Of course, if no one asked him about the Red Sox, perhaps he’d have less to say about them. From the Boston Herald’s Karen Guregian.

   “Because I didn’t let Theo (Epstein) or the Red Sox decide my life, my future, I’m a bad man now,” Pedro Martinez said yesterday. “Judging from what I’ve seen, and what I’ve read and what I’ve heard, that’s how I’m being portrayed.

     “I did my job. I think I did that all seven years I was there. Everyone seems to have forgotten about that. A lot of the fans probably remember, but they’re selling me as a negative. I’m not saying all the fans. But some have forgotten.”

     When told he was considered less than gracious on his way out the door, dissing the Sox during the press conference introducing him as a Met, Martinez offered no apologies.

     “The thing is, I was honest,” he said. “I’m not going to take back what I said. I wanted to stay in Boston. Hearing Theo talk today on ESPN, saying they wanted to spread my money around, and keep Jason, that’s a smart thing to do. He could afford to get rid of all of us, except Jason. I can appreciate that, but there was no need to mistreat my name.

“I can understand the business part of it. I can understand, I can live with the business part of it, not being able to afford me, or thinking I’m not that good, but I cannot understand the part where you mistreat my name, or mistreat what I did for the city of Boston because they have to build another image of me.

      “If they want to keep the (World Series) ring, that’s fine,” he went on. “I just know I contributed to that team to win, and I’m proud of it. They can never erase what I did in Boston. Most important, I had a job in Boston for seven years, and I appreciate that. And that’s the most important thing. I had a job, and I did what I had to do in my job. Every time I could pitch, I did. Hurting, or not hurting.’

`I couldn’t trust anyone. I was such a big icon in Boston,” he said. “Everything I did, even driving my car, was scary. So I’m not going to let the same thing happen in New York. Boston was so small, everywhere you went, you were recognized. At least here (in New York), I have places to breathe, places I can probably go to the park without being recognized. I’m not going to make myself miserable for the next four years and at least try to have fun, and continue to work hard, like I’ve always done.”

Did he get special treatment, as Schilling implied?

     “If it’s more time in the gym, then yes, I got special treatment,” Martinez said. “I asked Schilling a lot of times to run with me, he couldn’t. I could run distance like nobody on the team. And, I spent a lot more time in the gym than anybody else because I was hurt in 2001 and nobody knows what I did to rehab. So is that special treatment? I’ll give it to anybody else that wants it.”