After fouling a pitch off his groin, Leonys Martin gathered himself and enacted revenge with a homer
How is your pain threshold? Can you handle pretty much anything that comes your way, or do you jump into bed and hide under the covers after stubbing your toe?
These questions do not apply to
How tough? Well, facing
While most of us would probably just walk off the field at that point and head for the nearest ice cream stand to feel better, Martin opted instead to gather himself, re-enter the batter's box, take a ball and then crush a leadoff homer anyway.
To pull a quote from a beloved 1997 global smash-hit single, Leonys went down, but he got up again.
Later in that same game, Martin made a tremendous sliding catch in the outfield -- because again, he's pretty tough:
His leadoff homer set the tone as Detroit won Game 1, 13-10.
"You don't want to know about that conversation," Tigers manager Ron Gardenhire told MLB.com's Ben Weinrib after the game. "That was not a very fun conversation for me or anybody else out there. I didn't think his voice could get any higher, but it did. He wasn't feeling very good, but he wasn't coming out of the game too. He expressed that to me right from the start. 'Don't take me out. Don't even think about it. Just let me gather myself.' That's what he did. And then he yelled at me again in the clubhouse after the game, 'Don't take me out of the second game either. I'm playing.'"
That's the stuff of inspiration.
But because Martin wasn't done making headlines, he hit another homer in the second game of the doubleheader:
Something that hasn't been done in a while for the Tigers.
According to @EliasSports, @leonys27martin is the first Tiger to homer in both games of a doubleheader since Don Kelly on October 1, 2010 at Baltimore.
— Tigers PR (@DetroitTigersPR) April 26, 2018
Have a day, Leonys.
