BOSTON -- Heads up to Jeff Idelson, the smart guy from Newton, Massachusetts, who once worked as a PR man for George Steinbrenner's Yankees before becoming president of the National Baseball Hall of Fame: After listening to Pedro Martinez Tuesday afternoon, a mere plaque will not suffice for him in Cooperstown.

Nothing short of a mosaic will do, one composed of tiny images of all the people Martinez credited Tuesday for his first-ballot induction, a recitation that literally traveled from A (Eliodoro Arias, a Dodgers pitching coach in the team's Dominican academy) to Z (Rich Zawacki, a Red Sox physical therapist).

On a day that validated a career comprised of a matchless assortment of pitches, a fierce competitiveness that dwarfed his small stature and a transcendent understanding of his craft, Martinez reached into his repertoire and revealed that his gifts didn't end there. Tuesday, he painted the corners of the plate with his graciousness. If it hadn't been so cold on Yawkey Way after his Fenway Park news conference, it would have surprised no one if Sox security guard Angel Santiago had escorted Martinez to a spot outside Gate D, where he personally could have thanked every Sox fan who walked by. And then flown home to the Dominican Republic to do the same there.

Pedro Martinez, who recalled the many who helped him throughout his career, receives congratulations on his election Tuesday at Fenway Park. AP Photo/Steven Senne

Among those elected to the Hall, singling out those who helped along the way is not unique to Martinez. But few have done it with more flair, passion and humility, nor produced such an exhaustive list of those worth mentioning, seemingly off-the-cuff. The folks who give out the Academy Awards had better hope Pedro never wins an Oscar; the orchestra would have time to play Beethoven's Ninth in its entirety before Martinez took the cue to wrap up his acceptance speech.

It started with the first words Martinez uttered when he leaned into the microphone set up on a table in Fenway Park's State Street pavilion.

"First of all, hola!" he said. "I would like to thank every one of you. I would like to thank the voters, to thank every fan out there throughout my 18 years and in my minor league years."

That was just the preamble.

"To all the voters, the class going in with me, thank you. All the teammates that I played with, I want to say thank you. But mostly, my family, the Dominican Republic, America for opening their doors for so many of us and giving us a chance to become who we are, and who we've become while we're here. For all the fans out there that actually opened their arms to embrace every one of us coming from a Third World country and treating us so well, giving us opportunities. Thank you so much. The Baseball Hall of Fame, thank you for making the second Dominican welcome into the Hall."

Martinez had warmed up for the Fenway gathering with a conference call with national media about an hour after he'd been informed by Jack O'Connell, the secretary-treasurer of the Baseball Writers Association of America, that he'd been elected.

Over the course of a half-hour conversation, as if watching a documentary of his life unspooling, Martinez summoned the people from his past who had meant so much. His father, Paolino Jaime, and mother, Leopoldina, whose six children shared three beds in their cramped home in Manoguayabo, just outside of Santo Domingo -- older brothers Ramon and Nelson in one, Pedro and Jesus in another, and the girls, Maria and Anadelia, in a third. All trying to get by, Martinez would add at Fenway, on less than $20 a month.

His father's words, Martinez said, never stopped resonating with him. "To keep the integrity of my job, doing it the right way, doing it with determination, doing it with the integrity of keeping the family intact."

Older brother Ramon, he said, was a hero and role model not only on the field, where Pedro used to carry his bags when he went to the Dodgers' academy in San Pedro de Macoris, but at home, where Ramon became provider and protector when his parents divorced, and years later brought healing in place of heartbreak.