No one quite ready for M`s future without beloved Edgars
Until now.
With time running out in his spectacular career, the most productive batter in Mariners history knows the end is today.
So what would be the perfect finish to a glorious run when Martinez steps into the Safeco Field batter`s box one last time?
``As a ballplayer, you always want to leave big, with a home run or something like that,`` Martinez said Saturday. ``But there`s also a guy over there trying to get you out. You can play in your mind all these fantasy games and sometimes they come true. But I`m realistic. It can happen that way, but also you can strike out.``
The realist in Martinez has received a workout this season. He wanted his final year to play out in a pennant run. And indeed, had the M`s merely won the same 93 games as the past two years, they`d be in first place in the AL West this morning.
Instead, the Mariners are 29 games out of first and need a win today to avoid their worst record in Martinez`s 18-year big-league span.
``It`s frustrating to not be a part of that (pennant race), for me, for my teammates, for the managers and coaches and fans,`` he said. ``But the thing is, I`ve realized you want a lot of things in life, but not always can you accomplish them. Things don`t always happen the way you want.``
He wanted to maintain the hitting excellence that made him one of the game`s premier players over the past 15 years. Instead, he`s batting .266 with 12 home runs and 63 RBIs, the lowest output since he earned a full-time role in 1990.
Therefore, he`s having no second thoughts about his desire to retire.
``I know I`m done,`` said Martinez, who is hitting .307 since the All-Star break. ``I can get by. But playing at the level I like to play, I know that`s going to be way too difficult for me. The body isn`t responding the way I want.``
Despite Martinez`s frustrations, he figures this was just the right way to go out. He debated long and hard last offseason on whether or not to come back for this last run. And while it hasn`t been a Hollywood finish, he`s going out with a contented heart.
``I thought I could do a lot better than I`m doing right now. But at the same time, I`ve proved to myself that I`ve exhausted everything I have in me,`` Martinez said. ``It`s a sense of peace with myself that I know I can go out and not look back.``
Not that Martinez wasn`t looking back on Saturday, as friends and former teammates gathered at Safeco to honor him in an emotional postgame celebration.
Among the attendees was Marty Martinez, the M`s scout who signed him after being impressed with his fielding ability at a free-agent tryout in Dorado, Puerto Rico, in 1982.
``People talk about his bat, but he had great hands,`` Martinez remembered. ``I thought he`d be a good second baseman. He`s proved everybody wrong. He became a great hitter.``
The M`s scout offered a 19-year-old Edgar $4,000 to sign, but the youngster balked.
``I low-balled everybody,`` Marty Martinez said. ``I signed (Omar) Vizquel for $2,500. Edgar almost didn`t sign. Look where I`d be now if I hadn`t got him.``
At that point, Mariners bench coach Rene Lachemann -- who was fired as M`s skipper in 1983 -- leaned over from his listening post at the batting cage.
``If you`d signed him five years earlier,`` Lachemann said, ``I might still be manager.``
Edgar wanted $5,000 and was figuring on turning down the M`s offer until cousin Carmelo Martinez, then playing in the minor leagues, suggested it wasn`t worth quibbling over what now amounts to meal money.
``If I didn`t take that offer, I`d be like most people in Puerto Rico, a working man doing eight-hour shifts,`` said Martinez, who has since earned another $50 million playing the game. ``You never know what`s going to happen in life. It was like 360 degrees for me to go from having expectations of being a family man with a regular job to just being in the situation I`m in right now.``
That situation remains a pretty good one. If you saw Martinez catching Saturday night`s ceremonial first pitch from son Alexander while young daughter Tessa jumped up and down at the sight of Daddy coming onto the field, you know what`s ahead for the family man.
He and wife Holli, a Bellevue High graduate, are building a new home in Bellevue and expecting another child in February. Don`t be surprised if Martinez finds some sort of future employment with the M`s, though he`s not tipping his hand yet on what he`d like to do in years to come.
After all, he`s still got one more game. Four more at-bats. And one last afternoon to put on a show for Mariners fans who still can`t quite visualize that the sight of Edgar Martinez lacing line drives is no longer part of their daily lives.
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