Batman

WHEN SEATTLE ANOINTS a monument, the city's collective conscience judges not by historical importance or sweeping elegance, but by our ability to connect with it. Washington, DC, can have its Smithsonian and Capitol rotunda, New York its Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building. We're quite content with our symbols, quirky as they may seem to others: our Space Needle and its connection to our aerospace industry, our Pike Place Market and its connection to the salmon that used to swim in our waters. I'd argue that two of our newest and most stately structures, the acoustically and architecturally pristine Benaroya Hall and Safeco Field—which is uniformly described, as if it's in the script,

as a "beautiful ballpark"—will never fully win us over. But one man who happens to play in Safeco has this year ascended the ranks to become one of Seattle's favorite monuments. You can almost see his statue out in front of the Safe, his muscular legs and powerful forearms cast in bronze. And you can sense fans' devotion every time he steps to the plate, in the palpable hope that his workmanlike swing will produce another spectacular hit, in the crowd's mumbled chanting—sometimes harmoniously, but mostly in trance-like monotone— of his name: ED-GAR! ED-GAR!

Now in his 13th season with the Mariners and his 17th with the M's organization, Edgar Martinez ranks fourth among active players in longest tenure with one team, behind only Cal Ripken Jr. of the Orioles, the Padres' Tony Gwynn, and Barry Larkin of the Reds (Edgar's tied with the Braves' Tom Glavine). Lofty company, and in itself enough to earn Edgar the distinction of franchise player. It helps that his .320 lifetime average places him fifth among active players and his .426 on-base percentage—meaning that he reaches base nearly 50 percent of the times he steps to the plate, walks included—puts him second behind White Sox slugger Frank Thomas. More remarkable still is that at age 37, Edgar has begun the 2000 season with a bang, batting above .350 and ranking among major-league leaders in home runs and RBIs as baseball takes its midyear break for the All-Star game (July 11 in Atlanta).

And yet Seattle connects to Edgar not so much for his numbers or even for his hitting heroics, as when he drove in a postseason record seven runs to almost single-handedly lift the Mariners over the mighty New York Yankees in the 1995 Division Series. We see his loyalty, his studiousness, and his long, methodical path to success as emblematic of the Pacific Northwest spirit. He's quiet, less an overt team leader than his teammate and friend, 24-year-old rising superstar Alex Rodriguez. He's a designated hitter who takes his designation seriously. Like the masterminds behind Boeing, Starbucks, Microsoft, and Seattle's brand-name music scene, Edgar exudes a mystique: He's made the rest of the world shine a spotlight on him rather than sending a beacon out himself.

Why I hate(d) the designated-hitter rule

As a boy growing up in the New York suburbs during the late '70s, I became an avid Mets fan, which meant rooting for a team that lost nearly two-thirds of its games while crosstown rivals the Yankees marched toward the World Series year after year. My love of the Mets, and of National League baseball, was righteous; I acquired a Topps baseball card of Ron Bloomberg—the Yankee player credited with becoming the first to bat as a DH after the American League instituted the rule in 1973—just so I could scorn it.

I also experienced my first bout of disillusionment with the national pastime in 1977, to be exact, when the Mets traded away an unhappy Tom Seaver to the Reds in a foreshadowing of the situation that occurred here with Ken Griffey Jr. during this past off-season. Baseball is a funny game, as Joe Garagiola said, but the designated- hitter rule—which ended a nearly 100-year tradition of pitchers having to represent at the plate—and the shedding of franchise players for contractual reasons were hardly laughing matters.

Edgar has jolted me from my high horse, for the simple reason that he's a designated hitter who has remained with the same team despite opportunities to earn more money and fame in a bigger market or with a better team. Like this city's plethora of fatalistic yet blindly hopeful Mariners fans, I've watched in awe as he's stroked doubles to the left-field gap, RBI singles up the middle, home runs to the opposite field— especially this year, when he's put his head down and led the charge to the top of the American League West, a position the M's are juggling with the Oakland A's.

Still, questions linger. How does a guy who's 37 and an unusually consistent player suddenly take it to the next level? How can he shrug off the disappointment of losing a teammate known as baseball's greatest living player and replace him as the club's most fearsome power hitter? And how does Edgar, an obviously shy and reserved man, cope with his status not only as a local hero but as a player who's increasingly scrutinized as the majors' best right-handed hitter?

The house that Edgar built