Will All-Star Voters Pick Up On Edgar’s Act? As The Anti-Albert, Martinez Gets Lost In Shuffle Despite Awesome Numbers

Upon seeing a reporter jotting down notes at the batting cage during Friday’s pregame warmups, Edgar Martinez barked, “Hey, what are you writing?!”

Edgar? Angry? Yelling? Caliente, verdad?

Couldn’t be.

Wasn’t.

“Just kidding,” the Mariners master hitter said, his customary smile back in place. “I’m trying to be more controversial.”

Martinez is baseball’s anti-Albert.

Yet he’s so little-known, despite two American League batting crowns, he needs to generate headlines just to collect some well-deserved All-Star votes, especially considering there’s no designated hitter category on the ballot.

A week ago, begged for something outrageous, he said he was thinking of robbing a bank. No chance. Edgar would wait his turn in line, then interrupt his escape to hold the door open for little old ladies.

Not that Martinez isn’t newsworthy. It’s just that while Albert Belle and other pitch muggers go after high profiles like Roger Maris and Babe Ruth and their home run records, Martinez is after Earl Webb.

Webb, you probably won’t recall, is the fellow who set the A.L. record with 68 doubles for Boston in 1931. Webb had the advantage of hitting toward Duffy’s Cliff, the slope at the foot of Fenway’s Green Monster that was later removed. He also had a habit of stopping at second en route to would-be triples.

Martinez is on pace to obliterate Webb’s mark, projecting to 87 two-base hits.

More noteworthy and less known is the fact that Martinez is on line to set major league records for total extra-base hits in a season, also for percentage of extra-base hits to overall hits.

He is on a pace to collect 127 extra-base hits, or as they are officially called, long hits - eight more than Babe Ruth’s record 119 in 1921 (44 doubles, 14 triples, 59 home runs).

He also projects to have 64 percent of his hits go for extra bases. Among players with 85 or more non-singles, the accepted standard for the listing, Cleveland’s Belle set the mark with 59.5 percent last year.

So many extra-base hits has Martinez piled up, 11 straight in the first six games of the last homestand (nine doubles, two homers), that he actually bemoaned the lack of a single. “I’d like to get one, a simple single,” Martinez said part way through that home streak.

Funny as it sounded, he wasn’t kidding.

“I’m not exactly complaining about all the doubles and all,” he said. “But singles tell me my swing is right. When my swing is right I get my share of hits anyway. When my swing is right I get line drives and if the pitcher makes a bad mistake I can hit it out.”

Too many long hits, to him, mean his swing is too long. “The longer the swing, the bigger the holes in it,” he said. “I’ve been doing all right so far, but when the swing is not right, trouble can start at any time and I don’t want that risk.”