First-year Ray gets 300th homer in opener before a loving audience.
By MARC TOPKIN
Published March 31, 2004
TOKYO - For reasons he's not quite sure of, Tino Martinez has been the most popular Devil Ray among Japanese fans. Fans have waved his baseball cards, screamed his name, run him down on the street for autographs.
In Tuesday's opener, he gave them reasons to cheer.
Martinez made his regular-season debut for his hometown Devil Rays a smash, going 3-for-3 and hitting his 300th career home run into the rightfield seats at the Tokyo Dome.
"It's nice to get 300," Martinez said. "I'm happy to get it anywhere. Hitting home runs is tough to do. I'll take them where I can get them."
Martinez, 36, is the 99th player to hit 300 home runs in the big leagues, joining fellow Tampa products Fred McGriff (491) and Gary Sheffield (379).
"Three hundred is huge," Aubrey Huff said. "I don't think people realize how good that is. It's an amazing feat, and he should be very proud of it. He got a beer shower after the game for it, and you don't want to waste a good beer."
Martinez appears to be coming home at the right time. He wasn't particularly successful after signing with St. Louis or appreciated by the Cardinals, who are paying $7-million of his $7.5-million salary, but the Rays are glad to have him on their side.
"Three hundred homers; that's a lot of home runs, isn't it?" manager Lou Piniella said. "He's had a heck of a career."
The Rays acquired Martinez for his bat and smooth hands around first, but they would like him to share some of the wisdom he acquired along the way, especially from his six-year run with the Yankees that included four World Series championships.
"Our veterans have really stabilized our team in a lot of ways," Piniella said. "The more they produce with their bats and gloves obviously the better, but they give us some maturity and stability and leadership in the clubhouse, and that's important."
Martinez is team-first, so he should be comfortable in the role.
"We know we have a good team," Martinez said. "The Yankees are a tough team, and that was just one game today. If we play hard every night, anything can happen. And we plan on playing hard every night, so we'll take our chances."
So far, Martinez has made a pretty good impression. In his first at-bat as a Ray in a March 6 spring game, he homered. In his first regular-season game, he hit the landmark homer and was honored to catch the first pitch from former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
