The Red Sox slugger longs for his old routine back.

Now, I’ve never been a professional sports star, so I can’t completely fathom what one’s lifestyle would be like. But if I were to hazard a guess, it’d be a lot of playing games, a lot of training, and maybe a little bit of kicking back in a big fancy house. I do, however, know what it’s like to have a routine you enjoy disrupted and it’s not fun. Turns out that’s something I have in common with the Red Sox’s J.D. Martinez.

Martinez is very cognizant of the fact that even once the baseball season finally gets started after its myriad delays, things are not going to be exactly the same as they were.

“[The routine is] definitely going to have to change,” Martinez said. “That’s kind of evident with everything that we all are seeing. But you have to kind of adapt to it and kind of find a way to make a new routine and make it work.”

What Martinez really misses most is being at home plate, ready to swing that bat. He’s hoping that when the training camps get started, he can start catching up on all the at-bat time he missed out on due to the delays. “It’s kind of like what I told [manager] Ron [Roenicke] right when I came in,” Martinez said. “I was like, ‘Ron, I’m a guy that needs a lot of at-bats to get it going.’ That’s always been my M.O. … I told him, ‘I need at-bats. Get me as many at-bats as you can.’ If I’ve got to track bullpens, put me in bullpens for that exact reason. … We didn’t really get that many at-bats in Spring Training to really, really feel comfortable, so it’s going to be a grind.”

Things we’ve missed:
J.D. Mashing pic.twitter.com/ge1mNKYpE9

— Red Sox (@RedSox) July 4, 2020

But while the mechanics of the game are most certainly on his mind, more than anything, Martinez just misses being in the thick of it all. “When I was around my friends they were like, ‘Do you miss it?’” Martinez recalled. “And I was like, ‘Honestly, I really do I miss the smell of the ballpark and walking in. I miss the energy of the stadium and the excitement of every game and the excitement of not knowing what’s going to happen today. Today could be one of the most amazing days or it could be a really, really bad day when you come to the ballpark.’

“And I think that that excitement when you come is — I think that makes it fun and that’s what I love to do, is come to the ballpark and the challenge between the pitcher and the chess game you play against your competitor. So yeah, I really do miss it.”