The Martin era is upon us, for a day
ST. PETERSBURG, FLA.— John Gibbons saunters past, seemingly without a care in the world, pregame nosh on his plate. “Tomorrow morning, pregamer too,” the outgoing skipper chirps from the corner of his mouth, aiming the reminder at Russell Martin, at the centre of a reporter scrum.
Which is, strictly speaking, a fib. Because Gibbons always took Sundays off from the media scruff, at least before the game. This was negotiated with baseball writers in Gibby’s salad days: The Sequel.
But Gibbons is cutting Martin — his skipper-for-a-day — no slack. It comes with the job, confabbing with journos. And new daddy Martin — who has been coolly unapproachable in the past month, and who hasn’t played in a game since Sept. 3 with young catchers coming out the yin-yang — is forced into chatty stance, shades of Mar- tin of yore.
With what remains of his authority, Gibbons will stay true to the blithe quasi-promise he made his veteran earlier this month: You da man, Russ, the manager, come Toronto’s final game of the 2018 campaign.
If nothing else, that deliberately dingbatty premise has enlivened the last weekend of baseball for the Jays.
“On the bench a couple of weeks, I wasn’t playing and Gibby just came up to me and said, ‘Hey, what do you think about managing in the last game of the season,’ ” Martin explained. “I was, like, ‘Sure, it’d be great.’ ”
Gibbons intends to stay out of the dugout, for the most part, no bench-coach arm-around; he might even spend the game stretched out on the couch in the visiting coach’s quarters. He looks, suddenly, very tired.
“I decided to have a little fun with it,” said Gibbons. “I knew (Joe) Torre let a couple of his guys do it one time. Perfect way to end it.”
A handful of other players have drawn similar one-shot managing duties, as opposed to full-time player-managers, the last of whom was Pete Rose.
Catchers historically make good managers, and Gibbons is part of that fraternity.
“That’s what they say,” mused Martin, who has had starts this emergency diverse season behind the plate, at third, at shortstop and in left field. “I think being a catcher kind of helps you get perspective on the pitching side and the players’ side, so that’s really the only position where you do get to work with both. So that does kind of help. You’re strategizing nonstop. That kind of helps too.
“But for one day, I don’t know if it can make much of a difference.”
While speculation has been fervid over who will succeed Gibbons, Martin advises not to go getting any silly ideas about his own candidacy, resurrecting the player-manager model. “Oh gosh. I doubt whether we’ll ever see that again. But I guess I could be one of the candidates if it were to happen.”
He hadn’t, as of yesterday afternoon, pondered his lineup yet. But he was disinclined to put himself in, even as a pinchhitter. “Probably not. I’m just going to manage.”
The 35-year-old, who hasn’t been ejected from a game all year (“I’m usually good for one a year”), doesn’t expect to break that ’18 cherry on Sunday.
“I don’t think I’ll get thrown out but you never know. It would be kind of funny.”
Yes, we’re down to the funny pages of the season.
Oh yeah, almost forgot, about Saturday’s game:
Teoscar Hernandez launched a monster-shot, 440 feet, left his bat at a blistering 112 mph velocity, for his 22nd home run of the season, off reliever Diego Castillo, while rookie catcher Reese McGuire jacked one into the seats in the ninth. Nice long bomb touches but the Jays still fell 4-3, although they had starter Blake Snell on the ropes, holding the Cy Young candidate to a no-decision.