Martinez Hoping Long Ball Carries Into the Regular Season

In this spring’s annual Cactus League home run derby, which will neither get you on the cover of Sports Illustrated nor earn you $2 million a year, Mighty Mark McGwire is embroiled in quite a battle.

You see, the Padres have this slugger who is hitting home runs at such a clip that the coyotes are starting to cower each time he steps to the plate.

Obviously, Jack Clark is making quite an impression.

Obviously?

Clark is indeed having a rather productive spring, but the Padres’ Cactus Crasher is man quite familiar in and around Mission Valley.

Carmelo Martinez.

Carmelo Martinez?

Is he still here?

This man, who came to the Padres in the National League championship year of 1984, is a survivor. The notion that he is still around has defied logic and rumors.

Martinez, after all, has been--in reality or perception--benched, booed, platooned, moved, replaced and shopped seemingly throughout his five years with the Padres.

And yet here he is for another spring training . . . and greatly enjoying it.

For what it is worth, which isn’t much in the grand scheme of life in baseball, he hit his fifth home run of the spring Monday. That puts him one behind Cactus League leader McGwire. Just for the fun of it, consider that his spring time pace would project to 50 home runs given 400 at-bats in the regular season.

Such projections are silly, of course, but they do indicate how well this oft-forgotten man is doing in the wake of an off-season in which the Padres seemed totally preoccupied with trading and/or replacing him.

And this off-season followed a 1988 season in which the trade for Keith Moreland supposedly made him the odd man out in left field. Other managers have platooned him, and one, Steve Boros, told him he was to be his right-handed pinch-hitting specialist.

“You think that’s all I can be?” Martinez recalled telling him. “If you don’t like me, get me out of here.”

Instead, Boros is gone, Moreland too, for that matter, and Carmelo Martinez still is on the job in left field.

So nothing really is new, except maybe that Martinez might almost be tempted to feel just a little bit secure.

Not likely.

Trade rumors persist, which can be expected with Trader Jack McKeon pulling so many strings.

“When I was traded from Chicago to here,” Martinez said, “I felt really bad. I thought I was going to be playing for Chicago the rest of my life. I didn’t realize this was a business. Every year now, they say I might be traded. I’d like to stay in San Diego, because my family loves it there, but whatever happens happens.”

Loving San Diego has not always been easy, because San Diego was cool toward Martinez through his first two or three years.

“I didn’t let it get to me,” he said. “I worked harder and did my best every time I had a chance. Sometimes it didn’t look like I was hustling because I’m not blessed with great speed. Fans will go with you according to the way you play, and I always give it all I’ve got.”

Giving it all has never been enough to produce a really big year, possibly because he has always been surrounded by so much uncertainty. This may not be the year either, but Martinez, at 28, is in the midst of what should be the most productive years of his life.

“I’ve always thought that I’ll hit some home runs if I got a lot of at-bats,” he said. “The power’s always been there. But what I’m really thinking now are RBIs. I want to bring in as many runs as I can, whether by driving them in myself or moving runners into position so the other guys can bring them in.”

One way to move runners is the home run, maybe the most efficient of all. Martinez’s outburst of power this spring has also produced 15 RBIs, easily best on the club.

And this outburst has been caused by . . .

“I’m well-rested,” he said. “Every year I’ve played winter ball in Puerto Rico, but this year I took it off.”

However, there is a sad side to this bright beginning. At about the time he was, in fact, about to go to winter ball, his grandmother died.

“My mother took it hard,” he said, “so I decided it would be better if I stayed with her and my family.”

And so he worked out in his garage and batted in the cage in his yard.

“I was desperate to play and see some live pitching,” he said, “so it was hard mentally. I came to spring training, and my timing was off. I had to hit a lot of live pitching to get it back.”

Suffice it to say that Martinez seems to have live pitching timed rather well these days. About the only thing wrong with his timing is that this is March rather than April.

But Carmelo Martinez has put together the most remarkable numbers of what has been a most mundane spring. Maybe he will actually get to April and know he has a job for a few months, like maybe the entire season.