Who's your daddy now? 

Pedro Martinez, one of the better pitchers in baseball history (until of course, he joined the amazingly skilled talent-sapping organization known as the Mets), was never one to shy away from controversy. The Don Zimmer incident aside, Martinez was always known to not back down, and never shy away from sending a message to whoever he felt may have needed one.

On Monday, Pedro talked about how pitching inside allowed him to have so much success throughout his remarkable career. He hit batters quite frequently, but Martinez said it was almost always on purpose.

“Probably 90 percent of them,” Martinez said according to the Boston Globe. “But it was always retaliation for my teammates.” 

As the dudes from Larry Brown Sports point out, Pedro, master of control, generally had a pretty low walk rate--in his 2000 Cy Young campaign, he finished with the second lowest in the American League. Meaning that whether or not his chin music was actually "in retaliation," it's safe to say that a Pedro hit batter was undoubtedly a marked man. 

Not to be all like "baseball sucks," but I wish we had more of this sort of thing. Adds a little flare to the game, raises the stakes, makes that grueling 162 game sched not just the zombie walk that it could sometimes tend to be. Baseball enforcers, if you will. If it's really America's pastime, there's never any harm in more fireworks.

[H/T: LBS]