Tino Martinez Day

Today, The Yankees honored a player who was instrumental in winning 4 world championships in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2000 with a plaque out in the famed Monument Park. That player is Tino Martinez, who also just happens to be my favorite Yankee.

My earliest memories of Tino Martinez was watching him kill the Yankees as a member of the Mariners during the 1995 American League Division Series, batting .409 with a homer and 5 RBI's. When I heard Don Mattingly was taking a year off to decide his future, I wondered if the Yankees could get their hands on the guy from Seattle. Sure enough, the Yankees traded Sterling Hitchcock and Russ Davis for Jim Mecir, Jeff Nelson and Contantino Martinez. Highway robbery if it ever was. Jeff Nelson was a huge part of the championship teams as well as Tino was.

Over the years, I got to watch Tino launch home runs over the right field wall at the old Yankee Stadium and make some beautiful plays over at first base. I always felt Tino was robbed of a Gold Glove or two, but because the AL also had JT Snow, Rafael Palmero and John Olerud, Tino never won a Gold Glove and I think that's a shame. He was a tremendous fielding first baseman.

Tino's best season was in 1997, when he hit 44 home runs and had 141 RBI's. He finished second in the voting for Most Valuable Player, losing out to Ken Griffey Jr. He also participated and won the Home Run Derby during that season's All Star Game festivities, which was a joy for me.

My two most memorable Tino moments were in 1996 and 1998 respectively. First, during the early part of the 1996 season, Tino had started off slow and was being booed by Yankee fans. The Yankees were in Baltimore and one of the games wen late into extra innings. Tino belted a game winning home run and was cheered loudly when the team came back to NY. The second, was obviously during Game 1 of the 1998 World Series when he hit a grand slam into the upper deck off Mark Langston giving the Yankees a 4 run lead. I will always remember seeing a shower of beer pop up in the air after the ball landed into the upper deck.

Like I mentioned previously, I started collecting Tino Martinez cards back in 2002. Because I have other player collections, my Tino collection may not be as large as others, but I am proud of it. Here are my favorite Tino cards, starting with the base and inserts:

Here are my favorite Game Used cards. Mind you, these were taken before I got a scanner and I never got around to scanning them. The scanner is now broken.

I also have this printing plate

And probably my favorite Tino piece

This was a gift from a friend who used to sell cards. He accidentally sent an order late for a secret santa I was participating in. Knowing that Tino is my favorite, he sent this to me as a gift to make up for the lateness of the order. I never met Tino and I hope to at some point.

There are other cards I need to pick up. I also have eyes on some other Tino items like bobbleheads, his Starting Lineup figures, a Danbury Mint statue and some programs with him on the cover. My ultimate would be a Tino game used bat and jersey. Maybe when I win lotto.

Congratulations, Tino.  You had a great career and you were a wonderful Yankee. I think the plaque in Monument Park is rightfully deserved. You sit with the greats now.

I Finally Started.

Through out my collecting career (if you want to call it that), my cards have been in a state of chaos. Sure I have a lot of binders, but to be honest, I didn't know exactly what I had. I would go to card shows and pick up cards that I thought I need, but found that I already had once I got home.

Trades? Same thing. I would see a card that I'm offered, drool over my keyboard, pull the trigger, receive the card and find I already had it when I opened the binder.

Even my fellow collectors would ask me if I had a list and when I told them I didn't, I felt like the collector would be giving me a funny look behind the email. OK, maybe I'm hallucinating on this one, but that's how I felt, sniff sniff.

So, after a long discussion with the collector side of my brain, I decided I would start creating lists of my cards. Finally, I would be able to know what cards I have. I would be able to know what I really needed for my various collections. No more buying cards I already had. I finally would be in control!

Now, I originally was going to make my lists as Word Documents, but my buddy Kerry advised me to use Google Drive. I was familiar with Drive since I was making lists of my Spider-Man comic book collection. Kerry told me I could create a spreadsheet on Drive and I was sold.

So, I decided to start with my player collections. I could have knocked off the smallest collection of cards I have in a player collection which would be my Wayne Cherebet collection. But, NOOOOOOOOO! (That was me channeling my inner John Belushi) I had to start with one of my largest. That would be my Tino Martinez collection.

Constantino Martinez. That's Tino Martinez, to us common folk. He has been a favorite Yankee since he hit a late inning home run to win a game in Baltimore. As his career with the Yankees progressed, he became my very favorite. When I got back into collecting cards in 2002, I decided I would try to collect as many Tino cards as I could.

I'm actually glad I started with Tino. As I was looking up cards on eBay, comc.com and Becketts, I found I needed a heck of a lot of cards to even come close to having a good collection. It's not that I'm not proud of what I already own. I just always wanted to be THE Tino Martinez collector and I am not even close to being that. But the fun of the chase is still there for me and I am looking forward to it.

The drawback to this list is, I found quite a few doubles in my binder and the number of total cards, which I thought I had after doing a rough count, has dwindled considerably. So far, I am at 312 different Tino Martinez cards. I still have a few pages left in my binder to go through and I have my box of game used and autographed cards to list. If I am close to 450 cards, I will be a happy geek.

I'm really glad that I am doing this. I'm not even done with the Martinez list and I already feel a sense of accomplishment. Once I am done, I will make lists for my Mark Teixeira, Patrick Ewing, Mike Bossy, Wayne Chrebet, Chad Pennington, Martin Brodeur, David Lee and Derek Jeter collections. If that's not enough to keep me awake at night, there will be the time when I will want to make up lists for my Yankees, Jets, Knicks and Islander PC's. Just thinking about that is giving me grey hairs.Once I am done with each list, I will figure out a way to have them on the blog, just in case you guys are interested in seeing them

I know this is a project that may take months, even a year to finish. Maybe if I had been more organized from the very beginning, I wouldn't have to do this now. No use in crying over spilled cardboard. I just have to roll up my sleeves and get the job done. At least it's keeping me out of the pool halls and away from Miley Cyrus records.