When is it time to go?

The world is full of baseball players who should have retired last year. Bill Krueger knows why they rarely do.

“It happens to every player, and even when it seems obvious to everyone else, it’s not obvious to them,” he said. “You’re always overcoming odds in this game. It’s always a battle of trying to overcome failures and turn them into successes. That’s what this game is all about. Even if you have a fast track to the big leagues or a hard one, how do you know when it’s time?”

Last week, Edgar Martinez knew. He said he will retire at the end of this season, making an announcement that teammates and fans weren’t surprised to hear.

Martinez still enjoys the daily challenge of the game, and he maintains a deep desire to raise a batting average that is doomed to be one of the worst of his career. For those reasons, he’d love to come back.

The pain in his back, the soreness in his legs and the continuing struggle to distinguish a 90 mph fastball from an 87 mph slider have convinced him, at age 41, that it’s time to retire.

There aren’t many former players who didn’t wrestle with the question, sometimes for years, before they finally made the decision.

Krueger understands.

“If you say, ‘I’m going out on my own terms,’ how do you know you didn’t leave anything on the table?” said Krueger, who pitched 13 big-league seasons for eight different teams, including the Seattle Mariners in 1991 and 1995. “There’s always the fear that you have more to put into the game. You have this whole life ahead of you to live, and you don’t want to have that talent and not put it out there.”

Krueger, released by the Mariners in August, 1995, and again by the Chicago Cubs in the spring of ‘96, retired at age 38 despite the feeling he could have played on.

“But I made the best decision,” he said.

With a 31/2-year-old daughter who had been diagnosed with autism, Krueger knew he was more valuable at home than on the mound. Still, it wasn’t easy to leave the game.

“I was still thinking I could pitch, but I had to get real,” he said. “I had to be a grownup and do the right thing. Take care of your child. Don’t be selfish about baseball. I was able to slowly get over it, but it was hard.”

Krueger’s daughter, Michelle, is doing fine now, he says, and he doesn’t regret his decision to quit baseball.

“I was still healthy, and I was struggling with the whole thought of not playing anymore, but I understood what was the most important thing,” he said. “It was the best thing I could have ever done because my daughter needed stability.”

Dave Valle didn’t think he was ready to retire, either, after his 13th major league season in 1996. He’d batted .302 that year in a backup role with the Texas Rangers and believed he understood the game better than any time in his career.

“I knew exactly what I needed to do to be successful,” he said.

He hooked up with the Atlanta Braves for 1997 and, after a few weeks in their minor league system, got a phone call from home in Seattle that changed his life.

“I’m a backup catcher, I’m 37 years old, I’m in a hotel room on the East Coast and my daughter calls me,” he said.

Valle answered the phone and heard six words that melted him: “Daddy, are you ever coming home?”

“It’s May 15 and I’m not going to see my family until the end of the school year, which was June 24,” Valle said.

For all the money and first-class lifestyle that baseball players enjoy, the game doesn’t provide a convenient answer for what Valle’s daughter had asked.

He hung up the phone, picked it up again and called his wife.

“I told her, ‘I’m coming home tomorrow. I’m done,’” he said. “It was that quick.”

Vicki Valle told her husband, “Don’t come home unless you’re sure. I don’t want you to decide in three weeks that you wish you had toughed it out.”

She knew as well as anyone what the game means to a person who has played it since childhood. A ballplayer’s life follows a certain order during the season, and leaving it abruptly isn’t easy.

“During the season, even when we’re home, mentally we’re really not home,” Dave Valle said. “We’re thinking about facing Roger Clemens that night, and there are other things pulling your mind away from where you should be as a father and as a husband.”

The phone call from his little girl made nothing else seem important. Valle realized then he was ready to quit, and he has never regretted it.

“The things I missed the most were the guys and the clubhouse,” he said. “As far as the playing and the physical aches and pains you have as a catcher, I didn’t feel the need to be competing anymore at this level. I felt like I played it all out of me.”

The first year after retirement often is the toughest. Jay Buhner, who retired after the 2001 season, knows how Edgar Martinez is going to feel.

“There are little checkpoints you have as a player during the offseason,” Buhner said. “You take a couple of weeks off, then you start with the conditioning, and then with the throwing, and then hitting. Edgar has done it for so long, it’s going to be tough for him to set it aside and realize that it’s not the most important thing in the world.”

Valle said it’s important for a player to fill his time with something that gives his life meaning.

“As men, we need to have a purpose in our lives,” he said. “For Edgar, for so many years, it’s been the drive to excellence. When you remove that, you’ve got to find something else to take that place.”

Valle did it with his family, so did Krueger and Buhner. And so might Martinez, who has two children and another on the way.

“Now, he can start a new chapter in his life,” Buhner said. “Hey, retirement’s not that bad. I find myself being busier than I’ve ever been.”

Martinez isn’t sure what he will do after he retires, although the Mariners want him to stay with the organization.

Valle, Krueger and Buhner have all remained close to the game as broadcasters. It’s a job that keeps them around the ballpark without the daily rigors they experienced as players.

“I still get the good parts of being around the guys and being a part of the energy,” Valle said. “But I don’t have to worry about going 0-for-4 anymore.”