CHICAGO -- Steve Martone's driver's license expired last September, and because he relied so heavily on public transportation in New York, he never bothered to renew it. So when new general manager Billy Eppler brought Martone to the Angels early in the offseason to serve as one of his assistant GMs, Martone was unable to operate a motor vehicle.
For all of November and all of December, Eppler would pick Martone up from whatever hotel he resided at that morning, drive him to Angel Stadium and take him back later that afternoon. Martone considers Eppler "one of my mentors, somebody who taught me the ropes."
Martone, 35, spent the last nine years with Eppler in the Yankees' front office, serving as an assistant of baseball operations and then eventually a manager of professional scouting. He was initially hired as an intern in 2006, shortly after graduating from the University of Houston with a bachelor's degree in history.
Martone didn't play baseball past high school, but he always dreamed of working in a front office.
"It's not the easiest industry to break into," Martone said. "But I didn't really have any other plans. I would've probably thought about law school, that type of thing, but I wasn't going to sell out for this opportunity."
One of Martone's many tasks with the Yankees was to transfer advanced-scouting information from paper binders to tablet computers. It meant manager Joe Girardi's infamous binder -- which spawned the Twitter handle @BinderGirardi -- was no longer.
"Yeah, it was funny," Martone said. "We would always joke about that, how they need to switch the Twitter handle to Girardi's iPad."
Martone has begun to do something similar for the Angels' coaches and players, and will be one of several executives -- along with fellow assistant GM Jonathan Strangio, director of player personnel Justin Hollander, and special assistants Bud Black, Marcel Lachemann, Bobby Scales, Eric Chavez and Tim Huff, among others -- who will have Eppler's ear on player acquisitions.
"Working with [general manager Brian Cashman] and with the baseball-operations crew was great," Martone said. "I learned so much from Cash and [assistant GM] Jean [Afterman] and had a lot of fun. But the opportunity to work for the Angels' organization and Billy was too good to not take."