{"id":3215,"date":"2019-01-23T22:25:10","date_gmt":"2019-01-23T22:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=3215"},"modified":"2019-01-23T22:25:10","modified_gmt":"2019-01-23T22:25:10","slug":"finally-edgar-gets-his-due-and-is-now-where-he-belongs-cooperstown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=3215","title":{"rendered":"Finally, Edgar gets his due and is now where he belongs — Cooperstown"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

TERRY MOSHER<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

EDGAR MARTINEZ<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Justice has finally been done after 10 years \u2013 Edgar Martinez has been voted into the Baseball Hall of fame.<\/p>\n

What took so long? Man, it doesn\u2019t take a baseball genius to know Edgar should have been voted in a long time ago. I have seen professional baseball up close for nearly 30 years and been around the sport all my life and I can spot a special player within seconds.<\/p>\n

Edgar was that player.<\/p>\n

He was the best right-handed hitter I ever saw. Nobody else was close. You are not allowed to cheer or be loud in a press box. It\u2019s a serious working space and there are rules of decorum you follow or get evicted. And I was a super quiet writer. I tended to keep my chatter to a very low decibel, yet there was a night when I broke all the rules.<\/p>\n

For about a week, Edgar was hitting every pitcher he faced and hitting them hard. He couldn\u2019t be put out, it seemed. He was just right on everything. I don\u2019t know what he hit during that unbelievable streak, but it easily had to be .500 or more.<\/p>\n

So there I am sitting there in the press box being as quiet as possible and then I couldn\u2019t stand it anymore. As Edgar again strolled to the plate I just knew he was going to get another hit. I was trying hard to hold back, but the hair on my arms was giving me away. They were starting to stand straight up and goose bumps began to appear.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s weird, but I can still see Edgar at the plate even now. He is fouling off pitches he doesn\u2019t like, but are too close to take. He does that three or four times and then, just as I predicted, he laced a shot into the leftfield corner for a standup double.<\/p>\n

As Edgar\u2019s bat connected with that pitch, I broke out laughing. Not a low laugh. A loud laugh. Heads in the press box turned toward me. They were wondering, I\u2019m sure, what was wrong with me. But I couldn\u2019t help it. It was so funny because it was absurd to see Edgar do what he had been doing for a week \u2013 hit that little white pill.<\/p>\n

That my friends was Edgar Martinez at his best. He had a bad eye (left one, if I remember correctly) which is why he stood a little crooked so he could see better with his good eye. It is why he did eye exercises all the time, to strengthen his eye sight.<\/p>\n

Edgar didn\u2019t just show up at the ballpark and do his thing. He worked hard at his craft. As a kid in Puerto Rico he swung a stick at rain drops, he spend hours hitting stones with a stick, and as a professional player he lifted weights, ran, took thousands of swings in the batting cage and drank a lot of protein milkshakes to build himself into a block of granite.<\/p>\n

He did nothing illegal. He just did everything that was legally available to make himself better, and most of that was just hard work. His hard work plus his ability to remain calm in the midst of a storm made him who he became at the plate \u2013 a hitter that few in history can match, a Hall of Fame swinger.<\/p>\n

What is just as important is Edgar is as good a human being as he is a Hall of Fame player. He is naturally shy and humble and gracious to those around him. He\u2019s the guy we all would want as a friend.<\/p>\n

Some athletes we all know can be first-class jerks, or even worse. Not Edgar. He\u2019s first class as a person all the way. Guys like him don\u2019t come along very often. When they do, we all want to hang on to them.<\/p>\n

Edgar is that guy.<\/p>\n

Good for Edgar that voters after 10 years finally gave him his due. There are some bad dudes in Cooperstown but with Edgar\u2019s entry the field has been tilted a bit toward the good guys.<\/p>\n

Today is a good day for me because a wrong has been righted. I\u2019m all for fairness and equal justice. It was not fair, it was not just for Edgar not to be in the Hall and now that has been corrected, and that pleases me to no end.<\/p>\n

I hope that you will be treated fairly today and always. I hope you find justice in everything. May your life be good.<\/p>\n

Be well pal.<\/p>\n

Be careful out there.<\/p>\n

Have a great day.<\/p>\n

You are loved.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TERRY MOSHER   EDGAR MARTINEZ   Justice has finally been done after 10 years \u2013 Edgar Martinez has been voted…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3216,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,3,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-column","category-mosher","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3215"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3217,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3215\/revisions\/3217"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}