Q&A with Blake Martinez

By: 
Bill Huber
Correspondent

Packer: Blake Martinez

Number: 50

Position: Linebacker

College: Stanford

Draft: Fourth round, 2016

Season: Fourth

Age: 25

Height/weight: 6-foot-2, 237 pounds

Q: What does it mean to be the team’s Walter Payton Man of the Year nominee?

A: It means a lot to me. Coming into the league, I knew once I got my feet underneath me, I went straight to our community outreach people and said I wanted to be a part of anything that comes up. Being able to be nominated for this award shows that I’m doing the right things, understanding that I need to be a professional, be that role model to anyone that looks up to me, whether it’s little kids, adults, just to show the way to be a good person. For me, getting this nomination just shows that I’m doing it that way. I want to keep improving on it from here and out.

Q: Why is that important? After a hard day here, I’m sure it would be easy to go home and chill out instead.

A: There’s numerous things. For me, my main focus is St. Jude (Children’s Research Hospital), mainly because my first best friend in third grade passed away from bone cancer when he was in ninth grade. It was a tough thing for me to swallow. To have kids that age having such promise and to have their life cut short, that’s what’s motivated me. From doing those types of things, it’s allowed me to venture on to other things. That’s been awesome to see the reactions from people that I’ve helped and the change that I’ve seen in little kids or even high school kids, adults, that when I had those moments with them, it’s changed their life in some way.

Q: Thinking of a child battling cancer, what are those reactions like?

A: It’s amazing. When I started doing this, I was like, ‘If I could change one kid’s outlook on life, it’s a success for me.’ To be able to have those moments and having kids come up to you and saying, ‘I remember you gave me a high-five’ or ‘I remember when you said hello to me.’ To me, it was just saying hello. To them, it could mean the whole entire world. It’s those types of moments that get you wanting more of that and to give more. If you can keep doing that over and over every single day, all of a sudden you’re changing a hundred lives, a thousand lives.

Q: In the Packers’ announcement, there was a long list of things you’ve done off the field. Is there a thing or two that’s particularly meaningful?

A: The two that stood out for me, one, is I went to Syble Hopp School (in De Pere) and got to hang out with those kids and see their interaction. We played football and gave them a taste of a normal day, have fun and get them out of their norm and what they go through every single day. Just being able to see their reactions and talk to those kids — even saying hi or giving a high-five — it brightens up their day and they have a huge smile on their face. It’s a blessing for them and it’s also a blessing for me, because I go there and then I see this, and I’m like there shouldn’t be any day that I’m mad or any day that I’m feeling down. It gives you more of a perspective on life.

The other one was on the Tailgate Tour (in 2018), we went to a retirement home. So, it’s a different spectrum but it’s the same aspect. All of these elderly people are stuck in this home every single day doing the same thing. All of a sudden, they get this opportunity to hang out with us and interact, catch footballs from us throwing it to them, ask questions. It’s those cool moments. You learn something, they get something out of it. It’s a cool perspective.

Q: You mentioned your childhood friend earlier. What was his name and why was he so special?

A: Richard Blau. In third grade, I switched schools. In the cafeteria, he came up to me and was like, ‘Hey, you’re a new kid? Why don’t we become friends.’ It was a cool moment. Ever since then, we hung out all the time, played ‘Pokemon,’ ‘Yu-Gi-Oh,’ all the card games you can think of. Throughout the years, we were great friends. In sixth grade, he was going up for a layup at recess and crashed to the ground. We thought he slipped and fell and he wasn’t getting up. We didn’t see him for a few weeks. Two weeks went by and the principal took me and two other kids who were really good friends with him and told us Richard had been diagnosed with bone cancer. It was a whirlwind. I didn’t really know what to think. He was going on chemo and eventually went into remission, so we had a huge party for him in eighth grade. In ninth grade, it came back 10 times over and took over and he passed away later that year.

Q: I’m sure there are a lot of great things about being a professional athlete but is it especially cool to have the platform you have to impact the lives of others?

A: You have to have that understanding of the platform that we have. The guys that understand that and can take it to that full potential, it’s a really cool thing when you have those moments with those kids or adults or high school kids or whoever. All of them respect you. Whatever you say is going to impact them in some way or another. It’s cool to see it. I remember when I was in sixth grade, he ended up being my high school coach, he came to our school and laid out all the statistics of like 0.0001 percent of these guys make it to the NFL. I was the kid that was like, ‘I’m going to make it because of this!’ It’s one of those things that I hold near and dear to my heart. I want to be the guy that changes maybe one kid and, all of a sudden, he’s here.