Thankfully not cursed, a keepsake for a lifetime!
Juliet’s great story and request for some help (burn some sage, maybe?) about her cursed Pedro Martinez bobblehead inspired me to tell my own story about a Pedro keepsake I’ll always treasure.
I think the moratorium on me getting in trouble sharing this story is over, so let’s ride. First, a lot of background.
From 2018-19, I worked two seasons as a Media Manager for Major League Baseball. Graveyard shifts from 6pm to at least 2am—one east coast game and one west coast game generally—helping to populate highlights in the Gameday app, as well as team websites and playlists. You see Thursday’s highlight “Liam Hendriks secures the win”? Yeah, my job was to come up with those names and tags and work with a producer to cut highlights and reels to tell the story of a game, metadata galore.
My first year we worked out of Chelsea Market in Manhattan, a dedicated floor for our department, with the ability to take an elevator downstairs to get whatever foods we desired from the vendors. Year two, we were moved to the MLB Network studios in Secaucus, to a frigid open-air workspace behind Studio 42. Right behind the third-base dugout is what was called the bullpen—where our publishing department worked out of—and the door in and out of the studio happened to be right around the corner. With that fortuitous placement came the ability to meet and interact with a lot of the hosts and guests going in and out of the studio to film. We were told explicitly, no matter what, that we CANNOT ask anyone for a picture or an autograph. Professionalism is the name of the game, I totally understood.
Greg Amsinger, Heidi Watney, Dan Plesac, just some of the names who were awesome to make pleasantries with, but today’s story focuses on Harold Reynolds. The Harold you see on TV is the Harold you get in real life; gregarious, engaging, talkative, just infectious energy.
Remember how I said the office was frigid? That’s what happens when you work in what’s basically a bank of computers and broadcasting equipment that has to not overheat to work properly. It basically becomes an igloo. Without fail, I wore a Red Sox thermal jacket to my shifts. Cold begone, I could get through 8+ hours no problem wearing this guy. When it was hot outside though, I’d gladly take it off for a few minutes to cool down.
The night of May 10th, 2019, I had taken off my jacket and left it off, I was fine for a while without wearing it. Around 10pm, Harold’s voice comes bouncing around saying hello to everyone ostensibly about to film segments about the East Coast games or do their first taping for MLB Tonight. His voice stops right behind my chair. He taps me on the shoulder and asks me if I’m a Red Sox fan, to which I reply of course, spinning around to grab the jacket off the back to show him. He gets me up, turns me around and says, “Have you met Pedro before?”
Not even five feet behind me is the man, the myth, the legend, an icon of Red Sox memories forever. I’m in absolute shock as I shake Pedro’s hand and thank him for everything he did for the Red Sox and for my early childhood as a fan. He says thank you and they both head into the studio to film. I’m already freaking out. Harold quickly pops his head out and says, “If you can find a Sharpie before we’re done taping, I’ll try and get him to sign that jacket for you,” before disappearing.
Chaos ensues.
My colleagues and I start rummaging everywhere, drawers, shelves, asking anyone and everyone before someone triumphantly comes to me with a black Sharpie from their backpack. Half an hour later, the pair emerge and I give the marker and the jacket to Harold, profusely thanking him for the generous offer. They walk away from the bullpen and we’re all waiting on pins and needles for either of them to come back. A half hour goes by. Then an hour. Two hours. We’re now past 1am on May 11th, about three hours after the initial encounter and we’re joking that Pedro was cold or wanted to avoid the ensuing rain and they stole my jacket for shits and giggles. We’re cackling at what they could have done with it, the energy still bright despite the late hour.
Finally, Harold pops out of nowhere in his plain clothes, ready to head home. He’s wishing everyone a good night left and right, walking towards the door. He tosses me the jacket and marker, and all he says is, “I hope he spelled your name right, kid!”
I didn’t ask, but I received the keepsake of a lifetime. I had to find a garbage bag to keep it out of the rain on my way from Secaucus back to my shoebox apartment in NYC, but as soon as I could, it got mounted in a shadowbox to protect forever.
Since then, I moved on from MLB, moved states a multitude of times before settling back in Boston in late 2023. I didn’t have the space for it when I first moved back, so in the finished basement of my parents’ house he lived. Finally now, after some rearranging, I officially cleared the wall space and reclaimed my prized possession from the room of cluttered childhood memorabilia.
Today happens to mark six years exactly since this story began. I’m so proud he finally has his own place to hang on the wall in my home.