Card of the Moment #63
March 4th, 2011 by slangon
1971 Topps #602 Orlando Martinez
Todays Card of the Moment comes to us from the 5th series of the 1971 Topps set. Orlando Oliva “Marty” Martinez career as a Major League player spanned from 1962 to 1972. He spent all of 1963-66 in the minors. He played for the Twins, Braves, Astros, Cardinals, A’s and Rangers. It’s sort of funny that he started his career with one franchise that used to be the Washington Senators and ended it with another franchise that used to be the Washington Senators.
Martinez spent his entire career as a utility player. He never played more than 113 games during his 7 seasons in the Majors. When I say he was a utility player, I mean he was a utility player. He played games at catcher, 1st base, 2nd base, shortstop, 3rd base and left field. He even pitched 2/3 of an inning for the Astros in a 10-3 blowout loss to the Giants in 1969. He got Frank Linzy to ground out, gave up a solo homer to Dick Dietz and got Tito Fuentes to fly out. That puts his career ERA at an ugly looking 13.50.
Orlando had 230 hits in 945 at-bats for a career .243 average. He never hit a Major League home run, but he did manage to push 57 guys across the plate. Probably his most successful season was the same one that saw him fail as a pitcher, 1969. That year for Houston, he wracked up 61 hits in 198 at-bats for a .308 average. He had 5 doubles, 4 triples and 15 RBI’s.
After playing his last game for the Rangers in 1972, he bounced around the minors for a few years. At several of these stops he was a player manager, before switching to managing full-time in the Seattle Mariners organization. He worked his way up to various coaching and instructing roles on the Mariners Major League club. He even was the manager of the Mariners for 1 game after Chuck Cottier was fired and before Dick Williams was hired. They lost that game.
Marty Martinez’ biggest claim to fame was that he was the man who scouted and signed both Edgar Martinez and Omar Vizquel.
As a side note, I can’t remember where I got this from, but I swear hearing somewhere that Roberto Clement was none too happy that Topps insisted on listing him as “Bob” on their cards on almost all of his cards. I know that Clemente was fiercely proud of his Latin heritage and I can understand him being pissed about being referred to as “Bob”. So when I see cards like this one, where Topps lists the Cuban utility man as “Marty Martinez” but the he signs his name as “Orlando Martinez”, I can’t help but wonder if this is another case of Topps trying to Americanize another Latin player.
By the way, although nothing will ever compare to the 70’s-80’s rainbow Kool-Aid uniforms, these late 60’s/early 70’s Astros uniforms are pretty awesome looking in a classic late 60’s/early 70’s baseball uniform kind of way. I love the space-age Astrodome logo on the sleeve and even the “H” star logo on the hat is pretty sweet looking. It sure beats the blood red monstrosities they wear these days.
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