TORONTO – Only a very small handful of people are connected to every generation of the Toronto Blue Jays the way Buck Martinez is, which is why he’s such a fitting choice for induction to the club’s new Hall of Excellence.
The beloved former player and broadcaster will be celebrated Saturday afternoon, when the club transitions the current Level of Excellence to a new venue for team history, located in the right-field concourse on the 100 level at Rogers Centre.
Paul Beeston, the team’s first employee and now its president emeritus, described Martinez’s selection as “a just reward” that “recognizes all the hard work he’s done, and rightly so, when you put it all together.”
“He was there just after the foundation had been put down and he came when we started to get good. Is it a coincidence we got good when he came along? I don’t know,” Beeston said with a mischievous laugh. “But I do know that he brought professionalism. He brought a work ethic. He brought a sense of humour. He knew how hard it was to play the game. He had no intention, when he first came here, of staying for the rest of his life be affiliated with the ballclub like he did. But he became an integral part of everything that we’ve accomplished over the years.”
Paul Quantrill, the former all-star reliever who pitched for Martinez when he managed the Blue Jays, put it this way: “He belongs up in the Hall of Excellence because when I think of the Blue Jays, I think about guys like him and Tom Cheek and some players like Carlos Delgado. But Buck is as much a Blue Jay as any human being that I know.”
True as those words are, Martinez’s impact spreads even wider across nearly six decades in the sport, as a player, a union representative, a manager, a broadcaster and a support leader in the player fraternity. Here’s a look at the 77-year-old’s legacy in each of those lanes:
Martinez had already spent 11 seasons in the big leagues when the Blue Jays acquired him in May 1981 for outfielder Gil Kubski, pairing him behind the plate with future all-star Ernie Whitt, who had just started establishing himself in the majors.
“I played off of his being a veteran leader on the team,” said Whitt. “I was very in tune to his feeling on the game, learning how to call a game and working with the pitching staff. I knew a lot, but I’ve always felt that it’s good to absorb as much as you can. I thought Buck and I worked really well together as players. We both accepted our roles and our ultimate goal was to get the best out of our pitching staff and to lead them in the right direction.”
Martinez helped teach Whitt various intricacies of the game.
“The biggest thing was paying attention to the opposing team, the opposing hitters, things that they can do from at-bat to at-bat. Watching the footwork of the hitters. Are they getting closer to the plate? Are they moving up in the box, or back in the box? Things like that,” said Whitt. “I never really paid that much attention until Buck and I started working together. That really helped out. And then to recognize pitchers when they didn’t have their A game going, how we can get them through five or six innings so we don’t burn our bullpen out.”
Whitt wasn’t the only Blue Jays player on a developing contender to benefit from Martinez’s wisdom.
“He was very easygoing and anything that we talked about, it was for the betterment of the team,” said Whitt. “His approach was good as far as talking about things, even when he was talking to other hitters. Maybe he knew the pitcher or had caught the pitcher before with Kansas City or Milwaukee. He was there to help his teammates. It was always very professional, and the bottom line is he wanted to win. I always respect people that go out and do their job, and the bottom line is they want to do the best they can and they want to win.”
Donald Fehr, the longtime executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, first met Martinez during the union’s annual meeting in December 1977. He had just joined the PA as general counsel, having previously represented airline employees and that “became a connection point” because Martinez’s wife, Arlene, had worked as a flight attendant.
“I recall a couple of conversations early on in which two things were apparent,” said Fehr. “The first one was, this is a guy that can really think in a straight line and is very observant and very knowledgeable about the conditions he faces and other players face. Second one, he wanted to test me, so he would ask all kinds of questions and pose hypotheticals and do all kinds of other crap designed to find out if I could think in a straight line. We got to know each other fairly well after that. During the the first major crisis – the very short strike in spring training in ’80, which led to the long strike in ’81, which we were at 50 days and we settled on the day the owners’ strike insurance ran out – he was actively involved, mostly in terms of making sure his knowledge was up to date and then speaking with other players, anyone and everyone that would listen to him about you know what the issues were. He was persuasive and he was respected and it meant a lot. … Buck attended negotiating meetings in ’80 and ’81, and what happened after that is he essentially maintained that status throughout the rest of his playing career.”
Martinez was the Blue Jays’ player rep at that point, but later served as vice president on the union’s executive board, detailing some of his experiences on Stitch x Stitch, the MLBPA’s historical podcast. Paul Beeston didn’t sit directly across from him during any formal CBA discussions, but as a senior team executive, was frequently in contact with him on various labour matters.
“He was a voice of reason,” said Beeston. “He knew that in negotiations there is give and take and the best result would be a win-win. And he had the ability to listen, which is key. It wasn’t like he went in there and said, ‘This is the way it’s going to be, and I don’t really care what you think.’ He went in there and said, ‘This is what I think, let’s hear your side.’”
That ability to communicate made him one of Fehr’s most valuable and trusted confidants, especially as he became acting executive director in 1983 and was elected to the role in 1985.
“Buck had no hesitation about telling us what we needed to focus on and what we needed to do next, how we needed to approach problems, what were the players really thinking about, what were they concerned about, what are the issues which are top of mind in their internal discussions,” said Fehr. “And it works both ways. There’s this notion out there that Marvin (Miller) and then me, we were basically union bosses, whatever the hell that is. That’s a pejorative phrase that the owners use because it harkens back to corrupt teamsters. But Marvin and I and anybody else, Bruce Meyer now, are staff. The players are the union. You can’t take them anywhere they don’t want to go. It’s not possible. So they have to be heavily involved. And that takes work and it takes leadership. …
“Buck would explain that to people. He’s incredibly patient, you don’t really want to say, do this because I tell you. What you want to say is, I think you should think about this and come to your own conclusions. If you do it right and if you’re correct, then the players will come to their own conclusions and they are much more committed when that happens.”
The Blue Jays had lost their way after winning consecutive World Series in 1992-93 and Rogers Communications Inc. had just purchased the club from Interbrew S.A. in September 2000, when GM Gord Ash hired Martinez to replace Jim Fregosi as manager. It was an unorthodox pick, pulling the former catcher from the broadcast booth, where he had shifted once his playing days ended after the 1986 season, “but for me, it was a pretty clean transition,” said Paul Quantrill.
“There might have been some people saying he was stepping out of his role of broadcasting, but that’s what helped him, I thought,” he continued. “Most of us knew him. I knew him well, considered more than a colleague, more of a friend. But when he stepped in as manager, it was really smooth, really good. That’s mostly because of the person Buck is. The thing I look for in a manager is, No. 1, can he communicate and talk to you. Obviously, Buck has that in spades. Probably the hardest thing is to get back at it, the everyday grind, some of the almost babysitting that all us young guys needed and to help along the way. Certainly Buck had to get used to that again. It wasn’t just a fly-by interview and talking to a few of the guys. It was having to call them into the office and help. We had some young players that were just getting started out. He cared about us, he cared about his guys and genuinely was a personable guy. That took him a long way.”
As an example, Quantrill points to his all-star selection in 2001, at the time a major outlier for a non-closer reliever like him.
“Buck was a big part of that,” Quantrill said. “I found out later from a lot of different people that Buck had a big part in advocating and supporting that I had earned the right to go. That was always much appreciated, but that’s Buck.”
That year, Quantrill set a then career best in appearances with 80, the first of four seasons at that threshold, including a remarkable 89 outings in 2003 with the Dodgers under Jim Tracy. He and Martinez “would not only listen to you, but they also took me for my word,” said the right-hander.
“I wanted to pitch every day. Some guys would try to protect me but I always felt like I’m a grown man, I’ll tell you if I need a day or want a day off,” he continued. “Buck and I, that was never a problem. I told him I’m available every day, and if I’m not, I’ll come see you. And he stuck with that all year. That was a big part of why I excelled specifically that year, was that he allowed me to pitch, allowed me get rhythm. I really just appreciated being out there.”
The Blue Jays finished 80-82 in 2001, Ash was fired on the final weekend of the season and J.P. Ricciardi took over as GM, charged with taking the franchise in a different direction under much tighter payroll restrictions. Several higher-priced players were soon shipped out, Quantrill among them, and Martinez was fired two months into the 2022 season, with the club 20-33. All the flux above the players didn’t seep into the clubhouse.
“From a player’s perspective, Buck was the same every day,” said Quantrill. “He came in, he had good conversations, he’s honest and upfront with you, so whatever he had to deal with upstairs or with all the changes that were going on around him, he at least appeared to I think all of us, to be really just dealing with it and rolling with it.”
Martinez didn’t manage again in the majors, although he did skip the U.S. team at the inaugural World Baseball Classic in 2006, running into Ernie Whitt, his old platoon partner who was running the Canadian team.
“That’s the only time that I really didn’t like Buck,” said Whitt. “We got our revenge and beat him. I wanted to beat him, but he wanted to be me, too. That’s the beauty of being a competitor and wanting to win.”
Martinez had hoped to keep playing after the 1986 season, but the Blue Jays instead urged him to consider a shift to broadcasting. In 1987 he began working as a colour commentator for the Blue Jays on TSN, and his work was so strong, he did additional radio and TV work with ESPN, receiving a Sports EMMY Award for his coverage of Cal Ripken’s record 2,131st consecutive game.
“Buck was a natural broadcaster. But like everything, he had to be refined,” said Paul Beeston. “He worked at it, worked at his craft and he listened to people, whether it was Gordon Craig at TSN when he first started or whether at Sportsnet or when he did his ESPN work. All of it was a learning experience for him. He never quit learning and he never quit really being involved. He didn’t just come up and go behind the microphone. He would do his interviews before the game. He would be around and because he played the game and because he played it for so long, he came across the paths of a lot of managers, a lot of coaches, and particularly a lot of players. He knew what he was talking about.”
None of that led him to coast on the job. Martinez spent hours each day talking to players, managers and coaches, in the clubhouse and behind the batting cage, getting to know the game’s various characters in a way few others could.
“In my mind there are two things that separated Buck from so many other analysts,” said Dan Shulman, his longtime partner in the booth. “One was his work ethic – he did the same amount of prep for a game against a last-place team in June as he did for a playoff game in October. It mattered to him, day-in and day-out, to be as prepared as he could be, to try to give the viewers everything he had every single night.
“The second area,” Shulman continued, “was how he related to people – players, coaches, fans, everyone. I’ve never worked with anyone who got as much information out of people as he did, and they all loved talking to him whenever he approached them. He got stories most other people couldn’t get simply by being Buck.”
Added Beeston: “He explained the game. He spread the gospel, as I like to say, coast-to-coast.”
On Feb. 1, Martinez’s six-year run as president of the Baseball Assistance Team, or B.A.T., came to an end, with Eduardo Perez elected to take his place. “I’ve got tough shoes to fill,” said the popular former first baseman/outfielder who is now one of ESPN’s top baseball voices.
The B.A.T. program, celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, has awarded more than $73 million in grants to more than 13,500 players, current or former, on-field major and minor league personnel, scouts, umpires, trainers, front-office staffers Negro League and former Women’s League of Professional Baseball players. Aside from his duties as president, Martinez also served on the grants committee, underscoring his commitment to helping others.
“I think it’s second nature to him because when you know you look at the position that he played, being a catcher, he had to make sure that others were in positions to succeed and he did the same thing with B.A.T.,” said Perez. “From the way he held the board meetings to the way that he listened, observed, and would be able to give his two cents and it’s a respected opinion, not thinking of himself but always putting others ahead of him. … The way Buck carries himself, the foundation, the beliefs, the grace of understanding how important it is to be able to do this work and then the leadership, I know that he is someone I can turn to with anything that I ever have questions on. Most importantly, I learned so much just by observing and watching how he treats others.”
That skill is especially essential with B.A.T., a confidential service that people can still be reluctant to use due to embarrassment, shame or fear of what others might think.
“We think highly of the people that come and ask for help, because it takes courage to be able to ask for help. That’s the one thing we do understand, we’re just here as a short resource that the baseball family can have,” said Perez. “Buck is so easygoing that when you see that bright smile you know it’s genuine. That’s the most important thing with Buck. Everything he does is so genuine and that’s a really interesting trait to be able to have. Then he has that leadership skill. He’s got the experience. He’s seen a lot in the game. He’s known so many people in the game. He played winter ball, so he understands that culture, as well. That full understanding of who Buck Martinez has been for everyone, not just in Toronto, is really special.”