Victor Martinez, baseball player

Victor Martinez retired from Major League Baseball on Saturday. Martinez played 16 years in MLB – eight-plus with the Indians, one-plus with the Red Sox and the last seven with the Tigers.

Martinez was an All Star five times. He retired with a .295 lifetime batting average, 246 home runs and 1,178 runs batted in.

His last at bat, in the bottom of the first inning, Martinez hit a slow roller to the second baseman. He ran for all he was worth and beat the throw. An infield hit at 40 years old and his last at bat.

Some players have hit a home run in their last at bat and then trotted around the bases.

Martinez worked for his last hit. He ran it out, never slowing down until he was past first base.

Martinez looks like a baseball player. He wears his uniform socks high, the way a baseball player should. Martinez does not wear his uniform with the trouser cuffs below his ankles or below his shoes.

My daughter would like Martinez’s style of play. She says, “A player who wears his uniform the proper way, he plays baseball right. Those others, I want to tell them. ‘It’s a baseball uniform, not a track warmup suit.’”

She’s right. A player who wears his uniform right, he hustles. You won’t see those players lollygagging on an infield ground ball. Those players run out every ball.

Watch the Astros big three – Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa and George Springer. Those players wear a proper uniform, and they hustle.

The Yankees big guy, Aaron Judge, wears his uniform properly. And he hustles.

Maybe high-socks players will set an example for the track warmup suit players. Maybe more players will play like Victor Martinez.

The war and all that

I read in a couple of books baseball players saying there are no physical differences between a AAA player and a player who makes it to The Show.

There are physical differences. Not differences in strength or eyesight. AAA players and Major League players have the same muscle strength and eyesight.

The difference is that muscle-controlled, eyesight accurate portion-of-a-second ability to place the proper part of the bat on the proper part of the ball, the difference between a hit and a popup or flyout or ground out. Or for a pitcher, the difference between muscle-controlled, eyesight ability of being able to put the baseball within one inch of where you want it, opposed to two or three inches. Jim Bouton claimed a control pitcher was one who put the ball within six inches of where he wanted it, but Bouton was exaggerating and must have forgotten the times he watched Tommy John pitch or maybe never saw Gregg Maddox or Tom Glavine.

There are ball players who, in minor leagues, can muscle up and hit many a ball out of the park, yet fail to do the same when hitting in better parks with better backgrounds. Those players are no less strong than a major league player, but have a small defect in muscle or eyesight that keeps them from a long career in The Show.

Buck Frierson was one of those players. Frierson spent seven days with the Cleveland Indians in September 1941. In five games, Frierson had 11 at bats in five games. His three hits gave him a .273 batting average. His fielding average was 1.000 on two fly balls hit to him in right field. He also played one game in left field, but did not have an opportunity to handle the ball. In Frierson’s first major league game – Sept. 9, 1941 – he went 0 for 2 in the Indians’ 13-7 win over the Philadelphia Athletics. Bob Feller pitched a complete game for his 23rd win.

Frierson played minor league ball from 1937-1942 and then 1946-1953. In 1947 at Sherman-Denison, Frierson hit 58 home runs and drove in 197. That was a good year for the Class B Big State League, as well as for Frierson, with Texarkana and Greenville both winning more than 100 games, and league attendance exceeding 100,000.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_State_League

Frierson was born July 29, 1917, in Chicota, Texas. Chicota, “near the Red River one mile north of Pat Mayse Lake and fifteen miles north of Paris in northern Lamar County, was established in 1879, when it received a post office. Capt. Robert Draper started a store at the site called Center Springs. From Indians trading at the store he heard of Checotah in Indian territory and chose the name for the post. In 1884 Chicota had a post office, four churches, and a district school with 100 white pupils and two teachers. The population was forty-five. The town grew to 225 residents in 1892. In 1914 Chicota had a population estimated at 100 and seven businesses. By 1936 it had a church, a cemetery, a couple of businesses, and a number of scattered dwellings. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s the population was estimated at 212. In 1980 Chicota had a cemetery, a school, four businesses, one church, three surrounding churches, and a number of scattered dwellings. In 1990 the population was estimated at 125. The population remained the same in 2000.”

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hlc26

That gap in Frierson’s baseball career – 1943-45 – came about because of his Army time during World War II. At the end of the war, Frierson was 29 years old, somewhat up in age for a player with only five big league games.

Here’s a video of beekeeping in Chicota:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNGd6sc2n4c

Zip-codes.com has no census information on Chicota.

Texas.hometownlocator says Chicota has eight business addresses, one single family address and zero multi-family addresses. Whoever posts data on that site might want to consider the improbability of those numbers.

Zipcode.org says Chicota has no people.

When working for the newspaper in Paris, Texas, I drove through Chicota a few times, heading somewhere else. If the internet had been a bit more available then (1997-2001), I would have written an expanded version of this piece, with pictures.