MLB legend Tino Martinez is the newest prominent addition to JOOLA's pickleball roster.

He joins Brad Penny and J.D. Martinez, whose impressive professional baseball careers need no introduction.

In conjunction with the recent announcement, Tino participated in a Q&A with JOOLA's Editorial Strategy Manager, Corey Bockhaus, to discuss his passion for America's fastest-growing sport.

Here are a few of Tino's most notable responses.

How did you get into pickleball?

"I got into pickleball in 2020 when the pandemic hit, and everything shut down here in Tampa. My kids were home from where they lived in New York and Miami, and they all came home, and with businesses shut down, my son came to me one day and said, 'Dad, let's go play pickleball. The pickleball court is open, so we can go play pickleball.' And I said, 'Uh, what's pickleball?' He said, 'Oh, it's a game, you know.' He explained to me what it was. And I said, 'All right, let's go.'"

"I would have done anything at that point to get out of the house and get some exercise in. So we went to this park, a public park in Tampa, and started playing pickleball, starting with the basics, just learning how to hit the ball. I had no idea how to play besides rip it and just smash the ball, and then as time went on, I started learning how to play. And when I started playing better players, and they were dinking and wearing me out and just killing me, and I had to figure out a way to get better and learn the game, and I just got really hooked on it. Since then, I've taken lessons, and I am totally addicted right now, and I play all the time."

Why do you love it? What is it about pickleball? Why is it so addictive?

"You know, it’s an addiction, and everybody has it that plays it. It's just the competitive nature of the game and the speed of play. When you're playing doubles, and you're at the net, in a back-and-forth rally, and it's fast, and you must be technically perfect to win the points. It's not just smash the ball and win a point; there’s more nuance, moving the players left and right, working together as a team."

Tell me about your backhand. Why is that special?

"I'm a right-handed pickleball player, but I'm a left-handed hitter in baseball. So, as a left-handed hitter in baseball, my right hand, or my bottom hand, pulls through the bat to generate power on my swing. In pickleball, I play right-handed, and every time I get a ball on my left side, to my backhand, I just smash it. I hit it hard. And people could never figure out why I have such a strong backhand. Until one day, this guy said I figured it out. You're a left-handed baseball hitter, and that's why you have such a great backhand. And I said, it's true. Yeah, it's all here that comes from my baseball swing being left-handed. And it carries over here into pickleball."

What surprised you the most about pickleball when you first started playing it?

"When I first heard about pickleball, I thought it was boring. I thought, that's a boring sport. It's almost like, you know, tennis is a great sport, but after you hit the ball back and forth a couple of times, and you score a point. And then when I played it, and I saw how fast it was and how much smaller the court is and how quick the game is, it was shocking to me and made me realize, wow, this is a really fun sport that I can play every day and get great exercise and be outside and meet some people and just have some good competition."

At what point did you start getting hooked?

"About a year or two into it, I was getting decent, and then I started playing better players. Then I started spending money on more paddles and getting hooked on it. I started watching videos on Instagram and just started to learn the technical parts of the game, the angles. There are a lot of angles and working with it with your teammate moving players around. I just love that part of it, the strategy that goes along with it. Like I said, it's not just power, its strategic, and it's gratifying after a while, when you get your 11 points, you win the game, and the other team played hard, and you find a way to win."

Is there something about baseball that carries over into pickleball that drew you in?

"When hitting the ball in baseball, hand-eye coordination is very important. A lot of baseball players could be pretty good at pickleball because of the hand-eye coordination and being a left-handed hitter. When you're at the plate, and the ball is on the outside corner, you wait longer, and you hit the ball to the opposite field in the inner half of the plate. It’s the same in pickleball. If I want to hit a ball to the left side, that’s because somebody's cheating on the other side. I can hold my paddle back a little further, as I would on an outside pitch in baseball, and just hit it towards that side and catch them off guard."

“Same thing when I played defense in baseball, playing first base, I would read the bat on the right-handed batter. I could read the bat when it came into the zone, there in the balls, in the zone to see where my catcher is setting up at, where the ball may come to my left or right. So, the same thing happens in pickleball. When I watch the guys paddle where their eyes are looking, where their paddle is aiming, I know exactly where they're going to go, and I can cheat a little bit and return their ball."