In the Footsteps of Jackie Robinson
Johnny Martinez was apparently the first Hispanic to ever win an athletic letter at Waco High School or at any school in the city in my hometown.
Photos: (Lef) Johnny Martinez in his Waco High Tigers uniform, 1949; (right) Johnny in his Waco Missions uniform, 1958.
I AM SADDENED AND DISAPPOINTED to have only yesterday learned of the death of longtime family friend and next-door neighbor Johnny Martinez, who also taught me more about baseball than anyone else, with the possible exception of Pete Rose.
Johnny died on Labor Day in Waco, Texas, where he lived for many years next door to my late mom and dad. He was 89.
As a starting third baseman on the 1948-49 Waco High Tigers baseball team, Johnny made some history that has long gone unrecognized.
Johnny was apparently the first Hispanic to ever win an athletic letter at Waco High School or at any school in the city.
He was also also the kind of person who would have first wanted to be known as a heck of a player, which he was. Former minor league pitcher Percy Hough, who played in the 1940s and early 1950s -- including with the Waco Pirates in 1948 -- once told me:
"Johnny Martinez is the best fielding third baseman I've ever seen in my life, and I've seen all the great ones of our time... at another time, he might have been playing in the majors."
I knew Percy, as I did Johnny, from being batboy to the semi-pro Waco Missions from 1957 to 1962, a team on which Johnny and Percy were teammates and where I had already begun amassing all the knowledge I could about baseball.
What Percy meant by "another time" was the color ban that long existed excluding African Americans and Latinos from organized baseball. It was not until Jackie Robinson broke that color barrier in 1947 that organized baseball also began signing Hispanic players, though mostly from Latin America and a rare few from the U.S.
Johnny was preceded in death by his wife Lilly, who passed away in 2016. He is survived by his daughters and their families, including my friend Marion Martinez Palomino, who kindly assisted me with the research for my 2013 book The Prince of South Waco.
https://www.dignitymemorial.com/.../johnny-martinez-9348656