Pitcher of the Year.

PEDRO MARTINEZ IS KING OF THE HILL

Boston right-hander dominated A.L. hitters in 2000 with a 18 victories, 284 strikeouts and a 1.74 ERA

THE 17-YEAR-OLD COULDN'T UNDERSTAND it. Couldn't figure it out at all. His body was changing. Again. First he had to withstand the onslaught of raging hormones a couple of years earlier, and here he was trying to control the raging strength surging through his right arm.

Pedro Martinez sat at his locker in the Dominican Republic and cried. No one told him this would happen. When the Los Angeles Dodgers signed the scrawny kid the year before, they liked his heart. They liked his control. But suddenly, he had no control. Sitting at his locker at the Dodgers' academy in the Dominican, he wondered if he had any heart.

"I couldn't do anything," Martinez said. "I was furious with myself. I didn't know what happened. All of a sudden I was walking everybody."

Oh, how far he has come from that day in 1989 when he looked for answers in his locker and found none. Martinez is speaking in the Boston Red Sox clubhouse at the Ballpark in Arlington, Texas. The next day he would pitch on nine days of rest. Rest turning to rust is the only hope the Texas Rangers would have against the best pitcher in baseball, one who may become the best pitcher of his generation.

His growth has been monumental but only in status, not stature. At 28, he stands all of 5-foot-11 and 170 pounds, pound for pound maybe the hardest thrower in baseball history.