New Attitude Puts Martinez in Elite Class

Five years ago, pitcher Dennis Martinez was driven by a desire to change his life. He has done that, and in the process earned the respect he so desperately sought in the early years of his career.

Today Martinez is driven by a desire to excel, to reach heights that have been both expected and unexpected in the course of his baseball life.

He would like nothing better than to show Jim Palmer, the player he respects most, that his advice in those turbulent early years did not go unheeded.

“I don’t want to give in to anybody,” said Martinez, who has been as much a part of the Montreal Expos’ turnaround as any other player. His 11-game win streak was broken in Chicago recently, but the 34-year-old right-hander has Cy Young credentials with a 12-2 record and a 2.94 earned run average.

The acquisition of left-hander Mark Langston is generally credited with pushing Montreal into contention in the National League East, but Martinez, who began his career with the Baltimore Orioles, has been leading the Expos from the start of the season.

“I want to be No. 1,” Martinez said. “I want to win. I hate to lose. I know the enjoyment of playing in the World Series.”

The enjoyment he remembers; the satisfaction of reaching the World Series remains a little beyond his comprehension. “If I can get back, in many ways it would be the first time,” he said. “In 1979 and 1983 I was there physically, but not mentally -- and in 1983 I didn’t even pitch at all.”

The success part of Martinez’s story starts after the 1983 season. He is still embarrassed by the memory of spraying champagne on Philadelphia Phillies veteran Joe Morgan, who had entered the Orioles’ clubhouse to offer congratulations after their World Series victory that year.

That was, perhaps, the first time the warning signals were noticed. Martinez was an alcoholic. Yet neither he nor the people around him had heeded the warnings.

Soon after the ’83 Series, he was arrested late at night for driving while intoxicated. He went through a three-month rehabilitation program that separated him from his family during the holidays, but it put him in touch with reality.

To this day he has remained faithful to the Alcoholics Anonymous meetings that gave him inspiration during the early years of his rehabilitation.

During a four-day trip to Pittsburgh last week, he attended a meeting every day. Last Saturday in New York, he walked six blocks to discover meetings at that location were not held on weekends.

“It took 2 1/2 years to get the pieces together,” he said. “After I realized it (drinking) wasn’t a problem anymore, I could concentrate on baseball.”

That was about the time the Orioles, fearing that Martinez’s competitiveness had gone the same way as his potential, traded him to the Expos for a player to be named later, who turned out to be Rene Gonzales.

Nobody faulted the move at the time. The feeling was that Martinez’s 108-93 record with Baltimore was more of a mirage than an indication of what could happen.

“Leaving the Orioles was the toughest thing for me,” he said. “I grew up with them as family. The people were outstanding,” he said, mentioning Brooks Robinson, Mark Belanger, Ken Singleton and “especially” Jim Palmer.

“They made me feel good coming to the big leagues, and that’s something that doesn’t happen anymore. I still have hope that maybe I can go back there before I’m finished,” said Martinez, who moved his family from Baltimore to Montreal last year. He and his wife, Luz, have four children.

Martinez feels a special attachment to Palmer and still has some pangs of guilt because he didn’t give the veteran pitcher the respect he deserved. “He was a great leader ... his work habits ... even when he was running with the younger guys, he would beat our butts,” Martinez said. “I used to think, ‘I’m not going to let this old man beat me.’ ”

To fully appreciate the Martinez story, you have to go back to the beginning. He was 17 years old, with only limited education and virtually no knowledge of the English language, when the Orioles signed him. He left poverty and family in Nicaragua. He became a national hero, the first Nicaraguan ever to play in the major leagues.

“It was all so fast,” Martinez said. “The fame ... the money.” He was soon making $500,000 a year, and he was vulnerable.

In his first two years with the Orioles, Martinez was 14-7 and 16-11, but he was always in the shadows of Palmer, Scott McGregor, Mike Flanagan and later Mike Boddicker. “I never thought I got enough credit, or attention,” he says now. “It bothered me.”

In 1981 and 1982, he combined for a 30-17 record, but still many thought his potential was unfulfilled.

The less he was appreciated, the more he drank. His personal and professional life bottomed out in 1983, when he was 7-16 for the team that won the World Series. Still, he blamed Manager Joe Altobelli, just as he had blamed Manager Earl Weaver and catcher Rick Dempsey before.

If ever there was a time his drinking problem would have resurfaced, Martinez says, it was after the trade to Montreal in 1986. “That was the collusion year,” he said. “I only had a 3-6 record (for Montreal) and the Expos only offered a contract that would cut my salary more than 50 percent.”

So he became a free agent. “I decided to take the risk -- but nobody called.”

Then he was frustrated, but today he feels it was something he had to go through.

“That was the hardest part of my life as a player. When spring training started and I was reading about the Orioles, I’d say, ‘How can that guy be out there pitching, and I’m sitting home -- am I finished at 31?”

The Expos were not allowed to re-sign Martinez until May 1 because he was a free agent, and there was no place else for him to go. Then he remembered Miami, the former Orioles’ farm team that was operating independently. “I called Sonny Hirsch, who was the general manager and a good friend since I started, and asked him if I could play for his team.

“He said they’d like to have me, and he’d see what he could give me (as salary). But I told him, ‘Sonny, you don’t have to give me anything, just a chance to pitch.’ ”

He pitched three games, the last two unimpressively, before signing with the Expos for the major-league minimum salary ($68,000, pro-rated) and incentives that eventually paid him $200,000 -- less than Montreal’s original offer.

He went to the Expos’ triple-A team in Indianapolis determined to do two things -- work hard and prove he could still pitch in the big leagues. When he “got racked” in his first two outings, his doubts returned.

“One night I got down on my knees before I went to bed,” he said. “I asked God to show me if I can pitch again. If not, to show me that too.”

On June 16, 1987, Martinez returned to the big leagues and in his first start for the Expos, he beat the New York Mets, 4-0. His professional life has been on the upswing with his personal life ever since.

“Looking back, I think it was meant to be that way,” he said of his experience in the minor leagues. “Maybe I had to go through all of that to be successful again. I had been down, and I had been up. Maybe I had to go down again before going back.”