I always have had a fondness for professional athletes who were good at what they did despite having something less than the ideal physique.

Terry Forster, a Los Angeles Dodgers reliever circa 1980, was one of them. He knew he was on the “stout” end of the size spectrum and famously said of his weight struggles: “A waist is a terrible thing to mind.”

Edgar Martinez was another one of those guys who was never mistaken for a Greek god. He looked old even when he was young, and he was a bit lumpy.

All he did was spray hits around Major League Baseball stadiums, finishing with a .312 career batting average and a top-20 all-time on-base percentage of 41.8, thanks to his plate discipline — 1,283 walks against 1,202 strikeouts.

He was enough of an offensive force that he is on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot for the eighth year in succession, and again, the electorate from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America will grapple with this difficult question:

Does a player who spent the large majority of his career as a designated hitter (DH) deserve to be in the Hall along with players who actually played in the field?

The other day, I received in my email a message from the Seattle Mariners endorsing the HOF candidacy of a man who spent the whole of his career with the club. Mostly, it includes a dozen links to players advocating for Martinez and from HOF voters writing about how they are fine with Martinez having been his club’s DH for nearly 70 percent of his career at-bats.

I am not so sure I can overlook his lack of contributions with the glove.

For starters, the game was meant to be played by men who took a place in the field when the other team was up. The game even has “safe places” for the defensively challenged — namely, first base and left field. But Edgar Martinez rarely played even there.

A man who walks to the plate four or five times a day, then goes back to sit on the bench or hit balls off a tee under the stadium would seem to have an advantage over the guys who are running or waiting in the field, making plays.

Thus, I believe a DH has to be a really, really good hitter to win a place among the ranks of players who fielded their position.

And I don’t think Edgar Martinez is quite there.

I once voted for the HOF, giving it up when I left the U.S. in 2009, so this is just me talking, not filling out a ballot.

Edgar Martinez had something of a curious career, which goes some way towards explaining those years of doing nothing but hitting.

He did not get his first big-league at-bat until he was 24. He did not become a regular in the Seattle lineup until he was 27.

He apparently was a decent fielder when he broke in, and advanced metrics seem to suggest he was a pretty good third baseman for the three seasons beginning in 1990.

Ahead of the 1993 season, he suffered a torn hamstring on the artificial turf of BC Place Stadium in Vancouver and missed most of the season, and thereafter he rarely appeared in the lineup as anything but a DH.

We can have sympathy for his injury but we also have to recall that his inability (or reluctance) to play in the field would have been career-ending in the era before the DH was established in the American League — before 1973, that is.

Instead, Martinez was able to stay in the bigs for another decade, through the 2004 season, when he was 41, piling up some very nice numbers and gaining the respect of pitchers who despaired at getting him out.

For now, I would not vote for Edgar Martinez to enter the HOF. He would become the first predominately half-player in the Hall.

But I write, “for now”, because of David Ortiz.

The man known as Big Papi played even fewer games in the field than did Edgar Martinez. About 90 percent of Ortiz’s games were as a DH. At no point was he considered anything but a handicap with the glove, unlike Martinez in his early years.

Yet there seems to be a sense that Ortiz belongs in the Hall of Fame. Mostly because he hit a lot of home runs while playing more than a decade in Fenway Park.

And if Big Papi is headed for the Hall, the case then can be made — and has — that Edgar Martinez should be there waiting for Ortiz when he arrives. Because Martinez was a more useful hitter, at least according to the analysis linked (above).

Thankfully, not many great hitters spend the bulk of their careers DH-ing, which means we may not have to grapple with this Edgar/Papi question very often, at least in the short-term. The overwhelming number of big-leaguers still play in the field for most of their careers.

I will be watching to see how many votes Edgar Martinez gets this time around, his third-from-last on the ballot, and a vote that does not include several “can’t miss” candidates, as noted here.

Martinez was named on 43.4 percent of ballots a year ago (75 percent is needed for election), his highest total yet and a significant rise from the previous year (27 percent).

That could suggest a groundswell of support that could lift him to the HOF before he falls off the ballot. Especially if the electorate feels like a David Ortiz ceremony is coming five years hence.