Pedro Pitched Well

The best thing about the New York Yankees tying the World Series on Thursday night is that Pedro Martinez of the Philadelphia Phillies has a good chance of being asked to pitch again.

The wily 38-year-old, who spent most of the spring gardening with his mother in the Dominican Republic without a contract, has made himself the talk of the postseason. He has reminded baseball fans, and the choleric people who cover the game, of a time when the players with the most talent saw it as their birthright, if not their sacred responsibility, to indulge in the occasional bout of outrageous, eccentric and altogether inexplicable behavior.

Already this postseason, Mr. Martinez has declared himself the most influential baseball player ever to set foot in Yankee Stadium, lectured a heckler on fatherhood and admitted to hiding a case of the flu from his manager. All of this harkens back to other famous moments in his career, from the time he tossed Yankees bench coach Don Zimmer to the ground at Fenway Park to the 2004 press conference when, after his Boston Red Sox had lost 6-4 to the Yankees, he famously said: “What can I say? I tip my hat and call the Yankees my daddy.”