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| | Friday, March 24 | |||||
Special to ESPN.com | ||||||
| You're Al Martin, you poor bugger. You have nothing but free time
while you consider your limited options. You're full of nervous energy as
your predicament unfolds, and you're wondering what to do.
The answer is easy. You start writing your acceptance speech as
Comeback Player of the Year.
You know about Al, the Preacher's Pal. He is an outfielder with the
San Diego Padres, and he was arrested Monday for allegedly getting
into a fight with his wife, Shawn Haggerty-Martin.
The problem, as you doubtless know by now, is that he also has a wife
named Cathy.
Now that is a problem.
Martin claims he is not in fact married to Ms. Haggerty (or is it Mrs.
Haggerty-Martin). She says he is, and claims they were married in Las Vegas
two years ago. He says that he was in a ceremony in Las Vegas at that time,
but he thought the wedding was unofficial.
You know, like an exhibition game, only with jewelry, flowers and
witnesses.
The domestic abuse issue is not to be laughed at, of course. Haggerty
claims that she has suffered previous incidents of abuse, including one in
which he allegedly pressed a gun to her mouth. Martin, too, left the
altercations with cuts and bruises. Plainly, these are people with profound
issues.
But it's the extra wife angle that strikes strangest of all. I mean,
how do you go to a wedding, stand before a preacher and think it's a great,
thigh-slapping joke? Especially, that is, when you already have a wife at
home who isn't going to see the humor either way?
That is why Martin has the Comeback Player of the Year trophy locked
up. True, he hit .277 last year with 24 homers and 63 RBIs in 143 games
with Pittsburgh, which means that in a baseball sense, he didn't really
have a year he needs to come back from.
This requires an expansion of the definition of ""comeback," then.
Marriage, as we know, is a full-time commitment. It used to be a
full-time lifetime commitment, but since any marriage has a coin-flip's
chance of succeeding, we must settle for the more limited definition.
Professional baseball is also a full-time commitment. Just as a
professional husband can never take his wife for granted or ignore his
children, a professional baseball player must train his mind and body for
the rigors of a six-month season, day in and day out.
Throw in another wife, and you've got three full-time commitments for
one person. Most struggle to manage two. Anyone who can do three is coming
back from more than we can ever understand.
On the other hand, if he was in fact buffaloed into marrying Ms./Mrs.
Haggerty and thought he still was working on his original marriage, it is
still safe to assume that his wife Cathy is going to be in a pretty foul
humor for a pretty long time. Wives have a history of taking bigamy poorly,
even if it's comedy bigamy.
Thus, Al has at least one wife mad at him, and unless Cathy overflows
with the milk of human kindness, he has two. Now throw in the stresses of
the modern ballplayer, add a chin-high fastball now and then, and you've
got a gentleman awash in complications.
Martin came to San Diego a month ago, which didn't give the Padres'
public relations department much time to slip him into the media guide.
Their efficiency squeezed his bio into the book, though, and his wife's
name is listed as Cathy Martin. Now, media guides are not considered the
same as absolute proof of marriage, and some players have been known even
to lie about their hobbies so as not to look like a weirdo to their
teammates.
This one, though, staggers the imagination, weird-wise. Al Martin
either is incredibly unlucky, incredibly conflicted, or incredibly
troubled.
No matter what, he has a trophy coming to him. If he can play baseball
at all while coping with the mess he is alleged to have created, he is
performing brilliantly. If he has a year like last year's with all this as
side dish, he is an MVP candidate.
Either way, he will have come back from the kind of thing that makes
elbow surgery seem like a breath mint. That is, if he gets to come back.
This is already uglier than most events, and it figures to get uglier before
it goes away.
So maybe working on his speech will take Al Martin's mind off his
troubles. Even if he never gets to deliver it.
Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Examiner is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. | ALSO SEE Martin emotional upon return to Padres camp | |||||