OAKLAND – A’s first-round draft pick Richie Martin was a civil engineering major at Florida and took his studies as serious as his baseball.
No surprise then, that before agreeing to terms with the A’s and taking a flight to Oakland to meet his new team, Martin did his homework.
The shortstop tried reading up on the A’s front office staff to learn all he could about the organization. But when it came to meeting general manager Billy Beane for the first time Monday, Martin admitted his major impression of Beane came from the movie “Moneyball.”
Did he see similarities between Beane and Brad Pitt, who portrayed Beane in the movie?
“The hair was spot on,” Martin said with a smile. "I’ve oly been around him about an hour, but in the movie they kind of made him more aggressive. Not rude, but everything was about business. But I met him and the whole time he was making jokes, and the whole time he was smiling. Maybe he’s not like Brad Pitt in that sense.”
Martin, the 20th overall pick this year, reportedly got a signing bonus of $1.95 million according to MLB.com's Jim Callis, below the slot value of $2.214 million, and will report to the Vermont Lake Monsters on Wednesday, the A’s short-season Single-A club. But Tuesday, he got to rub elbows with big leaguers. A Florida native, the 20-year-old Martin especially enjoyed meeting Ben Zobrist and Scott Kazmir, two players he grew up watching while they were with the Tampa Bay Rays.
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He also had a gift waiting for him at the locker the A’s made up for him. It was a University of Virginia baseball hat, courtesy of former Cavaliers pitcher Sean Doolittle. Virginia bounced Martin’s Florida Gators from the College World Series shortly after Martin was drafted.
“Dang man, that’s rude,” Martin told Doolitttle. “First day here, you do that to me.”
Then Martin took the field, fielded some grounders alongside fellow shortstop Marcus Semien and took some hacks in the batting cage. The A’s love Martin’s athleticism, particularly his speed and the defensive potential he shows to be a standout shortstop.
Martin’s father, Richard, and mother, Deborah, were on hand at the Coliseum. Richard Martin, after returning from the Vietnam War, played in a travel baseball league throughout Michigan and into Canada. Among those he played alongside were legendary Tigers outfielder Willie Horton.
Another former Tigers All-Star outfielder, Chet Lemon, has been a baseball mentor throughout Richie’s life. But as impressed as Richard Martin is with his son’s baseball development, he marveled at his ability to juggle baseball with his engineering studies, all with the draft looming.
Martin, one of six kids in his family, has completed three years of a five-year program at Florida, and he’s promised his father he will complete his degree.
“He knows going in that all of his sisters have a degree, and most of them have a Master’s,” Richard said. “He understands that school is something you have to have, and baseball is something he loves. He was able to balance it out and do both.”
