The Fifth Column breaks down the Fourth Wall.

When I read a subpar article about Pedro Martinez, I also want to read an article about the article. I want to know about the process. I want a meta-article. I want an article about the effects of the original article. I want a never-ending, stream-of-consciousness, real-time, navel-gazing, self-aware journal of everything that happens in your life in relation to the subpar Pedro Martinez article.

Mike Lupica delivers:

"Now it is sometime around noon in the Mets clubhouse and there are players and media people everywhere, rain falling outside. I have been talking for 20 minutes with Tom Glavine, about golf and the Final Four and his Opening Day start. Glavine, who still thinks he might get to pitch against the Marlins at this point, who has been told the rain may stop around 2 o'clock, walks off. Billy Wagner is in front of his locker listening to music, probably not the radio.
I turn around and Pedro is there."

Fascinating stuff.


"Nobody in our business ever wants to be this kind of show in a team's clubhouse."

Errr, you must mean nobody besides yourself. Because instead of just dropping the subject, you went and wrote an article about it. This article. The article which I'm reading right now. The article where you said you didn't want to be a part of the drama.


"It had happened once before with a Met, the young and hotheaded Darryl Strawberry at old Huggins-Stengel Field in St. Petersburg, before the Mets moved to Port St. Lucie, Strawberry telling me to stay out of his personal life. It turned out Strawberry was yelling that day about a column somebody had written about him in another paper.

Another time, Eddie Lee Whitson called me out in the Yankee clubhouse. That time we did go out in the hall, even if I could see Don Mattingly's head poking out of the clubhouse door every few minutes, probably checking to see if I was still alive. Players have a right to get their say, even when it's loud, a right not to like what's written about them. But it sure is a lot easier for them to have the debate on their turf.

Pedro wasn't going anywhere, he does what he wants, it's part of him being Pedro. Part of the drama."