He's not supposed to go out like this.
Mike Martin has never not won 40 games in a season. He's never not played in the NCAA Tournament.
With less than two months left in the 2019 regular season, he's very much in danger of doing both. His Florida State Seminoles, one of the younger teams in the country it should probably be noted, are just 19-12 overall and 7-8 in the ACC. Keep in mind, the season started with a 12-game winning streak.
So since that came and went, FSU is just 7-12 in its last 19 games. On Sunday, it snapped a four-game losing streak in which it scored a grand total of two runs.
I don't know if FSU ever before had a stretch where it scored in just one of 38 innings -- but we just lived it. It happened. And while the Seminoles were able to salvage the final game this weekend in Coral Gables against a mediocre Miami team, Martin was still having to answer questions about his team's struggles on Monday, as they got ready to play you-know-who tonight at Dick Howser Stadium.
Because this is Florida State. Largely because of the guy wearing No. 11 for all these decades, Florida State doesn't miss the postseason. Florida State doesn't lose 12 of 19 games. Ever.
We're not used to this. The players aren't used to this.
And you better believe the guy wearing No. 11 isn't used to this.
That was evident on Monday when he answered one of the great Ira Schoffel's questions with the following response:
"I was telling somebody earlier today I could just be sitting back, saying, 'Ahh, heck. I'm not going to get all uptight about anything. I'm just going to glide on through and see what happens.' And then I tongue-lashed myself like you can't believe.
"Because I would never, ever change the way I tried to do things for 40 years. And just because there's only a few months left, for me to just say, 'Well, let's just see what happens?' I would feel as bad as I've ever felt in my life. I will fight until the last ounce of breath I have for this program. And we will battle. We may not get to where we want to get to, but it's certainly still at the front of our minds because we're going to get after it. We're going to get better."
They're going to have to get a lot better if they want to not only make the postseason but actually make some noise in it.
But that quote got me to thinking.
By and large, legends don't go out on top. It just doesn't happen. Not in college baseball, not in any sport really. We watched that first-hand here at Florida State in football.
For FOUR decades, it's been an automatic that FSU was going to be in the NCAA Tournament. And it was going to win 40 games. Auto. Matic.
So in a weird way, and I might be the only that sees it this way, what is happening right now should make us all appreciate the Martin Years even more. Because as we are seeing, it's not a guarantee that you get to 40 wins. It's not a guarantee you even get to 30. This current squad has some serious work to do.