Pedro Buries Zito in Battle of Former Cy Young Winners
By Andy Lopusnak of Bay Area Sports Drive
June 3, 2008

From 1999-2002, Barry Zito (left) and Pedro Martinez combined for three of the four American League Cy Young awards. Since, neither has won more than 16 games in a single season and are both playing for the National League in different cities. Tuesday night they played each other in the City by the Bay.

After four innings, the game was tied at 1-1. But an eight-run fifth inning by the visiting Mets turned a would-be pitching duel into a quick 9-1 deficit by the bottom of the inning. Rookie Travis Denker’s first career homerun (three RBI) in the bottom of ninth helped make the 9-6 loss look respectable.

On a chilly June night in San Francisco, Martinez was red hot after returning to mound two months after exiting his first start of the year just four innings in when he hurt his hamstring (On April 1 at Florida). Not only did Martinez pick up his first win of the year, he added two hits, a run scored and a run batted in. It was his third multi-hit game of his career and first since 1997. Additionally, Martinez upped his all-time record against San Francisco to 10-2.

"Pedro, he never ceases to amaze," said Mets manager Willie Randolph following the game.
Zito, who earned his first victory of the season in his last appearance (after starting 0-8), pitched just four and third allowing four runs in the fifth inning before being pulled. Overall, he gave up five earned runs, five walks and striking out just a lone batter.

The best player on the Giants was Denker, who added went two-for-three with three runs batted in, two runs scored and a homerun. In his eight previous MLB games, Denker had just two hits on ten at-bats with no RBI or runs scored.

After an afternoon tilt with the Mets on Wednesday, the Giants head out on a seven-game road trip against Washington (four games) and Colorado (three) before returning home on Friday, June 13 for the first of fifteen straight games against the American Conference when they host cross-Bay rival Oakland.

A BIT OF HISTORY
The 2008 season marks the Giants’ fiftieth year in the Bay Area since moving from New York after the 1957 season. New York also lost another team that same season when the Brooklyn Dodgers split for Los Angeles. As a result, MLB awarded New York an expansion team in 1962 – the New York Mets, which San Francisco hosts this week. The Mets’ colors are a hybrid of the two New York area baseball teams that moved from the East Coast to the West Coast – the (Brooklyn now Los Angeles) Dodgers and the (New York now San Francisco) Giants. On the Mets’ logo, the style of NY is identical to that of the New York Giants from their final years in the Big Apple.