Dennis Martinez hangs up his hat Dennis Martinez made it official two weeks ago. Unable to find a job pitching in the major leagues following a disastrous start with the Seattle Mariners, Martinez took his ailing elbow and enormous heart home to Miami--the city where he started in the minors 23 years ago--and retired. A pitching career come full circle. I shall miss him. He was a remarkable pitcher--maybe the best the Expos ever had, though you will get an argument from Steve Rogers' fans. He was an extraordinary individual and loyal friend. He was in the gutter once--a victim of alcohol abuse--but pulled himself out to fashion a career that saw him pitch a perfect game in July 1991--one of only 14 ever pitched in the majors. He won 241 games, two shy of Juan Marichal's record for Latin American pitchers. It was the pursuit of that record that brought him back this season when, perhaps, he should have left well enough alone. But athletes are notorious for not knowing when they are done. Mario Lemieux is one of the few to leave near the top of his game. Too many stay too long. Who can blame them? Never mind the money--professional athletes are driven by an immense pride and a competitive drive that they sense will be difficult to replicate in the workaday world. Unlike the rest of us, they get to remain kids until the day their athletic ability inevitably fades. Certainly, the transition to the world of the mundane can be traumatic. While everyone else is carving out a career, the athlete continues to play a game for a lot of money--a combo that doesn't make for the best sense of perspective. Forced to grow up overnight, he must now compete with others who have a 20-year head start in the real world. Many fail the transformation, finding themselves trapped in an emotional conundrum they are unable to handle--despite the big money they might have made. There will be no tag days for Dennis Martinez. He has the dough to buy the time to pick and choose what he wants to do with the rest of his life. My hunch is he will parlay his passion for his native land and fascination with politics into a return to Nicaragua, where he's regarded as a national hero. This will be no cakewalk--his profound lack of tact will not serve him particularly well in that polluted arena. Martinez is not given to compromise. It's doubtful he has ever pulled a punch in his life. He is committed to telling the truth--as he sees it. He can be overly blunt and does not suffer fools gladly. These are not the tools of successful politicians. He is also mercurial--charming one minute, stand-offish the next. Friends, like opposition hitters, could rarely guess what was coming next. What remained consistent was his devotion to Nicaragua and to speaking his mind, especially when he felt some racial or ethnic slight was in play. There are those who say Martinez was an arrogant self-aggrandizer looking out only for number one. I don't hold with that view. We spent too much time together on the road, playing pool, going to the movies, discussing life. One gets a pretty good read on another man walking the streets until dawn in foreign cities, as we did in Houston one night in 1989 after Martinez was left, unjustly, off the all-star team. Martinez has always been ruled by his heart, which remains firmly planted on his sleeve. Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? I think so, but I'm prejudiced, and the criteria for election are murky. There are pitchers with fewer wins (Don Drysdale: 209) who are in. There are pitchers with more wins (Don Sutton: 324, Tommy John: 288, Jim Kaat: 283) who are not. Martinez never won more than 16 games in a season and never had a great World Series, though in what may have been his finest hour, he defeated Randy Johnson in the 1995 playoffs to provide the Cleveland Indians the momentum to get to the Series. His arm was never the same, but the game cemented Martinez's reputation as a winning big-game pitcher, a factor Hall of Fame voters (read: sportswriters) might well consider. While I am sad he didn't make it, I remain thankful that Martinez took his shot at Marichal's record far from Montreal. The inevitable braying of boorish local sports fans as Martinez struggled this year would have been difficult to take. Better he be remembered for his greatness and passion than for a final, futile struggle to get his name in the record books. I hold no fear for his future, whatever that might be. He has demonstrated for all to see that a man can come off the ropes, achieve great things and not forget where he came from. He has always been--and will continue to be--an extraordinary combination of darkness and light. In the end, Martinez has always had the courage to let the light shine through. It's been his saving grace.