Martinez Learns Baseball’s Not Always A Fair Game

There have been more than 3,000 major league at-bats in his career, but Edgar Martinez had never had one quite like it.

In the seventh inning Saturday, with reliever Jeff Russell on the mound, Martinez crushed what appeared to be his 18th home run of the season - a bolt that missed the left field foul pole by inches and was called foul.

“I was mad,” Martinez admitted.

Back in the batters box, Martinez nubbed a ground ball toward third base, just did beat the throw to first. Infield single? Nope, umpires ruled that ball foul, too.

Back to the batters box.

“Now I wasn’t just mad, I was out of breath,” Martinez said.

From the bench, teammate Jay Buhner could sympathize.

“You get your pitch, hit it out just foul, you know you’re not going to see that pitch again,” Buhner said.

In the opposing dugout, Texas designated hitter Mickey Tettleton agreed.

“You’ve just put a great swing on a ball, then you’ve just had a second hit taken away,” he said. “You’re really mad.”

And, in Martinez’s case, you need a new bat - he’d broken his ‘gamer’ on the infield nubber.

Russell threw Martinez a slider, down and away. Martinez hit it over the fence in center field.

“It happens,” Seattle manager Lou Piniella said, “but it never happened to me. Miss a home run, then come back and hit another ball out? I never did it. The balls I hit foul made me too mad to hit another one out.”

Added Paul Sorrento: “He hit a good pitch out foul, then hit another pitch - I mean a different kind of pitch - out in the same at-bat. Hitters don’t do that.”

Buhner said he’d done it once, in Cleveland, and it reminded him of another story.

“That day I was at second base on an error and I was 0 for 2 and complaining and (umpire) Al Clark came over and said, ‘It’s a long day. Maybe you’ll get a couple hits,”’ Buhner said. “I hit two home runs and a double the rest of the way - including a home run after I’d hit one foul. Ever since then, whenever I see Clark I touch him for luck.

“The problem is, (Ken Griffey) Junior found out about it. Now he runs over and tries to touch Clark first. He wants my hits.”

Notes

Reliever Mike Jackson has had trouble with consistency this season, and his 5.50 earned run average tells only part of the story. He’s also allowed 15 of 40 inherited runners to score - all of those runs charged to the pitcher whose place Jackson took. … Outfielder Darren Bragg is 2 for 6 as a pinch-hitter this season, matching Brian Hunter for the best off-the-bench average on the team. … First baseman Paul Sorrento is hitting .333 in the Kingdome and has hit 10 of his 14 home runs there. … Hitting instructor Lee Elia left the team for a few days to attend the funeral of his mother, who died Saturday. “She always loved baseball,” Elia said. “She’d set her alarm for 4 a.m. to get up and watch the early sports to see how the Mariners had done the night before.”