Shortly after the 1986 baseball season ended, the Blue Jays’ Buck Martinez was offered a job as a color commentator for Toronto games starting in the 1987 season.
Martinez figured he had at least one more year left. His wife, Arlene, thought differently.
“We always think we’re going to be able to play forever,” Martinez said recently. “When they told me that they were not gonna bring me back for the ’87 season, I told them that I thought I would want to play again and I’d look for another job. But when I got home and told my wife that they had offered me the TV job and I told them that I’m going to play, she said, call them back. You can’t play anymore. So she made another wise decision, that’s for sure. Yes, she did. She has always made good decisions for me.”
His wife’s advice has proven to be very, very good advice. After 17 years as a major league catcher Martinez stepped into the broadcast booth full-time and except for a short stint as a manager, has been talking baseball on the air from 1987 through 2025, most of those years with the Blue Jays.
Earlier this year the longtime resident of Pinellas County retired. And on Aug. 29, Martinez was honored in a big way by the Blue Jays, who inducted him into their impressive newly designed Hall of Excellence at a ceremony held at the team’s home field in Toronto, Rogers Centre.
“It was awesome, a great celebration,” said Martinez. “A level of excellence of a Hall of Fame. The Blue Jays really did a good job of bringing back some of the former members for the ceremony. George Bell, Dave Stieb, Joe Carter, Cito Gaston, Carlos Delgado, Jose Bautista, Paul Beeston and Pat Gillick were all there. My wife Arlene, my son Casey and his wife, and our granddaughters were all there, too. It was terrific, a great celebration.”
Soon after he announced his retirement in early February, Martinez learned that he was going to be honored by the team.
“It was back in spring training,” he said. “They had told me that they were going to develop a new Hall of Excellence, which is a phenomenal area in the Rogers Centre on the 100th level that fans can visit. It’s a great display of all of the excellent members and a lot of history there.”
The Toronto experience has been a humbling one for Martinez, who spent his first eight years in the majors with the Kansas City Royals and three with the Milwaukee Brewers before joining the Blue Jays.
“I went to Toronto in 1981 as a player and I thought I’d be there for a year, maybe two, but I ended up playing there for six years,” he said. “Once my playing days were over, I moved right into the television booth. So I was very fortunate to spend a lot of time there. Little did I know that I would be there until 2025. The fans were always very gracious to me. They welcomed me into their homes. It was a great run, a spectacular run.”
Martinez was hoping for a bit of a longer run, but it wasn’t to be.
“I wanted to be part of the 50th year of the Blue Jays, but as everyone knows, I had some health issues,” said Martinez, who has battled cancer. “So the last game I did was Game 7 of the World Series, Dodgers and Blue Jays, one of the best we’ve ever seen. So I can always have that as a lasting memory of my time in Toronto. It was a phenomenal run for the Blue Jays and certainly a very entertaining World Series for all baseball fans.”
While it may seem so, Martinez did not become a broadcaster overnight.
“I was actually broadcasting on the radio while I was still playing,” he pointed out. “In 1982 I did the playoffs between the Angels and the Brewers, and that was my first year time I started doing that. Later I did the All-Star Game, the playoffs, and the World Series on the radio, right through 1986. So I had a lot of radio experience in the postseason, and then when the Blue Jays released me, they offered me the television job in the same meeting.”
He admits he wasn’t a natural at first.
“It was hardly a smooth transition from the field to the broadcast booth,” he said. “In fact, my wife was acting at the time, and she recommended that I take some acting lessons. I took some speech pathology, trying to improve my speech and my vocabulary. A lot of work went into it. In the end I realized that I was there because I was a player. And I should never forget that I was a player, and I can relate to many things that happen on the field. When you play 17 years and play for some great managers over the years, you have a lot of experience that can add a lot to a broadcast, and I always felt like that was important. But it took me a while to understand that. It took me a while to relax and realize that I was there because of my baseball experience.”
In addition to his work with the Blue Jays, Martinez spent time broadcasting with the Orioles, has been on ESPN, MLB radio and other national broadcasts, and has offered insights in the booth with some of the biggest names in TV and radio.
“I was fortunate to do a lot of different things,” said Martinez, who also did World Baseball Classics in Japan twice. “I did World Series games with Chip Carey and Matt Vasgersian. Learned a lot from a lot of people about different aspects of the game, no question about it. Chris Berman at ESPN was always gracious and helpful. He taught me that the show goes on because of the people in the truck. He would always go down to the truck after the game and congratulate everybody for a job well done. Jim Hughson was my partner in Toronto for a number of years and so was Dan Shulman. There was Chip Carey, Brent Musburger, John Miller. I worked with a lot of great broadcasters and each and every one of them gave me something to build on and some kind of experience that I could take forward and help me in my own broadcasting career.”
He’s got many great memories from his perch in the booth. Chief among them was the game he did on ESPN when Cal Ripken of the Orioles broke Lou Gehrig’s consecutive game record on Sept. 6, 1995. That broadcast earned ESPN and Martinez an Emmy Award.
“It was (game number) 2131 when he broke the record of Lou Gehrig,” said Martinez. “Everybody thought that was an unbreakable record, but in the fifth inning, once the game became official, the game stopped. You remember that Cal was reluctant to acknowledge the fans, but Bobby Bonilla and Rafael Palmeiro pushed him out of the dugout and that’s when he circled around the ballpark. We didn’t talk for 22 minutes during that time. There was really nothing that words could add to the pictures we were seeing with Ripkin sharing that great moment with all the great Baltimore Oriole fans. We have a tendency to forget that there are pictures. You don’t need to describe everything. There’s nothing we could have added to that moment. The pictures tell the story sometimes better than the words, and that was one of those times for sure. That was a pretty special time.”
His broadcast memories don’t stop there, with people like Jose Bautista, George Springer, Joe Carter and Bo Bichette of the Blue Jays playing big roles in big games. And of course with 17 years of playing big league ball there is plenty to look back on.
“Obviously when you make your major league debut that’s a lasting memory,” said Martinez, who had a double dipper of debut. “I made my debut against the Oakland A’s (in 1969) and being from Northern California, I knew an awful lot about Oakland. I pinch hit in each game of a doubleheader in June when I first got to Kansas City, and I got a hit in my second at bat off Blue Moon Odom. Also, in Kansas City, I was there for eight years and we were always chasing the Oakland A’s in the early 70s. Then we finally won in ’76 and played against the Yankees in the playoffs. That was a great memory as well.”
The catcher got to experience the other side of the battery in a game in 1979 while he was with the Brewers. In one of those blowout games that happen occasionally, position players will get the call to finish out the contest. In this case, Martinez was the third position player to get the call to the mound.
“We were playing Kansas City and I pitched the eighth inning,” he remembered. “I was worn out by then. I’d been warming up since about the fifth inning down in the bullpen and by the time I got in the game, I was out of gas. Unfortunately, I walked Willie Wilson to start the inning, which is something you never want to do. Later a double play opportunity couldn’t be turned or otherwise I would have gotten out of the inning.”
A run would score before the inning was over and it was charged to Martinez. “So I got a 9.00 ERA for one game!”
Throughout the Toronto organization, Martinez has — and continues to be — well respected. Dennis Holmberg, longtime minor league manager in the Blue Jays organization, speaks for others in his admiration of Martinez. “I’ve known Buck going back to the beginning of his broadcast career years with the Toronto Blue Jays. Not only the great broadcaster that he was but as a great person. Engaging, always willing to go out of his way to see how you were doing. Asking questions about this player and that player of players I had managed and making it to the Major Leagues. He was simply the best and fans throughout Canada miss him and the game of baseball misses his broadcasting.”
Earlier this year, his partner in the booth, Dan Shulman, said this about Martinez: “From the first day I worked with Buck way back in 1995 right through Game 7 of the (2025) World Series, I couldn’t have asked for a better broadcast partner. No one worked harder, no one cared more. He’s one of the most significant figures in Blue Jays history, and someone who has meant the world to everyone he worked with at Sportsnet, both as a colleague, and even more importantly, as a great friend.”
Martinez and his wife, a native of New Jersey, started living in Pinellas County in 1982, first part time then full time, in Sand Key, then Clearwater Beach, and now outside of Dunedin for the past several years.
Through it all Arlene has remained by Buck’s side.
“She’s been through the baseball life for sure, moving around and establishing a home no matter where we lived,” said Martinez, who has written three baseball related books. “I actually met her in Puerto Rico in 1971 on the beach in Puerto Rico. She and her girlfriend were there vacationing and I was playing ball. Got married in 1975 and in July we just celebrated our 51st anniversary.”
Summing up his career, Martinez says, “I was very lucky. I never envisioned having a career in baseball. I just played baseball because I loved the game. And then I signed with the Phillies, ended up in Kansas City, went from Kansas City to Milwaukee, then Milwaukee to Toronto. And then, you know, you always think that you’re going to play forever. And that comes to an end, and then you have to develop something to carry you through the next part of your life, which is always much longer than your life as an active player. So broadcasting kind of fell on my lap, and once I got comfortable doing it I got very engaged in it. I wanted to be able to tell somebody listening something that they didn’t know or something they couldn’t find out without hearing it from me. I took pride in that.”