Work Helps Martinez to Play at Notre Dame : Third Baseman Toils for Tuition by Performing Chores on Campus

For proof that Cesar Martinez is a hard worker, watch him play third base for Notre Dame High. Or watch him fine-tuning his swing in the batting cage.

Or check out the schoolyard at Notre Dame. Those trees? Martinez planted them. The benches? He moved them.

Besides being one of the Knights’ top hitters and base-stealing threats, Martinez is something of a handyman. The labor he does around the school is part of a work-study program that helps pay his tuition.

“It’s fun,” Martinez said. “I am out here helping my school and trying to pay for my education.”

Martinez is unlike Notre Dame students who come from affluent families. The senior is living with his mother and younger sister in North Hollywood, surviving with checks from his father, who has been separated from his wife since last summer.

Toward the end of the fall semester, the tuition payments got to be too much for Martinez’s father, a truck driver. Martinez nearly transferred to North Hollywood High to ease the financial strain on his family.

But his older brother, Erik, a former standout outfielder at North Hollywood and Pierce College and now a reserve outfielder at Pepperdine, talked him out of it.

“He was thinking of transferring and I said no,” said Erik, who is as much a friend and mentor as a brother to Cesar. “I told him we would work it out, talk to the people at Notre Dame.

“I told him you’ve got to work hard to get where you want to be. If anyone knows that, it’s him.”

It was appropriate that Erik helped convince Cesar to remain at Notre Dame, because it was primarily Erik who directed Cesar to enroll there in the first place.

Cesar, who was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, and moved to California with his family when he was about 4, had been attending a public junior high school in North Hollywood. As Cesar completed ninth grade in 1990, Erik was graduating from North Hollywood and Cesar planned to follow him.

Despite Erik’s on-field success with the Huskies--he was the team most valuable player three times and an All-Valley Pac-8 Conference selection twice--he attracted little college interest. Erik told Cesar that a private school such as Notre Dame would better prepare him, athletically and academically, for college.

“If it wasn’t for the money,” Erik said, “I would have gone there myself.”

The money. That was the problem.

Believing the benefits would outweigh the costs, however, Erik helped convince his father that Notre Dame was the right choice for Cesar.

“I told my dad it would be very smart, but they would have to crunch for the money a little,” Erik said. “Dad said, ‘We’ll get through one way or another.’ ”

Martinez enrolled at Notre Dame for his sophomore year. And for two years, his father was able to scrape together the school’s $4,350 annual tuition.

But this year became increasingly difficult. Martinez approached Coach Tom Dill in December with his problem, and Dill directed him to school administrators who put Martinez on the work-study program, which covers half of Martinez’s tuition.

Martinez does custodial work and groundskeeping--”keeping the school looking nice,” Martinez said.

He said he squeezes in the hours whenever he can, but it is not so easy during baseball season because of games and practices. During the school’s spring break next week, Martinez will work two eight-hour days.

Martinez also worked two hours a night as a telemarketing agent for an insurance company but had to quit because of the time constraints of school and baseball.

“It was spending money for me,” Martinez said. “It helped my mom out. On the weekends, I didn’t have to ask her for money.”

He speaks openly about his family’s financial situation and concedes he sometimes feels out of place around his predominantly white, upper-middle-class teammates. It is generally not a problem, though.

“Sometimes they say, ‘Let’s go eat,’ or something,” Martinez said, “but I can’t really afford to go out and eat every time they go out. They never eat at home. I love my mom’s cooking, so I always try to eat at home. They spend their money on little things while I try to save mine and, hopefully, use it for another purpose.”

The purpose is clear: to get to college, via a baseball scholarship, Martinez hopes.

Martinez, who wants to go into sports medicine, said Pierce and Valley colleges have shown interest, and he wouldn’t reject going the junior college route if he had to--”It worked out for Erik,” he said--but his hopes are still for an NCAA Division I scholarship.

So far, nothing.

One reason perhaps is his height. Despite his nickname, “Monster,” Martinez is only 5-foot-7. He was given the nickname when he was about 13, and also 5-7.

“Everyone stretched out and I stayed the same height,” he said.

His lack of height and lack of any eye-popping tools such as speed, arm strength or power make him easy to overlook.

“When you look at him at first, you’re not going to say, ‘Wow, Vince Coleman speed,’ ” Erik said, “but after you look at him a while you say, ‘Wow, this guy goes hard all the time.’ ”

Martinez, a three-year starter, is batting .372 6with a team-high 13 runs and an on-base percentage of .440. He also is perfect in 14 stolen-base attempts, helping Notre Dame to a 10-2 record and No. 4 ranking in The Times’ regional poll.

The compliments roll in, all with a recurring theme.

“I’ve played on a lot of teams in a lot of sports and he could be the hardest worker I’ve ever played with,” Notre Dame shortstop Ryan Stromsborg said.

Said Dill: “He’s always working on something. He’s (at practice) to play, not to screw around. . . . I wish I had 20 just like him.”

A few weeks ago, Martinez injured his right shoulder. Notre Dame’s trainer told him not to practice, to rest the joint. Fat chance.

“(The trainer) said just watch practice and maybe feed balls (to the pitching machine),” Martinez said. “I got out there and I said, ‘(Forget) this. I’m going to take ground balls and hit.’ ”

The most measurable result of Martinez’s work ethic can be found in the stolen base column of the Notre Dame stat sheet. He has speed, but it is hardly blinding. Yet, he has been successful in 34 of 35 attempts since the start of his junior year.

He works on his leads, on reading pitchers, on getting a good jump, the slide. What makes his success more important is that it outdoes that of his brother, who “is way quicker than me,” Cesar said.

Erik, who has been playing part-time in his first season with the Waves, has two stolen bases in two attempts.

“(Cesar) has been ragging me this year because I haven’t gotten that many,” Erik said. “He works on his steals. Not me. For me it’s more God-given talent.”

The brothers’ relationship isn’t really a competitive one, though. Cesar said Erik is like “a second father.”

“My brother is really the one I look up to most,” said Cesar, who sees his brother about twice a week during the season. “He’s helped me out financially, mentally, with baseball, with school, with girls.”

As for baseball, the brothers help each other. Cesar has worked out with Erik at Pierce and Pepperdine, looking for advice.

“He’ll say to me, ‘Why don’t you hit me some ground balls and tell me what I am doing wrong?’ ” Erik said. “I always have him there and he always has me. We are like each other’s video cameras.

“What separates us is I’ve always been gifted with a lot of things like speed and a good arm. But with him, things haven’t come easily. With him it’s always been hard work. Without a good work ethic, he’s nowhere.”