ABCA Hall of Fame

Mike Martin was named skipper at Florida State in 1980 after having served as an assistant for the Seminoles for five seasons. Over the next 40 years, his teams would make 17 College World Series appearances while winning at least 40 games and qualifying for the NCAA Tournament in each of his 40 seasons.

Inducted into the ABCA Hall of Fame in 2007, Martin retired after the 2019 season as the NCAA’s all-time winningest coach in any sport with a record 2,029 career victories. He is the only coach in college baseball history with 2,000 wins. The 13-time Conference Coach of the Year led the Seminoles to 11 Metro Conference titles and nine Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) titles, while producing eight National Players of the Year and four Golden Spikes Award winners.

Off the field, Martin’s student-athletes were selected to the academic team of distinction 72 times since its 2006 inception, while leading the ACC six times in 13 years. Three of Martin’s players earned ACC Scholar-Athlete of the Year honors on five occasions, while his teams were twice honored with the ACC Sportsmanship Award.

In addition to his work with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and in the Tallahassee, Florida, community, the 47-year Lifetime ABCA Member has been a featured clinician at several ABCA Conventions, most recently in 2015.

The Seminoles celebrated Martin in 2005, naming the baseball field at Dick Howser Stadium in his honor. In 2019, Martin was honored with induction into the National College Baseball Hall of Fame. He was also inducted into the Florida Sports Hall of Fame in 2005 and his home-state North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame in 2018. In 2020, the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association named its National Coach of the Year Award in his honor.

Martin was an All-American at Wingate Junior College (now Wingate University) in Wingate, North Carolina, before transferring to Florida State, where he played from 1965-66. He played in the 1965 College World Series and earned All-District honors in his senior season with the Seminoles.

Following his collegiate career, Martin played professional baseball in the New York Mets and Detroit Tigers organizations for three seasons before beginning his career in coaching. He started as a junior high baseball and basketball coach before taking over as the head basketball coach at Tallahassee Community College. He then spent three seasons coaching basketball at nearby Godby High School in Tallahassee, before joining the baseball coaching staff at Florida State in 1975.

Named after the great Lefty Gomez, this annual award is presented to an individual who has distinguished himself among his peers and has contributed significantly to the game of baseball locally, nationally and internationally. The Lefty Gomez Award is sponsored by Wilson Sporting Goods.