SEATTLE – It was always about loyalty.
To his roots. To his agent. To his team.
Edgar Martinez knew no other way to be.
Loyalty was as much a part of him as his skin.
When he went back to his hometown in Puerto Rico during the offseason, he stayed in the small house where his grandparents raised him. Even after they were gone and he was a high-paid player in the major leagues, he rested his head there.
He also worked out at the ballpark where he played as a kid, and he chummed around with old friends from his childhood.
Edgar Martinez never got too big for his hometown or its people.
“The way he is today is the way he was 20 years ago,” said his longtime agent, Willie Sanchez.
Sanchez came into Martinez’s life in the early-80s, when Edgar was playing for Chattanooga in the Southern League. Carmelo Martinez, Edgar’s cousin and a big-league ballplayer himself, had asked Sanchez to take a look at his young relative as a possible client.
Martinez, playing third base, committed three errors in the two games Sanchez watched, but he also had a home run, triple, double and single, hitting to all fields. “I decided,” Sanchez said, “this guy can play.”
Twenty-some years later, Willie Sanchez still represents Martinez. In fact, he is the only client Sanchez, who has been the agent for 23 major leaguers, retained after selling his business and becoming athletic director at the University of Sioux Falls in South Dakota.
Over the years, after he became a star, Martinez had other agents try to steal him away.
“I knew about it,” Sanchez said. “We had dinner one night and I said, ‘Edgar, if you think another agent can do a better job than I, I don’t want to stand in the way of your career. You’re a good man and I’m a good agent and unless you give me an opportunity without the fear of dealing against somebody else … ‘”
Before he could finish, Martinez stopped him. “You’re my man,” he said. “You do the job for me.”
And he did. Right up to the last contract Martinez signed with the Mariners, a one-year deal taking him through the 2004 season.
On Monday afternoon, old No.11 indicated that would be the last contract he signed. He’s retiring at the end of the season.
You knew the end would come eventually, and you anticipated it would be this year. Even so, it felt like a punch to the gut when he announced it.
A Mariner lineup without Martinez will be strange, to say the least. We’ve gotten a glimpse of it in recent weeks, with rookie Bucky Jacobsen getting some starts as the designated hitter.
The Edgar Martinez of old has slipped. The fans knew it. But more importantly, he knew it and chose to retire rather than hang around and hope for a comeback year. He still has the heart and the desire to play, but the body isn’t what it used to be.
You didn’t want him to go out this way, with a batting average 50-some points below his career mark and with more strikeouts already than he’s had for some entire seasons.
No, you wanted him to go out hitting line-drive doubles into the gaps, turning on inside pitches for hits down the left-field line or reaching out with the end of his bat and finding open areas in right field.
At his best, he was a magician with the bat. A two-time American League batting champion, a .312 lifetime hitter, a 2,200-hit guy, a 300-plus home run guy, a 1,200-RBI guy.
Some argue a first-ballot Hall of Famer.
“Hall of Fame?” Martinez said at his press conference Monday afternoon. “That’s up to you guys, the writers to decide whether I’m worthy of it. The position, designated hitter, a lot of people think it’s not worthy of the Hall of Fame.”
I’m not one of them. Edgar has my vote. I don’t care that he spent most of his career as a DH. The man can flat-out hit.
Another thing that’ll help Edgar get in, I think, is that he’s such a sweetheart of a guy. The media treat him with respect, and he returns the favor. Don’t think that doesn’t count.
Something else I’ve always admired about him. He’s genuine. There isn’t an ounce of phoniness in his body.
Sanchez and I were talking about what Martinez might do after he stops playing. Perhaps become a hitting coach. “One thing I can assure you, he’s not going to BS anybody,” the agent said. “If he thinks a kid can’t hit. he’s going to tell him. If he thinks a guy can hit, it’s because he knows a guy can hit.”
As hard as it is for fans to see him go, it’s also extremely difficult for Martinez to have his career come to an end. What’s remarkable is that – in this day of players jumping from team to team – he spent his entire career in the M’s organization, including 18 years in the big leagues.
“There were clubs that would call me when they knew he was going to be a free agent,” Sanchez said. “Fortunately, the Seattle Mariners recognized his value, I recognized the leverage he had, and the two would always get together.”
The truth is, Edgar Martinez didn’t want to go anywhere else.
Twenty-two years ago this December, a 19-year-old Puerto Rican was offered $4,000 to sign with the Mariners. The kid didn’t think it was enough and was going to turn them down. “Other players were getting $20,000,” he said.
Besides, he was happy doing what he was doing. “I had a job (in a pharmacy), I was getting good pay and going to school,” he recalled. “I’d work from 11 at night until 7 in the morning, sleep until 3 in the afternoon, get up and go to class from 6 to 9:30, then go to work.”
Finally, his cousin convinced him that he should accept the M’s offer.
Despite being low-balled, Edgar Martinez showed what kind of guy he was.
Loyal to the end.
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