Don Zimmer Fires Back After Pedro Martinez Details 2003 Incident

On Wednesday afternoon, Pedro Martinez detailed his 2003 encounter with then-Yankees bench coach Don Zimmer in which Zimmer, 41 years Martinez's elder, charged the pitcher at Fenway Park.

"I'm sorry I'm going to recall this, because it was an ugly scene," Martinez told the media at Yankee Stadium. "This is probably the first time I'm ever going to talk about it publicly. But when Zim came over to me, I thought he was going to just give me advice or something, just '…You need to slow down or something,' or try to make it look a little bit different.

"But his reaction was totally the opposite. [Zimmer] was trying to punch my mouth and told me a couple of bad words about my mom. I just had to react and defend myself."

Watching the video, the story seems to check out OK.

Not according to Zimmer, though.

"Pedro is full of crap," Zimmer said, according to TampaBay.com. The Web site says that Zimmer admitted that he was trying to take down Martinez "by putting his head in his chest" before Martinez grabbed his neck.

"It's what, six years later?" Zimmer said. "If Pedro wants to be a big man, I don't care what he says."

Zim, however, was more apologetic when speaking with the New York Daily News.

"I told the whole world I was wrong and that I was embarrassed by what I'd done and I apologized for it," he told the paper. "I was definitely wrong and Pedro didn't do nothing. I told the whole world that."