Happy Sunday!

The World Baseball Classic is in full swing, and I’ve got the perfect story to keep the good times rolling.

In today’s edition…

One story in two different formats.

He was a 19-year-old working the night shift at an electric factory.

But after losing hope in any kind of pro baseball career, a last-minute opportunity stood in his driveway.

Meet the “one-eyed” hitter who turned a $4,000 contract into a Hall of Fame career.

Let’s dive in 👇

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He almost lost hope in his baseball career.  Between college classes and night shifts at an electric factory, his dream was fading fast.

Then he came home one morning to find a man standing in his driveway.

And if he didn’t react the way he did, we wouldn’t be talking about him today.

Edgar Martinez was born in New York City in 1963.

After his parents got divorced when he was 2 years old, he went to Puerto Rico to live with his grandparents.

From a young age, he learned the meaning of hard work.

“My grandfather was relentless.  I mean, he worked two jobs, and that’s the way I grew up…all those great qualities that I saw in him, it’s just like, I thought this was the way it should be done.”

As a kid, he watched the Pittsburgh Pirates win the World Series in 1971, led by Puerto Rican legend Roberto Clemente.

In his own words, Edgar was “hooked on baseball after that”.

His grandfather bought him his first uniform – number 21, after Clemente – with his own name stitched on the back.

From that point on, nothing could keep him away from baseball.

He played in the yard with his brother and cousins, hitting bottle caps and rocks with a broomstick to learn the game.

His cousin said that when it would rain, Edgar would go outside and swing at the raindrops. 

He would do it for hours.

When he was 11 years old, Edgar’s parents got back together and asked their children to return home to New York.

His younger brother and older sister were ready to go and expected Edgar to come with them.

But an hour before they were set to leave, he climbed up on the roof and refused to come down.

His choice was clear.  He’d stay with his grandparents in Puerto Rico.

He told the Seattle Times: “I was in a real hard situation. I wasn’t sure what I was doing, really, but I went with my feelings. I felt my grandparents needed me. I remember all the work they needed to do. I just felt great staying with them. I felt it was the right decision.”

The decision to stay, like the big one that would come later, kept him on his path to the big leagues.

After all, who knows how his playing career would’ve developed back in the States?

Edgar’s first taste of organized baseball came later that year, when he started playing Little League.

His mom, Christina Salgado, said later: “Now I understand that it was better that way. In New York, he wouldn’t have done anything. Maybe he would have studied and worked.”

But as he matured, Edgar didn’t receive attention from pro scouts in Puerto Rico.

They liked his glove but felt he was too weak a hitter, which is ironic for a guy who went on to play over 1,400 MLB games in which he never had to pick up a glove.

After a few failed pro tryouts, he enrolled at a local university to prepare for the real world.

He told the Seattle Times: “I was thinking, ‘Well, I have to go and prepare myself for a good job.’ At that point, I sort of lost hope of signing.”

Playing Major League Baseball was his dream, but he had to be realistic.  At that point, it seemed so far and difficult to reach.

By the time he was 19 years old, Edgar’s schedule was jam-packed.

From 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm, he had college classes.

Then, from 10:00 pm to 7:00 am, he worked the night shift at the General Electric factory.

When he got home, he’d sleep a few hours, then practice for his weekend semi-pro baseball league.

“It was a really busy time for me, but I loved it. It was what I wanted to do.”

One morning, Edgar arrived home from his night shift to a surprise.

The GM of his semi-pro team stood in his driveway waiting for him.

He told Edgar, “The Mariners are having a tryout. Get ready, I’m going to take you there.” 

So after an 8-hour night shift, Edgar hopped in the car for the 8 AM tryout.

He remembers being so tired he “couldn’t swing the bat.”

Running on fumes, he flashed just enough potential to get on the team’s shortlist.

After the tryout, the scouts were torn between two players: Edgar and a catcher.

They only had enough money to offer one of them a contract.

That’s when long-time scout Marty Martinez stepped in and vouched for Edgar.  So they agreed to offer him a small sum to sign.

But it wasn’t an easy “yes”.

“I feel like I had a good paycheck for my age in Puerto Rico. I had no car, no responsibilities.  Life is good.  And the offer that I got, it was only like $4,000 to sign. So I had to leave pretty much everything that I had so far, and then try to make it as a professional ballplayer.  I didn’t want to do it.”

That’s when he had a chat with his cousin, Carmelo, who’d signed a pro contract a couple of years earlier.

It was a back-and-forth discussion, and Edgar listed all of his reasons he didn’t want to sign the contract.

He had a job, he was in college, and the chances of him making it to the majors were slim.  It felt like a big risk for the amount of money being offered.

Carmelo just looked at him and said, “You’ve gotta take a chance. You only have one chance, and it’s right in front of you.”

After thinking about it, Edgar realized he’d regret it if he didn’t take advantage of this opportunity.  So he changed his mind and signed the deal.

But $4,000 was a tiny signing bonus, even back then.

He’d start from the lowest level of the minors as an international free agent with no pedigree and only one scout truly vouching for him.

And it didn’t start well.

In his first minor league season, he hit .177 with no home runs in 32 games.

That put him in a tricky spot.  Marty Martinez, the scout who found him, had to fight an internal battle to send him to the instructional league in Arizona.

But the GM, Hal Keller, felt that the league was reserved for real prospects.  And he didn’t see Edgar that way.

But ultimately, he relented, giving in to his veteran scout, and Edgar hit .340 in the instructional league.

Years later, Keller admitted he was wrong about Edgar.  He never thought he’d make it to the big leagues.

Another factor was the culture shock of a 20-year-old moving 3,000 miles from Puerto Rico to the West Coast of the U.S.  The adjustment took time.

“I could only speak a few words of English, just enough to order in a restaurant.”

But he kept his head down – learning English and getting more pro at-bats – and he improved over time.

He also battled strabismus, a condition that caused his one eye to wander intermittently. 

He’d dealt with it all his life, and kids would make fun of him for it growing up.

But it became a much bigger problem once he was expected to hit 95-mile-an-hour fastballs for a living.

The Mariners' eye specialist, Dr. Douglas Nikaitani, discovered the issue when Edgar was still in the minors.  And he later told SF Gate, “He is basically one-eyed at times. His (right) eye doesn't want to go straight. He has the ability to pull the eye in and maintain it. But when the eye goes out, he loses depth perception and the ability to see a change in velocity in pitches.”

Not ideal for a guy trying to do the hardest thing in sports: square up a round ball with a round bat.

So Edgar started doing 30 minutes of eye exercises as part of his daily routine.

He would write numbers on tennis balls, have a friend feed them into a pitching machine, and try to identify the number as the balls sailed by him at home plate.

At times, he set the speed as fast as 160 miles per hour.  Out of a bucket of 50 balls, his goal was to see the number on about 25 of them.

“By doing it constantly, over and over again, you get to the point where you can see it…[It] helps you focus, and also slows down the game…when you see it at 130, it really slows you down.”

Another part of his eye training was even more difficult.

It required something he wasn’t used to amid all his time in the batting cage and the weight room:

Doing nothing.

Nothing but resting his eyes.

That meant no TV, no reading, no studying video of opposing pitchers, or anything like that.

All those extra hours paid off when Edgar got his first taste of big league action.  He was 24 years old and hit .372 in his first 13 MLB games.

But it wasn’t enough to stick around.  He spent the next three seasons bouncing between Triple-A and the major leagues.

Ultimately, Edgar toiled in the minors for the better part of 7 years.  He didn’t play his first full MLB season until age 27.

Yet he managed to post eye-popping career numbers through his final season at 41 years old:

In an average year, Edgar batted .312 and drove in 99 runs.

His longevity is a testament to his unmatched work ethic.

Fellow slugger Jay Buhner said, “He loved to hit, 24/7, he did tons of tee work…everywhere he went, he had his bat in his hand and a donut on the end of it…”

And it wasn’t just his teammates who noticed he was different.

Per Seattle Sports insider Shannon Drayer, “Watching Edgar Martinez was fascinating. He was never in one place for long. Early to arrive, late to leave, always working. His bat scale sitting atop his locker, boxes of bats awaiting weighing and approval sitting nearby. Most of Edgar’s back and forth was between the weight room and the locker area.”

Not only was he an outlier on the field.  He was also different than almost every modern-day ballplayer: he stayed loyal to one franchise til the very end.

Across 18 seasons with the Mariners, his contract expired only once.  And it lasted 8 hours.  He went to sleep as a free agent and woke up to a new deal with the team the next morning.

He carried his grandfather’s advice with him throughout his entire career.

“Hard work…And be persistent.  If you keep trying and trying and trying and trying, you usually get better.”

Edgar never forgot where he came from or the people who raised him.

According to a 2019 piece by Alex Coffey, he used the money from his first six-figure contract to pay for his grandmother’s heart medicine.

And when his grandparents were in debt, he bought their house and renovated it for them.

The winter of 2019 was Edgar’s 10th and final year on the Hall of Fame ballot.

One last chance at baseball’s highest honor.  If he didn’t get in this time, he would never get in at all.

He told the Seattle Times: “It started out as a normal day…I tried to distract myself as much as possible.”

Then, just before 6 PM, his phone rang.

In his final year of eligibility – and just as all hope appeared to be lost – Edgar Martinez was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Like everything else, he had to fight to earn it.

It was the perfect metaphor for his career.

Legendary broadcaster Dave Niehaus said it best: “I’ve never heard anybody in any walk of life say anything ever halfway bad about Edgar Martinez…He has always had nice things to say about everyone, even in trying circumstances. He’s a great human being."

Today, Edgar is the senior director of hitting strategy for the Mariners.

He passes his decades of wisdom down to younger players, giving back to the game and the team that believed in a 19-year-old kid from Puerto Rico.

Among his many teachings, one point stands out:

Per a 2016 article: “Edgar only likes his hitters to watch their successes on-tape, not relive their struggles…[he] knows struggle, and he knows success, and he knows the bridge from one to the other isn’t built out of negativity and longing over what could be. It’s made from understanding who you are and being the best version of that you can be.”

🐶

Today’s story was written by yours truly.

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Til next time,
Tyler

🌟 Trivia Answer: B) Marcus Stroman. Not bad for a 5’7” pitcher, huh?

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