It was far from the ideal setting to discuss such a heavy and personal topic.
Diamondbacks center fielder Starling Marte sat at a podium in an empty room, staring at a screen in front of him. On that screen, in a patchwork of boxes, were reporters he’d barely had the chance to get to know since being traded to Arizona from Pittsburgh. With one exception, they were separated by a language barrier and, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, any number of miles. Yet despite the impersonal setting, Marte did his best to discuss one of the worst days of his life: the unexpected and tragic death of his wife two months ago.
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In May, after Marte had returned to his native Dominican Republic, his wife, Noelia, suffered a foot fracture. While in the hospital, Marte said through team interpreter Alexander Lorenzo, “it led to something that caused (a) heart attack.” He posted about it on social media at the time, but Saturday — after a multi-day absence from camp that Marte chalked up to “waiting for results” from Major League Baseball’s testing regime — was the first time Marte discussed the loss publicly.
Hoy paso por el gran dolor de informar el lamentable fallecimiento de mi esposa Noelia, a causa de un infarto. Es un momento de mucha tristeza.
I go through the pain of making public the unfortunate death of my wife Noelia, due to a heart attack. It is a moment of great sorrow. pic.twitter.com/UEP4k8dLBW
— Starling Marte (@Starlingmart) May 19, 2020
“My first thought was I wanted to retire and didn’t want to play any more baseball,” Marte said. “I thought my process would lead me toward that. But the more conversations I had with pastors back home and friends back home, the more I felt supported, especially by my kids. I felt supported to come back to the game and rely on them.”
Marte has four children ranging from ages 10 to 1. He said Noelia’s death has been hardest on the 10-year-old, his son Smerling. But he also said his children have been a source of strength for him. “But through this entire process, they’ve been very, very strong and very, very helpful,” he said. The fortitude Marte has shown so far has impressed many with the Diamondbacks, including manager Torey Lovullo.
“He’s a very strong man, I can say that,” Lovullo said. “I don’t know how he’s doing it, I don’t know how he did it, but he seems to be functioning every day at a very high level when it comes to his profession.”
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Being on a new team — one whose members now must keep their distance from each other — likely only compounds the difficulty of finding normalcy. Before camps shut down in March, there had been only a few weeks for Marte to get to know his new teammates. That includes a countryman in Ketel Marte, whom Starling did not know well entering camp. (The two are not related.) But Ketel can understand what his teammate is going through. In 2017, Ketel was rocked by the unexpected death of his mother in the Dominican Republic.
Having been through that, he knows how important it is for teammates to make Starling feel connected with the rest of the team.
“We’re going to try to have as many conversations as we can with Marte,” said Ketel, who mentioned bonding with Starling over their family tragedies as they flew back to Arizona on the private jet of Diamondbacks managing general partner Ken Kendrick. “We’re going to try to connect that chemistry. Unfortunately, with the tragedy that happened a couple months ago, when you’ve got someone alone at his house, those bad thoughts come in. You want to be around him, and you want to help him.”
(Ketel Marte also spoke through the team’s interpreter.)
Starling Marte also has a former teammate on the same mission. Pirates outfielder Gregory Polanco told reporters he has talked to Marte every other day since the Diamondbacks outfielder returned to Arizona, and that’s a decrease from the daily contact they had when Marte was in the Dominican.
“I told him, ‘I’m here, every day, for you. I’m going to support you and I’m going to be calling you, no matter if you answer my phone or don’t answer it. I’ll be calling you every day. You’re like my big brother, and I’m here to support you,’” Polanco said. “Because you know we had good times, but now in those hard times, I’ve got to be there for him.”
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Marte obviously moved past his initial thoughts of retiring, and he has not opted out of the 2020 season, as other players have. No one would have blinked an eye if he had chosen to sit out, but it seems like he now views baseball as part of his healing process.
“Thankfully, through God,” he said, “I was able to come back and be back on the field and come back and prepare and be ready for this upcoming season.”
(Photo: Joe Camporeale / USA Today)
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