Martinez has new spring in his step

The man they called Papi for years with the Mariners acknowledged, "I really am a poppa now."

Edgar Martinez laughed as he said it, picking up his son Alex at school one day last week but still taking time to talk for a while about life after baseball. Another spring training is looming, but this time, the Mariners will head to Peoria, Ariz., without him.

Martinez, who retired last October after 18 seasons as Seattle hitting master and sports father figure, found this winter "very, very different for me.

"I've been playing baseball for ... well, basically, for my whole life. Baseball dictated how I lived, really it dictated how my whole family lived. Now I don't have to do things around baseball."

While purposely distancing himself from the game that once was his life, he has not lost touch with the friends he will always have from all those years of clubhouses and competing.

"I talk to a couple of the guys now and then, Boonie (Bret Boone), Jay (Buhner), Norm (Charlton), Nellie (Jeff Nelson), Paul Sorrento," he said, "but I'm really pretty disconnected."

"I am trying to get more familiar with my business," he said, referring to Caribbean Embroidery, the Redmond-based company he moved from Puerto Rico and has owned for more than a decade. "That has given me a lot of motivation."

Overall, however, the focus on the company is different than the intensity he brought to baseball.

"I am more relaxed, I'm enjoying the offseason," he said. "I don't get up every day thinking of the list of things I have to do."

The changes in his life have been as much mental as physical.

"It really is a different mentality, and tremendous adjustment from the emotional preparation to compete in the game of baseball," he said. "My daily routine really isn't that different. I still work out every day."

Instead of his old offseason program of hitting in a home-based batting cage every day, here or Puerto Rico, Martinez, 42, has not been tempted to even pick up a bat.

"I have not swung a bat since my last game, my last time up ... my last double play," he said. "No more of those, and that is great."

What he did swinging a bat, each one carefully weighed at his locker and chosen depending on how he felt and how he was swinging, is now history.

He was a five-time designated hitter of the year — the DH award is now named for him — was a .312 lifetime hitter (59th best ever) and finished with 514 doubles (35th on the all-time list), 309 homers and 1,261 runs batted in.

"Yes ... " he acknowledged. "I did my best. I wish I had been able to do more at times, but I always did my best. We had some great times, now great memories."

Times change, and workouts, too.

"Working out, I don't do the same drills," he said. "I'm doing more cardio, even playing some basketball."

He said he does not want to be one of those former players who make appearances at events, even old-timers' games, whose belt size is longer than their line drives.

He has taken trips to Hawaii and as always, visited family in Puerto Rico, but kept them short. After all, as he put it, "Alex is in school, and that is most important."

He moved the family in November into a new Eastside house they built. "That," Martinez said, "was a lot of work."

Those things got him through much of the winter, and a new baby due next month will get him through the toughest stretch, his first spring without his beloved game.

"Holli feels good, thinks the baby will come next month and that will be a different type of training for me," he said. "I think the baby, and watching Alex and Tessa while Holli is dealing with the baby, will keep me very occupied."

He knows he will need this, with training camp opening in about three weeks. His arrival, like that of Ken Griffey Jr. and Buhner, always created a buzz, smiles, noise, a lifting of spirits in the clubhouse.

"I know it will be another test, not going to spring training," he said. "I used to love to go to Arizona. It was always one of my favorite times of the year."

In a sense, Martinez has had preparation for hanging 'em up when a few years ago he stopped playing winter ball for the San Juan Senadores.

In his early years, he would play the entire winter schedule at third base for his old club.

"Sometimes I think back on it," he said. "But it was time to stop, just as it was time for me to stop playing here in Seattle.

"I miss it all, the fun we had, the struggles years ago, the satisfaction of winning later, the friends. In some ways I miss preparing now and I expect I will miss playing this summer, but my body told my mind what I had to do. I will always miss it some, but that will fade, too.

"I tried to make it a good career, and I think I did all right. Now it is time for others. I'm like everyone else in Seattle, I hope they will do well, even better than we did our best years."

• Attendance at the Seattle Mariners FanFest over the weekend drew 14,155, down more than 1,000 from the previous year. The 2004 FanFest attendance total was 15,854.

The event drew 6,290 on Saturday and 7,865 yesterday.

Bob Finnigan: 206-464-8276 or bfinnigan@seattletimes.com