People like Frank Martinez are why minor league sports exist

There are many, many great volunteers in all of our community’s leagues and associations, and we at the Monitor think it’s important to highlight some of their accomplishments.

This week, we spoke with NDG Baseball’s Frank Martinez.

Monitor: Why do you coach?

Martinez: I grew up in Nicaragua in the middle of a war; and that’s where I learned to play baseball in order a least have one small joy in life there.

When I moved to Montreal I fell in love with the Expos, and then my heart was broken by the greed of others.

To heal my pain I turned to coaching. I still play softball twice a week, but there is nothing more gratifying for me than seeing one of our boys work hard in practice and see the results of his hard work during a game.

NDG Baseball for me is not just a small house league – it’s an establishment that teaches our kids how to be good citizens, good friends, and ultimately good people.

I played NDG Baseball from the age of 15 to 18, and I was taught how to be a team player, how to behave when things go badly, and how to count on my teammates.

We are blessed to have great people in our organization like James Rankine, Terry Doucet, Steve Glazer, Lionel Geller and many more, and I just try to follow their footsteps to make sure that my kids and every other kid that goes through our system has the privilege of being a member of the NDG family.

This is my fifth year coaching in NDG – I have coached every team my sons Gabriel, 8, and Mikhaël, 5, have played on, and I also put two of their closest friends, Jedhias and Emmanuel, on our team as well.

Monitor: What has your team accomplished this year?

Martinez: We won the provincial championship with an exciting finish…

In the final game, we went to our last at bat of the tournament down by five runs and we started the inning with four outs in a row (you hit the whole lineup of 11 batters).

Slowly but surely, however, we were able to put some numbers on the board, and Jedhias came up to the plate with two men on (one on third and one on second).

I called a timeout and, knowing how much he loves wrestling, I said "Jed this is the time you always dreamed of – this is your title match at WrestleMania! Don’t worry about anything, just go and hammer the ball the way you do at practice."

He hammered the ball to centre field and our two runners came in to tie the game. Then our last batter, Anthony Griffin, came to the plate.

I called a time out again and went to talk to Jedhias once more, and this time I said "Jed when the ball is hit, run like the wind. Don’t look it, just look at me and make sure that you touch every base… and when you get to the plate, you make sure you slide."

Well, Anthony hit it hard and Jedhias flew like the wind, scoring the last run and making it the greatest comeback in NDG t-ball history!

The 2009 NDG Lynx t-ball provincial champions are: Isaiah Fox, Anthony Griffin, Kevin Griffin, Drew Hardiman, Brandon Hernandez-Perez, Gabriel Martinez, Michail Peters, Jedhias Racine-Peart, Andrew Titleman, Michael Titleman, Justin Wyatt, Emmanuel Caracassis, and Leo Gennaro.