mouthy gondolier, as he himself put it with a shrug). Even years later, Pedro still loved to tell that story, laughing before he could start, one more greatest hit in the vast collection.

Its odd to lose a very close friend, to see his death ripple out to millions, and to come to understand that for many of them, this was a deeply painful loss as well. Pedro brought people in baseball together in death as in life. When word spread on Super Bowl Sunday that Pedro had died, a thunder-clap of shock and grief shook nearly everyone in the game, sooner or later. Barry Bonds was among many who sent flowers.

I can tell you that right up until the end, Pedro was doing what he loved. He was, in fact, midsentence, telling a story, when the end came as he stood in his kitchen, not far from where the Super Bowl would be showing on his living-room screen, game time not far off. RIP PEDRO was soon trending on Twitter. The New York Times published an obit, memorializing Pedro as A Pillar of Baseball Coverage for ESPN. Emotional tributes proliferated, not only on ESPNby in particular Shelley Smith and Rachel Nicholsbut also in newspapers all over the country. (Only later did the autopsy reveal that the cause of death was sudden cardiac arrest, a detail left out of the first wave of coverage.)

For this book, we reached out to Max Scherzer, whose intensity on the mound Pedro compared to one of his all-time favorites, Dave Stewart, the ultimate embodiment of bringing everything youve got when the moment is biggest. Id been hearing highlights of Pedros conversations with Max for years, and knew hed be eloquent on Pedro. Ill admit Im a little blown away by the sweetness of his contribution, #7, Have Fun Every Single Day.

Pedro saw baseball for what it was, Max writes. He never forgot how fun it was to go to a game. That was something I immediately gravitated towards. I loved that I could just sit there in front of my locker and talk to Pedro about baseball, and have it be such a delightful conversation because of his insight and his positive personality. Before you knew it youd look up and see youd already been talking for an hour.