This Splinter Gets Under Braves’ Skin at Plate, Too

Ramon Martinez is built like an exclamation point. He is tall, dark and striking--and thin, very thin. Ramon’s torso seems to have no curves to it, which can hardly be said for his arm, and he bears at least a passing resemblance to Prince, the singer, with a waistline the circumference of a Louisville Slugger on a body that appears to weigh no more than a rosin bag.

Which accounts for Orel Hershiser’s observation Sunday: “Just think how good he’s going to be when he grows up.”

Standing beside one another, Martinez and Hershiser resemble the number 11. They are Tom Lasorda’s toothpicks. The nicest thing about Martinez and Hershiser is that they never take up much space in the Dodger dugout. Whenever Lasorda is through using them, he simply puts them back in the bat rack.

Now that Fernando Valenzuela is history, most of the Dodger pitchers are fighters from the lightweight division. Yet as Hershiser maintained in 1988 and reiterated in 1991, you don’t judge a wimp by his cover. Hershiser is still as tough as they come, as he demonstrated to the Atlanta Braves here Saturday night, and Martinez, well, there might not be much meat on him, but Ramon is bad to the bone.

The home run he hit Sunday put him only 397 behind Eddie Murray on the all-time list. It was a solo screamer against Tom Glavine, the major leagues’ leading winner, no less, and a left-hander to boot, who surely had no premonition when he left for the ballpark that the opposing pitcher, by his third at-bat, would have a single and a home run and would be giving him as much grief as Darryl Strawberry or Murray.

“I don’t even like to hit,” Martinez said later.

No?

“No. Sometime, I don’t even want to,” he said.

Had he journeyed directly from the Dominican Republic to the American League, where pitchers leave the batting to somebody more qualified, Martinez never would have known the goose-bump feeling of walloping one over a faraway fence. The Dodger thin man never homered in the minors, to his recollection, and in fact still regrets his relatively recent turnabout to become a left-handed batter, because he fears--particularly in a world full of Norm Charltons--being struck by a pitch on his meal-ticket right arm.

Nevertheless, the macho man inside Martinez motivated him last season to make a personal wager with Murray, his slugging first baseman, that before the 1990 season was over, a Dodger box score would include, somewhere in its legend: HR: Martinez (1). They bet dinner on the deal and shook hands on it, Murray being careful not to crush Ramon’s.

Alas, the 1990 calendar pages fell without a Dodger dinger from Martinez. No triple, either. No double, either. Oh, he did scratch out 10 little singles in six months of baseball, but Ramon also struck out 32 times. As a hitter, Martinez was more of a misser.

So what got into him Sunday?

Maybe some of Lasorda’s 64th-birthday cake. Or maybe some of that medicinal bourbon Ramon sipped to remedy his sore hip. Or maybe he was fueled by the sheer embarrassment of having lost eight of his dozen decisions since the All-Star break, or of lasting little more than two innings in last week’s start at Atlanta, where he bore little resemblance to the Ramon Martinez who on June 4 of the previous season had buzzed strike three past 18 dazzled Braves.

The 20-game winner of a year ago wasn’t sure if his pitching arm should be pronounced dead, or what. The Dodgers gave him seven days between starts to think about it, and possibly toyed with the idea of using Bob Ojeda against the Braves instead.

“I was kind of, yes, scared about my arm, I admit it,” Martinez said. “Before today.”

He took his mind off it by taking some cuts in batting practice, reviving an old dugout argument over which non-hitters hit better: The starting pitchers or the relievers. Martinez claims he yanked a couple into the seats; this fact is in dispute, and might require clubhouse arbitration. Nevertheless, he picked up his 32-ounce bat, stepped up with his 32-ounce body--OK, he swears it’s 175 pounds--and drove one of Glavine’s offerings farther than stronger men, even with a sore hip.

A clearly amused Hershiser said afterward: “I was worried that Ramon might have pulled a muscle, but then I remembered he doesn’t have any muscles. Maybe he pulled a bone.”

Martinez laughed last.

The locker alongside his in the Dodger clubhouse belongs to Murray. Wasting no time afterward, the pitcher borrowed a scrap of paper and a pen. He scribbled a few words, then placed the note on Murray’s chair.

It read:

Eddie:

When is dinner?

Ramon