Tino To Piniella: I'll Take Manhattan

AFTER SELECTING the Yankees, former Mariner Tino Martinez is proving nice guys can finish first, even in New York.

NEW YORK - In Tino Martinez's cozy, friendly and happy world, everything fits. When Tino became the Seattle Mariners' starting first baseman, his manager was Lou Piniella, the former fishing buddy of Tino's father, Rene, who like Lou is a revered figure in Tampa, Fla.

Tino and Lou were so close that when Mariner General Manager Woody Woodward told Piniella there wasn't money in the budget to keep Tino, Lou asked Tino where he wanted to play. Thus, Tino became a rarity, a player picking his next team.

"Padres, Cubs or Yankees?" Piniella asked.

Tino answered, "If you're going to trade me, trade me to New York."

Tino chose the team with ties to Lou, the team with ties to Lou's and Tino's hometown, the team that employed Tino's former neighbor, Joe Molloy, who like Lou and Tino is a west Tampa man and who once coached Tino's younger brother, Tony, at St. Joseph's grade school and had risen to become the Yankees' general partner.

This was good fortune for Tino, for when it came to negotiating a contract, the two men in the room - Tino's Tampa-based agent, Jim Krivacs, and Molloy - both loved Tino almost as much as they loved Tampa. When Jim and Joe were done talking, Tino had a five-year, $20.25 million deal. Unlike most baseball deals, it is an agreement that pleases everyone today. Asked this week about the negotiations, Tino smiled, as if revealing a secret. But Tino remembered something important as he said, "Everything has to go through the Boss."

True enough, and while it was suggested at the time that Molloy overstuffed Tino's Christmas stocking that day, Dec. 7, 1995, which also is Tino's birthday and the birth date of his third child, Victoria - the deal now ranks among the finest in New York sports. Besides being an acquaintance-turned-admirer who helped pick Tino, Molloy turned out to be one superb negotiator.

After his rough start, Tino now is beloved in the Bronx. Don Mattingly's successor is writing his own success story. Tino is among the league leaders in several categories. He and Mariner center fielder Ken Griffey Jr. are locked in tight battles. Griffey leads the American League in homers with 15; Tino has 14, but holds a 43-41 edge over Griffey for the AL lead in runs batted in.

Tino is an absolute bargain, it turns out. He makes $3 million less than his first-base backup/DH, Cecil Fielder, and Martinez, 29, is young, likable and believable. Recalled Pop Cuesta, Tino's baseball coach at Tampa's Jefferson High: "Tino was always on time, he got good grades and the girls loved him."

Tino is, in fact, so polite and respectful that George Steinbrenner wondered aloud whether he was wise taking Tino plus pitchers Jeff Nelson and Jim Mecir for pitcher Sterling Hitchcock and third baseman Russ Davis and anointing Tino as the immediate replacement for a New York icon.

Steinbrenner asked Piniella, "Can a quiet guy like this survive New York?"

Piniella responded, "You're going to get yourself a helluva ballplayer."

Besides being a family friend, Piniella turned out to be a superb scout.

When Constantino Martinez, the middle of Rene and Sylvia Martinez's three sons, returned home from baseball practices at Jefferson, he would retire to the back yard of their off-white three-bedroom ranch house on Kathleen Street, a mile from where the Yankees now train in the spring. Hitting off a tee, Martinez would slam ball after ball into a chain-link fence for hours.

In many ways, Mattingly's successor is his double. "The only way I thought I'd be able to make it is if I kept practicing hitting," Tino said. "I had to hit. I'm not fast, and I don't have a great arm."

The ballfield at Jefferson High was renamed for Tino's dad in the early '90s, not long after Rene Martinez died suddenly. As Tino remembered it, his father never missed a day of work. So when he couldn't rise out of bed a couple days in December 1989, Sylvia insisted Rene see a doctor. He was diagnosed with a brain tumor, underwent emergency surgery and died Jan. 4, 1990, at 48.

Rene Martinez Sr. lived to see Tino hit two home runs in the gold medal game at the Seoul Olympics in 1988. But he missed many wonderful things that have happened since. . . .

There is a large hole in Sylvia's fence, a testament to Tino's work. They never fixed the fence. It is a $100 hole, a million-dollar memory.