Mike Celizic

Roger Clemens isn’t around to pitch for the guys in pinstripes, and Don Zimmer isn’t sitting in the Yankees dugout, ready to charge onto the field at the first sign of an altercation.

But even as the uniforms change for Pedro Martinez, whenever he pitches in Yankee Stadium, whether in May or October, one thing remains a constant: Time stops when he hauls his slender frame to the mound.

Pedro has a knack for finding the big moment. Part of that has to do with the fact that he is one of the rare athletes whose charisma and talent are both off the scale. He’s also spent most of his career with the teams that hate the Yankees the most — the Red Sox and the Mets. And there’s no such thing as a meaningless Sox-Yankees or Mets-Yankees game, not even in spring training.

When Pedro faces the Yankees, it’s always more than a mere ballgame. It’s him against Roger Clemens. It’s him in the ALCS in 2003 trying to pitch the Red Sox into the World Series and being left in too long by manager Grady Little. Yankee fans remember Aaron Boone going yard in the 11th inning in that game. Red Sox fans remember Pedro coughing up a late-inning lead.

And then there was 2004 when the Red Sox busted the Babe’s ghost, but not before Pedro confessed to the world that the Yankees weren’t just an opponent he had lost the ability to beat, they were his daddy.

So now he’s back, and it’s impossible to say that any of the big games he’s pitched in the Bronx before are bigger than the one he’s starting Thursday night. It’s only Game 2 of a series that could go seven, but this Yankee team is better than any he’s faced since the Pinstripe glory years of 1998-2000.

The Phillies need him not just to give a quality start. They need Pedro to pitch a positive gem. He went seven and gave up no runs in his one start in the NLCS against the Dodgers. He’s got to be even better, go even deeper, because the Philly bullpen blew that game for him as soon as he departed, turning the 1-0 lead he gave them into a 2-1 loss.

The loss didn’t matter; the Phillies won in five games anyway. But that was against the Dodgers. This is against the Bronx Bombers, the team that won more games, hit more home runs and scored more runs than anybody in baseball.

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Pedro is used to the pressure and he’s more than familiar with New York. He’s faced the Yankees more than any team in baseball, with 32 regular-season starts and six postseason appearances for a grand total of 251 innings. That’s more than a full season’s worth of work over an 18-year career. No hitter in the game has more at-bats against Pedro than Derek Jeter’s 102.

The Yankees have not treated him kindly, especially in the second half of his Hall-of-Fame career. Overall, according to The Sporting News, his ERA against New York is 3.41, a half run higher than his career ERA of 2.93. His record against the Yankees is 12-13, a less than .500 success rate for a pitcher who has won 69 percent of his decisions against all comers.

Ever since he made his comment about his daddy wearing pinstripes, Yankee fans have serenaded him mercilessly with a “Who’s You Daddy?” chant. Pedro takes it all as a sign of respect, and it is. Fans don’t bother abusing players who don’t have the ability to make them miserable.

Pedro pitched well for the Phillies in an abbreviated season, going 5-1 in nine starts. His ERA of 3.63 was one most pitchers would call a career year, but for him, it’s rather ordinary.

The man who once brought it in the mid- to high-90s now throws in the high 80s and low 90s. He can’t blow away a hitter when the occasion calls for it. But nobody pitches with more guile than Pedro. No one understands better how to change speeds and location and movement to get batters out.

The Phillies have put him in a key spot in the rotation. If it’s a long series, he’s set up to pitch Game 6, as well. Once again, with hardware on the line in the Bronx, Pedro has a huge role to play.

The writers and the fans will milk the story line. They’ll talk about those had-to-head matches with Clemens, the 2003 ALCS brawl when he threw Zimmer to the turf, the chants and the troubles.

It’s all great stuff to talk about, and if he dominates, it will go down with Curt Schilling’s bloody sock as one of the greatest moments in postseason history.

But on Tuesday night, none of that will matter. All that the game on the field cares about is how well he pitches. If he can reach back into time and pull out a win, he’ll be a hero. If he gets slapped around, he’ll be an over-the-hill bum.

He knows that. And you know he’s loving every minute of it.

So are we.

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