Edgar: An Autobiography
352
Edgar: An Autobiography
352Hardcover
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Overview
Long before he cemented his status as one of the finest players of his generation, Martinez honed his batting skills by hitting rocks in his backyard and swinging for hours at individual raindrops during storms. Loyal and strong-willed from a young age, he made the difficult decision at only 11 to remain behind with his grandparents while his family relocated to New York, attending school and then working multiple jobs until a chance Mariners try-out at age 20 changed everything.
In this illuminating, highly personal autobiography, Martinez shares these stories and more with candor, characteristic humility, and surprising wit. Highlights include the memorable 1995 and 2001 seasons, experiences playing with stars like Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr., and Alex Rodriguez, and life after retirement as a family man, social advocate, and Mariners hitting coach. Martinez even offers practical insight into the mental side of baseball and his training regimen, detailing how he taught himself to see the ball better than so many before and after him.
Interwoven with Martinez’s own words throughout are those of his teammates, coaches, and contemporaries, contributing a distinctive oral history element to this saga of a remarkable career.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781629377292 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Triumph Books |
| Publication date: | 06/11/2019 |
| Pages: | 352 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.30(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.50(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
How It All Started
My major-league baseball career was fulfilling beyond my wildest dreams — 18 seasons, all with the Seattle Mariners, two batting titles, seven All-Star appearances, and a berth in the Hall of Fame. The life I have forged in Seattle, my adopted hometown, with my wife and soulmate, Holli, and our three kids, Alex, Tessa, and Jacqueline, has been a constant source of happiness and inspiration. I had a rewarding second chapter in the game I love as the Mariners' batting coach and will continue to work with the organization on hitting.
But I'm certain that none of it — not the association with lifelong friends and former teammates like Ken Griffey Jr., Randy Johnson, and Jay Buhner, not the Martínez Foundation that Holli and I started in 2008 that has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to promote teachers of color, not "The Double" in the 1995 Division Series against the New York Yankees that may have saved baseball in Seattle and gets brought up to me virtually every day of my life by Mariners fans — would have happened if I had left my grandparents' house on that fateful day in 1974.
I was 11 years old, living contentedly with my grandpa, Mario Salgado, and grandma, Manuela Rivera, in the town of Dorado, Puerto Rico. We weren't rich, by any means, but they made sure that food was always on the table for me; my younger brother, Elliot; and my older sister, Sonia. Born in New York, I had moved as an infant to Dorado — specifically, to the neighborhood called Maguayo — when my parents split up. Sonia and I, along with our mom, who was pregnant with Elliot, moved in with her parents, Mario and Manuela, and that was my home. It was the only home I'd ever known, and not only was I happy, but I felt my grandparents needed me. And to me, they were my parents.
My mom moved back to New York and eventually got back together with my dad. They decided they wanted to get the family together and give it a second chance. My sister and brother, they were kind of excited about that. I was excited my mom and dad were getting back together, but I wasn't excited about going to New York and leaving my grandparents.
I loved living in Dorado, with my friends, with my grandparents, with my cousin Carmelo, with whom I was inseparable. Surrounded by rolling bluish hills and dense green pastureland, Dorado is located 17 miles to the west of San Juan. It is composed of seven neighborhoods, including Maguayo, with a cumulative population of about 35,000. As my friend and winter-league teammate Carlos Baerga once said, "It is a calm town, like Edgar. It is a town for him."
It isn't too far from the Dorado Beach Resort and Club, which is a former plantation once owned by Laurance Rockefeller. The country club is the home of the famous Dorado Beach East Course, a golf course designed by Robert Trent Jones and featuring a hole that was rated by Jack Nicklaus as one of the 10 best in the world. Chi Chi Rodríguez owns a mansion overlooking the course and the Atlantic Ocean coastline beyond. But that seems like another world compared to Maguayo, an inland barrio of modest means. Yet to this day, I feel completely at home whenever I return. I'll buy a pincho (something like a chicken or beef shish kebab) from the vendor at the barbecue pit across from Felipe's Place, an open-air bar that is always one of my first stops. It's where people from the town go to hang out and relax. Calle 13, the narrow street where my childhood home still sits, isn't far away. Calle 13 has now been renamed Edgar Martínez Street, something I could never have dreamed back in those days.
I had started playing baseball, a game I immediately fell in love with. I didn't have any reason to go to New York, even though everyone tried to tell me how much I would love it there. I never told my sister and brother I didn't want to leave Maguayo. But I struggled with that in my mind. I told myself, "I'm not going. I'm not going to New York." I was thinking about my grandparents, and how they would get by without us when they were older. My grandmother had diabetes and heart issues. My grandfather was already losing his vision from an eye condition that eventually would leave him nearly blind. My brother and I helped him work on the car and truck that he drove to make his living. We helped him with the yard, and any work he needed done around the house. I didn't think he could do it without me. So with all those things put together, I said, "I'm not going." And I meant it.
At the time when I was expecting my father to pick all of us up to fly to New York, I went to the back of our house. There was a ladder, and I climbed it. I went on the roof, and I lay flat so no one could see me there. When the time came that my father had to go to the airport to catch a flight with us, I never came down, and no one knew I was up there. I could hear neighbors and everybody looking for me, calling my name. I just stayed there, praying no one would find me. I must have been up there for an hour, maybe longer.
My grandfather basically said to my parents, you have to leave him here. You're going to have a problem with him there. He doesn't want to live in New York. So Sonia and Elliot left, but I ended up staying in Puerto Rico. As my uncle, José Juan Rivera, told the Seattle Times in 2001, "Edgar's luggage was already packed. The luggage left. He stayed."
I remember it was so difficult. My brother and sister were close with me. It was tough, being apart from them, but I went through with it. I didn't really know what I was doing, not at that age, but I went with my feelings. I just felt great staying with them. Looking back all these years later, I feel like I did the right thing. I never had doubts or remorse about staying. But it did affect me. For a while, I had this strange feeling inside. One part of me was sad. I think that sadness stayed with me for a long time. It helped that Elliot eventually moved back to Puerto Rico and moved in with us, and now I have a very good relationship with my mom, who lives in Puerto Rico. My father passed away a few years ago.
I'm certain if I had gone to New York, my baseball career would have never gotten off the ground. Elliot had played Little League in Puerto Rico one year, and he was a power hitter from the left side. He could hit the ball a long way. But when he moved to New York, he never had a chance to advance his career. Our father worked in New York as a doorman in a building, and he wasn't a baseball fan. He wanted Elliot to get a vocation. For some reason, he wanted my brother to be a pilot, go to aviation school. Elliot didn't play ball in New York; he just went to school and pursued other interests. I don't think my dad would have let me play, either. It was like fate, in a way. My decision to stay in Dorado happened in a matter of minutes. It was far from the last time that fate intervened to guide me toward the glorious life I would wind up having.
My grandparents instilled in me a work ethic that I carried all the way to the major leagues. My grandfather had a variety of jobs over the years, but he was always working. At one point, he had a few trucks to transport gravel around the island. Later, he drove public transportation in his car, similar to a taxi. He owned the vehicles, so in addition to working five days a week, he'd spend the weekend tinkering with the vehicles, which always had something wrong with them. Most people rested on the weekend, but I never saw that. He wouldn't even take a half-day off. That just wasn't him. I would help him on weekends with the cars, trucks, or whatever else he was working on.
My grandmother was similar in a way. She was a homemaker, but she rarely rested. They showed me two important qualities — hard work and respect. Some people called me a perfectionist when it came to honing my baseball skills, and there's no question where that came from. My grandfather was very good at details. You had to do it right. If it didn't work quite the way he wanted, he would spend hours to make sure it worked. I was the same with hitting — I'd work at it until I got it right, whether it was my stance, my swing, or my approach. I might have blisters on my fingers, but I wasn't leaving the batting cage until I figured out whatever felt out of synch. I needed that perseverance when I was languishing in the minor leagues, year after year, getting a taste of major-league playing time in the late 1980s but unable to stick for a full season. That was the most frustrating time in my career, and there were points when I thought I might be traded by the Mariners — and that it might be best — but when the breakthrough came in 1990, it was that much sweeter.
The first time I really became aware of baseball was in 1971, when Roberto Clemente, who had grown up in Carolina, Puerto Rico, about 35 miles from Dorado, played for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series against Baltimore. Everyone on the island was riveted to that Series because of Clemente, the best player ever to come out of Puerto Rico. I was eight years old, and I was mesmerized not just watching the World Series, but watching my family watch the World Series. They were living and dying with every pitch, especially my aunt Wilma, who was a huge baseball fan. I have a vivid memory of watching a highlight of Clemente hitting a double, and Aunt Wilma screaming in the living room.
He ended up as the MVP of the World Series, batting .414 with two home runs, so there was a lot more cheering. I have a picture in my mind of a television being set up in my classroom so we could watch the games at school. It might have just been highlights, but the mental image I have is of our teacher putting the games on live. It's funny — one thing I remember is seeing Baltimore first baseman Boog Powell, who was 6-foot-4, 230 pounds, and thinking, "Wow, he's huge."
After that, I paid more attention to baseball. There was a plot of land very close to our house where all of us would play. I started Little League at age 11, and from that point on, I played baseball for the next 30 years, until I retired in 2004. Sadly, Clemente died on New Year's Eve just a year later, when his plane crashed while he was on a relief mission to deliver supplies in Nicaragua after a major earthquake. Once again, I remember Aunt Wilma's reaction, though this time instead of celebration, it was tears and sobbing when the news came over the television. I cried, too. Every young Puerto Rican boy wanted to be the next Clemente, including me. That's why one of the greatest honors of my entire career was winning the Roberto Clemente Award in 2004, which reflects not just baseball but sportsmanship and community service.
Just three weeks after I played my final game, I received it at the World Series that year in St. Louis from Roberto's widow, Vera, and his children. I was the first Puerto Rican ever to win the award, which has a treasured place in my home. Clemente is in the Hall of Fame, and joining him there will be the ultimate thrill. Orlando Cepeda, Roberto Alomar, and Iván Rodríguez are the only other Puerto Ricans in the Hall.
I was hooked on baseball almost instantly. I loved the game so much. In Puerto Rico back then, we didn't have what the kids have today, so many choices, like video games and computers. In Maguayo, playing baseball was a way for me to entertain myself. I would go out and hit rocks with a broomstick. My grandfather had a pile of pebbles and rocks in the backyard from various construction projects, and in my mind, I would picture myself being like Roberto Clemente. I would pretend it was different situations in a game, and hit the rocks, imagining I was in a major-league stadium. I would do that for an hour, maybe longer, day after day, for years. I did it so much that I cleared out all the rocks from the backyard, which wasn't necessarily appreciated by our neighbors. I remember that my grandfather bought me my first uniform around that time — striped, with my name sewn on the back. I couldn't have been prouder.
Sometimes it would be raining and I would try to hit the drops as they fell from the gutter of the house. I had a small baseball glove, and I would get a golf ball and throw it against the driveway wall. That was how I practiced defense, catching ground balls off the wall, or pretending I was a first baseman receiving a throw from an infielder. I would put baby powder in the area of the driveway where my grandfather would park the car on slick tiles. Then I would run and slide. The powder made the slide smoother. Some days, Carmelo and I would pitch bottle caps to each other. Carmelo started early teaching me to hit the ball to right field, which was a big advantage in my career. We didn't have the best equipment, but we were creative in finding ways to play or practice every day. And we loved every minute of it. We lived for baseball.
My grandpa was a big baseball fan, too. When the Puerto Rican winter league — which is now named after my childhood hero, Roberto Clemente — started in November, his team was Santurce, a town nearby. Every night, he would grab the radio and turn on the game. Listening to the Santurce games was his favorite thing to do, and I would listen with him, entranced. My grandfather was a big part of introducing the game to me, all the nuances and intricacies. He would always criticize the manager, second-guessing his decisions. That was a great memory, listening to my grandfather's passion over Santurce. We would talk about baseball for a couple of hours, dissecting it as we listened together on the radio, and it just added to my love of the game, my knowledge of it, and my desire to be great at it.
His favorite player was Tony Pérez, the Hall of Famer from Cincinnati's "Big Red Machine." Though he was born in Cuba, Pérez became an adopted Puerto Rican from playing so many years in our winter league. We both loved Tony Pérez. He was such a clutch hitter, and had such a flair. Years later, when I played in the big leagues, I got to meet Tony several times, and tell him what he meant to me as a child.
Another favorite growing up was José Cruz Sr., who was a great player with the Houston Astros. When I was with the Mariners, one of my teammates was José Cruz Jr., his son. I got to play against his dad in the winter league when I was just starting and José Sr. was an older player. That was a huge thrill. One time, when I was about 11, Orlando Cepeda and a couple of other players came to Maguayo to put on a baseball clinic. I have a strong memory of Cepeda taking batting practice and hitting a towering fly ball. I couldn't believe how high that thing was. I don't remember much else about that clinic other than that fly ball into the stratosphere. That's when I started to realize that major leaguers were a different breed, and it provided more motivation for me to get there. I played with and against some of the greatest players in history — including Griffey, who was the best I ever saw, and guys like Tony Gwynn, Wade Boggs, and Frank Thomas — but those heroes of my youth still have a special place in my heart.
I played in Little League, and also a league called the Tomás Palmares League when I was about 13 or 14. That was a tough league. I remember thinking, these kids are much bigger than me, but that just pushed me harder. In Little League, I was always the best hitter. I was the No. 1 player on the team, and then I moved to this league, and man, these kids were bigger than me, and stronger. That league, I didn't play much. After that, pretty much all the teams I played on — Mickey Mantle League, Sandy Koufax League — I was the best hitter on the team.
Then I played semipro at age 18 — Double-A we called it — and I was still the best hitter. I set the doubles record and hit well over .400. We got $50 to $100 a game, which was a way for us to have some cash. Since Dorado didn't have a team, I was recruited by the nearby town of Vega Alta, which was the home of the Molina brothers, Bengie, Yadier, and José, all catchers who would play in the major leagues. Bengie and José won a World Series ring with the Angels, and Yadier has won two with the Cardinals. He'll be in the Hall of Fame one day. I played with their father, Benjamin, who surprisingly was an infielder, not a catcher — a switch-hitter. Benjamin had a big, fun personality, but sadly he died a few years ago of a heart attack — on a baseball field in Puerto Rico, coaching a youth team. Playing on that team was a great experience.
When I started playing in more advanced leagues, my grandfather would use his transportation van to drive me and several teammates to all our road games. He would drive us all over the island, sometimes on long trips that would last several hours. He loved to do that, and he loved to watch me play. He would often sit in the dugout during the game, taking it all in. He didn't second-guess the manager, though, like he did with Santurce — at least not out loud. Though my father wasn't around, my grandfather was a big part of my baseball life growing up.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Edgar An Autobiography"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Edgar Martínez and Larry Stone.
Excerpted by permission of Triumph Books LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Ken Griffey Jr.,
Introduction,
1. How It All Started,
2. Breaking In,
3. Up and Down,
4. Making It,
5. The Mental Game,
6. Batting Title,
7. The Hamstring,
8. The Year of Magic,
9. Back to the Playoffs,
10. Soaring to New Heights,
11. Walking Away,
12. Life After Baseball,
Photo Gallery,