Buck Martinez didn't expect yesterday to hit him the way it did.
"Today blew me away," Martinez said. "I just didn't have any grasp for the magnitude of today."
That's a real admission from someone who's spent nearly six decades around this franchise in almost every role imaginable.
"But it was awesome," he added. "The Blue Jays did a hell of a job with it."
Martinez became the first person ever enshrined in Toronto's new Hall of Excellence, a fitting distinction given how much of the club's history runs through him.
The ceremony capped a week that already carried real weight for him, coming shortly after he confirmed being cancer free following a tough stretch.
Former teammates and colleagues spent the buildup describing exactly why this honor made sense, and Martinez's own reaction Saturday only reinforced it.
Why the day meant more than a typical honor
Even someone with his history in the game, as a player, manager, broadcaster, and union voice, said he wasn't prepared for how it would actually feel.
That kind of honesty tracks with everything colleagues have said about him over the years, someone who never coasted on a moment and always stayed present in it.
Filling a Rogers Centre suite with his wife Arlene and a group of family and friends made the occasion personal beyond just the ceremony itself.
Former teammates like Dave Stieb and George Bell were expected to be part of the pre-game celebration too, adding to a day built around decades of shared history.
For a fan base that's watched Martinez in every role this franchise offers, hearing him admit he was caught off guard by the scale of it says plenty about how well Toronto executed the tribute.
Whether this becomes a template for future Hall of Excellence inductions is a question for another year. For now, it's simply the day Buck Martinez didn't see coming, in the best possible way.
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