And then, in the distance, a figure walked toward us. It was dusk and I could barely see the person’s face. But as he came closer, the men on the terrace rose to their feet and raised their drinks. “Pedro!” they cried.

At that moment, from my perspective, Martinez was hardly worth a toast. Or a smile. Still, I pulled out my notebook.

“Juliet, my friend!” he said to me.

And that’s how I got my interview.

He told me about growing up in the town we were now in, sleeping at least two to a mattress in a house with dirt floors, bedsheets separating the interior rooms. How he played baseball using tree branches or broomstick handles for bats and fruit, rolled-up socks or the heads of his sisters’ dolls for balls. How, when he eventually made it big, he felt like a lion on the mound, fighting for the people he loved and the people of his village.

“I want them to use me now while I have this fame,” he said.

He sounded sincere.

He said that he sometimes headed to his mother’s house in the mountains so he could relax by working in the garden, where he liked to “clean up the flowers and make them pretty.” Orchids, he said, were his favorite because they were so delicate.

So after all this effort to find him, here we were talking about — of all things — hibiscuses and roses and how chatting to them and complimenting them helped them grow strong and beautiful. And yet it was a moment that probably captured who Martinez was and is: a singular combination of power and poetry, competitive enough to hit batters without apology and playful enough to frolic among the Shea Stadium sprinklers when they accidentally went off while he was on the field.

That happened when he was a Met. The best years of his career happened when he was in Boston. In both places, and everywhere else he played, he was an original, doing things and saying things in his own way. So as he prepares for his Hall of Fame induction this weekend, it makes sense to me that my journey to interview him 11 years ago was so long and winding, so unusual and even wondrous.

It was, in the end, just so Pedro.