Past and present stars align at Shirley Povich Field on Saturday

From left: Brenda Martzolf, Max Martzolf, Sal Colangelo, Greg Martzolf

ROCKVILLE, Md. — On Saturday, a former Bethesda Big Train star received a special honor prior to the night’s matchup against the Gaithersburg Giants at Shirley Povich Field.

Big Train founder and president Bruce Adams and head coach Sal Colangelo announced Colangelo’s annual award for the team’s best relief pitcher will be named the Max Martzolf Relief Pitcher of the Year Award. Martzolf, a left-hander from Florida Atlantic, won the award in 2023 and 2024 as a key player on the Big Train’s championship-winning squads, becoming the team’s first two-time honoree.

Martzolf was named to the All-League First Team in both seasons. The naming ceremony took place after the first inning of Saturday’s game, where Martzolf was joined by his parents, Brenda and Greg.

“It’s an honor, knowing that I gave everything out on that mound, and luckily I was successful in those outings most of the time,” Martzolf said. “It’s just an honor that my name’s going to be forever known as a legacy, especially with an award like that.”

Martzolf's ceremonial first pitch by Andrew Weitzel

Neither Martzolf nor his parents are local to Bethesda. His parents said they flew up from Florida to be at Saturday’s game, and Martzolf himself took a 6.5-hour drive to attend the contest between summer ball games in upstate New York.

“Max has had a big impact on the Big Train organization, [but] I’ll tell you, the Big Train organization has had a bigger impact on Max,” Greg Martzolf said. “He came here after his sophomore year, and Sal Colangelo and this organization, they breathed baseball life back into him.”

“[Florida Atlantic head coach John McCormack] has instilled how wonderful this program is,” Brenda Martzolf said. “It feels like coming home again, being here.”

Martzolf wasn’t the only Big Train legend in attendance on Saturday. Both Walter Johnson’s grandson Hank Thomas and Shirley Povich’s granddaughter Johanna McDonough attended the game, posing for a photo at the team’s Shirley and Walter sculpture.

Johanna McDonough (left) and Hank Thomas

Thomas also attended the game to do a book signing for his 1995 biography, "Walter Johnson: Baseball’s Big Train.” He said his grandfather — the inspiration for the team’s “Big Train” nickname — held incredible stature in many different ways.

“In the way I put it, you get the 10 leading experts on baseball history and ask them who the greatest pitcher was, and five or six of them will say Walter Johnson,” Thomas said. “But he was also a great, great man in a lot of different respects. Wonderful personality, kind, modest, generous, humble, all of those traits.”

Thomas said Johnson was an important member of Montgomery County.

“He did a lot of great service to the community,” Thomas said. “He was always available. Mom remembers him getting dressed up — he had a big farm out in Germantown — and [she’d] say, ‘What are you doing, Dad?’”

“He’d say, ‘well, they’re opening this shopping center down in such and such and they asked me to come,’” Thomas said. “I’m sure he wasn’t getting paid for any of that, and he just did it because I think he felt like the community had been good to him and he should pay it back.”

Hank Thomas by Andrew Weitzel

Thomas said he’s glad to be related to baseball’s Big Train.

“There’s no downside to being Walter Johnson’s grandson,” he said with a chuckle. “There is none that I could find in years and years and years of research and also being his grandson. There is just nothing to apologize for, and there’s lots to be so proud and happy about.”

It was also First Responders & Military Appreciation Night at the ballpark, and members of American Legion Post 86 were in attendance. The team additionally welcomed the newly-annointed UFL champion DC Defenders as special guests.

DC Defenders trophy by Andrew Weitzel

The night’s giveaway was a Colangelo bobblehead, depicting the renowned coach riding a train while holding a trophy.

Sal Colangelo bobblehead