Yankees: Sending Father’s Day Love to Pedro Martinez From Daddy to Son

Who’s your daddy? The Yankees are, Pedro Martinez. We miss you.

Has it really been 11 years since Pedro Martinez was able to call the Yankees his daddy?! Wow. It feels like just yesterday that our son was a former ace who we’d finally solved at the most opportune moment. Time flies by so quickly! Being a dad, it’s…it’s an emotional load, folks.

No, I’m not crying, that’s just the glint of 27 rings getting in my eye.

I’ll never forget the day we became a father. It was Sept. 24, 2004, and A-Rod, Hideki Matsui and Co. had just teamed up to tarnish Pedro’s outing at Fenway Park. A fatigued Martinez had returned to the mound to pitch the eighth inning, and Terry Francona Grady Little’d him — he was greeted with a Matsui game-tying dinger, and a Bernie Williams double and Ruben Sierra RBI single took the lead for the good guys.

After the game, Martinez had nothing to say…except for an all-time iconic quote.

Pedro Martinez had nothing more to say in 2004, and had to call the Yankees his daddy.

Now, of course, a few weeks after this inflection point, New York would suffer its most embarrassing historical defeat at the hands of the Sox. But that’s the thing with perfect, indelible chants: they transcend on-field performance. And with the need to replace “19-18!” swiftly, “Who’s Your Daddy?” endured.

All the way until Martinez’s return to Yankee Stadium under the bright lights to pitch the 2009 World Series. Right on time.

When the team’s age-old foe took the mound for Game 2, the chants rained down upon him once again, and he allowed the home runs that served as the turning points in that series.

Pedro returned for Game 6, which turned out to be New York’s clincher. What a perfect eternal bow for this rivalry.

Pedro Martinez was a no-doubt Hall of Famer who got the Yankees’ goat plenty during his tenure in Boston — his one-hitter with 17 whiffs in the Bronx stands out, as well as the duels he took over Roger Clemens in the regular and postseason (ALCS Game 3 in ’99 stands out).

But to New York, he will eternally be the hothead who threw Don Zimmer to the ground, a moment that still has yet to be explained (spoiler: it can’t be justified). And he will remain the face of the Boston Red Sox and the one “secret weapon” they believed they had who always managed to fall flat at exactly the wrong time during an era when Boston was always so close.

And so we say today, on Father’s Day, that we love having you for a son, kiddo. We’ll forget about Oct. 2004 (we always do). The rest of our lives together has been above and beyond.