As a high school sophomore, I, like every other Mariners fan who spent the fall of 1995 riding an emotional roller coaster, needed only two October evenings to decide that Edgar Martinez was a Hall of Famer.
In Game 4 of the American League Divisional Series against New York, he hit a pair of home runs to help the Mariners come back and force a deciding Game 5. The following night, he gave the Mariners their first playoff series victory with the most famous hit in franchise history. While that series-clinching double became the enduring moment from that series, what made Martinez such an unbelievable hitter in my mind was what he did a day earlier.
I didn’t watch Game 4, instead I was at a high school football game. When we turned off the radio upon arriving at the game, the Mariners were already down 5-0. This was before many of us had cell phones, let alone smart phones, so I walked into that football game thinking, “Well, that was fun while it lasted. Too bad it’s over.”
Despite having accepted defeat, I occasionally wandered over to where my parents were sitting — I was in high school, remember, so I of course though I was way too cool to sit with them — to get an update from my dad, who was listening on a walkman. (Note to readers under 30: a walkman was a portable device, popular in the 80s and 90s, that allowed you to listen to audiocassettes and radio while on the go. Think of your iPod but much larger and less sophisticated).
I couldn’t believe it when he told me Martinez had hit a 3-run home run to make a game of it, and I was flabbergasted when he informed me that Martinez had added the grand slam that put the Mariners up for good.
Now, unfortunately for Martinez, but fortunately for the sanctity of the institution, fans don’t decide who is enshrined in the Hall of Fame, and once again this year Martinez fell well short in his third year of eligibility.
Having long ago traded my fan status in for a life in sports journalism, I still firmly believe Martinez should, and someday likely will, get the Hall of Fame recognition he deserves. The fact that his vote total crept back up to 36.5 percent — well short of the required 75 percent threshold, but up from 32.9 percent last year — shows that voters, a few of them anyway, are reconsidering Martinez’ Hall worthiness. And while everyone, Martinez included, knows it will be a long process, more and more voters in time likely will take a closer look at Martinez’ impressive career in Seattle and change their opinion.
The good news is that Martinez is nothing if not patient. The man had to wait until he was 27 to get a full-time crack in Major League Baseball, then he made a career of driving pitchers mad and baseballs incredibly hard thanks to his patience in the batters box.
“It’s going to be a while, so I’ll just kind of follow it and see what happens each year,” Martinez said in a phone interview. “Hopefully it keeps going up. … I don’t think about it too much. Obviously when this time comes around, it comes up more. But it doesn’t change how I go about my life every day.”
More good news for Martinez’s long-term Hall of Fame prospects is the ever growing acceptance of statistics that were once considered the exclusive realm of stat geeks. Statistics like runs created, OPS+ (on base plus slugging, adjusted to the player’s ballpark) and WAR (wins above replacement) that not long ago befuddled the average baseball fan are now relatively mainstream, because, quite frankly, they’re better at describing a player’s value. And Martinez, it turns out, excels in many of those statistical categories.
Everyone knows that Martinez won two American League batting titles and finished with a career average of .312. It’s less commonly known that, as Sports Illustrated’s Joe Posnanski (who voted for Martinez) points out, Martinez led the league in runs created in 1995 with 161, the highest per-game total since Mickey Mantle won a triple crown in 1956.
“I think it will help,” Martinez said of the growing mainstream acceptance of advanced statistics. “It can help that people pay more attention to those numbers — on base percentage, slugging and all of that — and not just relying on numbers like home runs. I think eventually people will pay more attention to that.”
Until that happens, Martinez will be patient, which for a man who never feared an 0-2 count, shouldn’t be a big problem.
“I don’t really have high expectations at this point,” he said. “When I start getting closer, when my percentage starts going up, maybe at that point I’ll start paying more attention to it.”
Herald Writer John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com.
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