SEATTLE – He’s not playing baseball anymore, but Edgar Martinez has taken up a new sport.
Can you say Papi Pop-a-Shot?
“I’ve been playing basketball,” Martinez said Monday before the Seattle Seahawks-Dallas Cowboys game at Qwest Field.
A legend on the baseball field, Martinez is somewhat less than that on the court at his home, where he’s taking aim with a much bigger ball.
“I like to shoot from the outside, but I’m not very good,” said Martinez, who played basketball when he was a kid in Puerto Rico. “But I used to be able to shoot.”
Martinez was at the football game Monday to take part in a pregame ceremony to raise the Seahawks’ 12th Man flag. He said it was the first pro football game he has ever seen.
Now into his second month of retirement from baseball, Martinez looks just as fit as he did during the season.
“I’m working out every day and I’m doing a lot of cardio stuff,” he said. “I feel really good.”
Martinez wasn’t the only baseball player at Monday’s game.
Former Mariners relief pitcher Jeff Nelson, an Issaquah resident, watched the pregame warmup from the Seahawks’ sideline before taking a seat for the game.
Nelson, who pitched for the Texas Rangers last season, is a free agent and isn’t sure where he’ll wind up next year. He is fairly certain it won’t be in Seattle, even though the Mariners could use a right-handed reliever.
“Not as long as the current CEO is there,” Nelson said, referring to Howard Lincoln of the Mariners.
Nelson was openly critical of the Mariners’ front office two years ago when the team didn’t make a major deal to improve the lineup at the trade deadline. Within days, the M’s traded him to the New York Yankees.
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