The familiar repetitive booming noise returned to Sprunk Stadium at Jesuit High School last Wednesday with senior pitcher Christian Martinek back in the bullpen, warming up for his first high school start in nearly a year.
As his high right leg kick swooped through the air and gave way to another fastball that scorched the leather on his catcher’s glove, a less familiar sound resonated nearby.
It was the chattering of MLB scouts who crammed themselves in a pack near the chain-link fence around the bullpen, watching the 6-foot-5 lefty they believe could one day become a focal part of their respective organizations.
Just steps away from the pitcher was Brian Martinek, an assistant coach with the team and Christian’s father. His eyes scanned not only his son but the men behind the fence whose eyes watched his son, men who represent the Chicago Cubs, Miami Marlins and several other organizations to make up a sizeable percentage of the MLB’s 30 teams.
“Those two I’ve never seen before,” Brian Martinek said, motioning to a pair of evaluators who are off to the side, removed from the primary crowd.
MLB scouts watched Martinek (20) from behind the fence throughout his warmup last Wednesday before he returned to the mound. (Danny Moran/The Oregonian)
Soon enough, pitching coach Ron Kolstad approached the chain-link fence and recommended that the entire group of scouts allow the 18-year-old some space.
This type of interaction figures to be commonplace for Martinek and the Jesuit baseball team as the season progresses, balancing the drive for the program’s first state championship with the mini-circus surrounding its star flamethrower’s professional potential.
His career options are both limitless and in limbo. He has been admitted to Oregon State, where he can pursue his baseball career in college and continue his two-sport status on the football team.
Martinek can also elect to begin his professional career if presented with the right situation at the MLB Draft in June.
The latter option will depend on how he performs under the close watch of scouts who will break out their radar guns behind the backstop and furiously scribble notes with each pitch he throws this season.
Throughout the process, Martinek will have Brian by his side acting in the dual role of parent and coach that has defined the pair’s relationship.
“(Being a coach) gives me a good inside ability to protect him,” Brian Martinek said two days after the game.
“It is a pretty intense deal.”
The intense anticipation surrounding the first start of Martinek’s senior year emanates from the uncertainty with which his previous season ended.
It was on March 27, 2013, a full calendar year ago, during Jesuit’s spring break trip to Arizona when Christian Martinek feared his career could be over.
That’s when he felt his elbow pop.
Martinek had come off a phenomenal sophomore campaign in which he was named first team all-state and helped lead the Crusaders to an appearance in the state’s quarterfinals.
Jesuit was bounced by eventual champion Oregon City and with both Martinek and Stanford-bound catcher Matt Decker returning to the 2013 roster, the Crusaders figured to be a primary contender for a state title.
But on that day in the desert, Martinek felt the pop as he hurled a fastball in the third inning and took himself off the mound for the first time in his athletic career.
“You don’t see that guy cry very often,” Brian Martinek said. “But he obviously was very scared and felt like he had injured his arm very seriously – which he had.”
It was a moment that tested the nature of Christian and Brian’s relationship, constantly shifting between son and father and player and coach.
As an assistant, Brian coaches catchers and keeps track of pitch counts. The latter has allowed him to ensure firsthand that his son and the rest of the staff avoid fatigue and are not overworked.
Despite the extra precaution, it appeared their worst injury fears had been realized as the angry and frightened gunslinger struggled for answers in the dugout.
“That day I felt (the injury), it was like, ‘My life’s over,’” Christian Martinek said.
With his child at the lowest point of his athletic career, Brian Martinek did his best to comfort Christian and then made the choice to return to duty.
“I went back to pitch counting for the next guy,” he said.
An MRI revealed Martinek had sustained an ulnar collateral sprain in his pitching elbow and he was shut down for the remainder of the season.
Brian Martinek, a former college football player at the University of Utah, is also Jesuit football's defensive line coach. (Danny Moran/The Oregonian)
While Brian Martinek could not coach his son on the field, he advised Christian to use his removal from the playing field to his advantage. Although the frustration of having his career in doubt continued to eat at him, the junior eventually took the message to heart and used the season-ending injury to take a new perspective from the dugout.
He would try to learn a more cerebral approach on the mound, sitting with teammates and coaches in the dugout and picking out what pitchers would throw next.
“Before I would go out and rely on my athletic ability,” Christian Martinek said. “It really turned me from a thrower to a pitcher honestly.”
Although he was disheartened by a full season out of the lineup, Martinek adjusted to life in the dugout. His team was not able to adapt to life without him so easily.
The Crusaders finished the regular season 18-8 and were bounced in the second round of the playoffs.
“I don’t know that we ever really recovered all the way from it,” Brian Martinek said.
The elbow injury caused an abrupt halt to the rapid rise of Christian Martinek’s career that had put him on a surefire path to realizing his lifelong dream of reaching the Major Leagues.
This began, his father believes, when Christian began attending softball and baseball games of his older sister, Erin, and older brother, Taylor. The teams’ coaches let the younger sibling run around the bases, which he often did backward.
Soon enough he became a multisport athlete like his older siblings, playing youth football with children one and two years older, along with baseball and basketball.
Brian Martinek became a fixture in Christian’s athletic life, coaching his Little League baseball team for two seasons when his son was 8 and 9. He then continued as the head coach of his son’s Catholic Youth Organization football team from fifth through eighth grade.
“I think Christian has always seen his dad as a dad and a coach,” said Brenda Martinek, Christian’s mother and Brian’s wife. “That’s just what they’ve grown up with.”
This bond became crucial when Christian started his baseball career at Jesuit and continued dominating like he had in youth leagues.
Tim Massey, who was Jesuit’s baseball coach from 1989 to 1995 and returned to lead the program in 2011, had never put a freshman on the varsity roster.
But as Martinek continued to increase his velocity and show he was unchallenged at his own age level, Massey made the decision to bring the youngster up to the varsity squad toward the end of the regular season.
“It became apparent at that point that our best chance of being successful was with him on the mound,” Massey said.
Martinek recorded 26 strikeouts to win his first two playoff starts and the Crusaders reached the state semifinals before falling to eventual champion Westview.
Heading into the next season, Massey had an opening on his staff and reached out to Brian Martinek with knowledge of the father and son’s close relationship.
The ability Brian Martinek showed to comfort his son yet stick to the task at hand when Christian went down with an elbow injury a year later showed the distinct line he has had to navigate between coach and parent.
He is there for emotional support when it is needed but also knows his coaching tenure will last only as long as his son wants him there by his side.
“Every year he’s allowed me to do that,” Brian Martinek said. “That’s special all by itself.”
The Major League dreams a young Christian Martinek first cultivated while trotting backward around the base paths have not been dashed by his lost season.
His injury junior year has not tempered the expectations of the scouts who trail him so closely this season.
“When I first started, if you ever heard of an elbow injury it was like a death wish,” said Al Geddes, a scout with the Chicago Cubs who has worked in the Major Leagues for three decades. “I don’t think so anymore.
“The biggest red flag is shoulders.”
Martinek (5) made second team all-state on the defensive line as a junior and first team as a senior. (Miles Vance/Beaverton Leader)
After undergoing PRP (platelet-rich plasma) therapy on his injured elbow last year and returning for limited work with the Jesuit summer baseball team, Martinek switched his focus to football and was named first team all-state as a defensive lineman as senior.
Prior to the season, he committed to Oregon State. It was the first school that offered Martinek a scholarship and it also gave him the rare opportunity to continue playing football and baseball.
Martinek has been admitted to Oregon State but has not signed a National Letter of Intent to play either sport. Although he plans to play both football and baseball, his college career would begin without a football scholarship and he cannot sign his letter for baseball until April 16.
Oregon State officials could not comment on their recruit without the National Letter of Intent signed, but Christian Martinek said he expects Beavers baseball coach Pat Casey and an assistant to visit sometime over the next month to discuss the pros and cons of playing in college and professionally.
Martinek made the quick college selection in part because he wanted to avoid the distraction of recruitment and fully focus on his final year of high school football.
Now that distraction is firmly out of his control.
Numerous scouts have visited the Martinek home to get acquainted with the player and family, some offering surveys and aptitude tests for Christian, featuring prompts like whether he relates himself more to a cat or a dog.
Martineksaid all interactions with scouts have been “respectful” and that none have overstepped unwritten boundaries.
Should that come up, he will have his father in prime position watching over him, fielding questions about his son when they are raised and putting them in place if needed.
“I’ve got a mediator here who is out for Christian’s best interest and the team’s best interest,” Massey said. “I couldn’t have put that on paper any better.”
This is not the first time the Martineks have seen scouts at Jesuit games. They witnessed the process first hand with players like Westview's Carson Kelly, who was eventually taken in the second round of the 2012 MLB Draft by the St. Louis Cardinals.
But this year will feature the greatest intensity on Christian.
“This is going to be new for us,” Brian Martinek said.
Christian Martinek has said he is firmly committed to Oregon State. The only thing that could change that is if “the money’s right.”
Exactly how much money is at stake will be determined over the course of the season. But the experience of watching Kelly’s ascent has significance beyond its usefulness as prep for handling Major League scouting.
Martinek, seen here as a sophomore, said his father helps him refocus when he loses his cool on the mound. (Ross William Hamilton/The Oregonian)
It also gave the Martinek family a first-hand look at the reward for playing through the pressure, as Kelly agreed to a contract that would reportedly pay him $1.6 million in signing bonuses.
Numbers like that crystallize just how much is riding on the final season of Martinek’s high school career. It will be on his father to keep the mood light during the pressure cooker of a stretch when a seven-figure contract could be on the line.
It’s a role that Brian Martinek, a former police chief who can still maintain his intensity, is very comfortable with.
“He’s keeping (us) loose and making jokes,” Jesuit senior Trent Werner said. “He keeps, not only Christian, but everyone else loose and enjoying the game more.”
Christian Martinek has one last season as a high school baseball player, one last season to improve his control and overall grasp of the game before the majors come calling or he embraces the life of a two-sport collegiate athlete.
The biggest decision of his life awaits in the very near future. But with his father beside him in the dugout, he will also have the chance to focus on the father-son and player-coach relationship that has defined his life.
One more year of, as he describes it, “the best relationship I’ve ever had with anyone.”
-- Danny Moran | @DannyJMoran
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