As a young player with the Seattle Mariners in 1997, Raul Ibanez was getting ready to leave the clubhouse one night when he noticed that his star teammate Edgar Martinez was not leaving.

In fact, Martinez was still wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and instead of going out the main door, he veered into the weight room. Ibanez, then 24, still had a lot to learn about baseball, but he was smart enough even then to change course.

"If he’s going in there,” Ibanez recalled thinking, "then I’m going in there, too.”

Ibanez used to follow Martinez around, emulating his routines and soaking up every bit of knowledge he could, through both observation and conversation. One of the smartest and most well-rounded players in baseball, Ibanez has been fortunate to share clubhouses with many of the game’s greatest players, including Ken Griffey Jr., Alex Rodriguez, Carlos Beltran, Ichiro Suzuki and Chase Utley. More important, Ibanez has been shrewd enough to learn from them all.

So when he introduced himself into Yankees lore Wednesday by pinch-hitting for Rodriguez in the ninth inning of Game 3 of the division series against the Orioles and hitting a game-tying home run — to be followed by the game-winning homer three innings later — there was a piece of each of those players, including Rodriguez, up at the plate with him.

The first time Ibanez definitely remembers seeing Rodriguez, he said, was in 1994, when they played for the Class A Appleton (Wis.) Foxes in the Midwest League. Ibanez, then a catcher, was warming up a pitcher when he heard a distinctive crack of the bat. He looked up and saw a teenage prodigy taking batting practice, crushing baseballs with ease. Ibanez was amazed.

"I remember asking someone who that was,” Ibanez said. "They said it was the No. 1 pick. I said, ‘Wow, that’s the next Juan Gonzalez.’ I think I owed Alex an apology.”

Ibanez was 21 at the time and, as a 36th-round draft choice, on a track totally different from Rodriguez’s. But he was constantly studying and learning, and two years later he joined Rodriguez on the Mariners. They played together for parts of five major league seasons. During that time, and again when they reunited on the Yankees this year, Ibanez was astounded by Rodriguez’s baseball acumen, he said.

"He’s easily the smartest player I’ve ever played with,” Ibanez said. "He’s just on a different plane from the rest of us. He sees things that we just don’t see. Utley is a little like that, too. They are both just super smart about the game.”

Another all-around baseball genius whom Ibanez adored watching was Griffey, whose knack for the game was matched by his natural talents.

"I remember going into the video room once, and Junior is in there looking at tape,” Ibanez said. "He just keeps looking at this one swing of his over and over, rewinding just to the point where he swings. He looks at it a bunch of times, rewinding it over and over, and then says, ‘Got it,’ and walks out. Whatever he was looking for, he found it, and you know he went on a tear after that.”

Ibanez loved that story because he never found the game that simple. He always had to work and study, and then work and study some more. When Suzuki joined Seattle in 2001, Ibanez learned Japanese words from his teammate and studied them until his pronunciation was nearly perfect.

All the hard work and study paid off on the field. Ibanez became a reliable and durable player for years, hitting .304 in 2004, when he returned to the Mariners after a stint with Kansas City, and hitting 33 home runs and knocking in 123 runs in 2006.

In 2008, R. A. Dickey joined the Mariners and became friends with Ibanez. Intellectually curious and well read, they often ate dinner together after games.

"We talked about things that transcended the baseball diamond,” Dickey said. "We would talk about books and music and family. Did you know he is an excellent guitar player? I mean, really good. He’s one of my all-time favorite teammates, just a pro’s pro.”

Known as a streaky hitter, Ibanez went on a run that year that enthralled Dickey and the Mariners, who had little to cheer during a 61-101 season. In a 41-game stretch from the beginning of July until Aug. 13, Ibanez hit .339 with 10 home runs, 16 doubles, 27 runs scored and 33 runs batted in.

It was the kind of streak that he has been on the last few weeks, in perhaps the greatest run of his life — a run that was punctuated last week when his wife gave birth to their fifth child, a son named Luca.

On Wednesday, Ibanez became the first player to hit two home runs in the ninth inning or later of a postseason game, and at 40, he became the oldest player to hit a game-winning home run in the postseason. But it was not his first star turn with the Yankees. On Oct. 2, he hit a two-run, pinch-hit homer in the ninth inning of a crucial game against Boston and then drove in the winning run with a single in the 12th.

On Sept. 22, he hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the 13th against the Athletics to cap a four-run inning. That sent the game into the 14th inning, when the Yankees won it. Since then, Ibanez has gone 18 for 43 with 6 home runs; he went 0 for 1 as a pinch-hitter on Thursday.

Still, who could expect such a streak to continue?

"He’s only got to go another month,” Manager Joe Girardi said.