Catching a Break: Russell Martin Comes Home
That’s the other thing about Russell Martin: he’s really, honestly Canadian. Just check out that attempt at trash talk, tempered by “pleases” and caveats, polite as heck. In fact, with his scraggly beard and solid catcher’s physique, you wouldn’t be wrong to confuse him for a hockey player. Not that you should ever confuse him for a hockey player.
“Please tell me I can’t do something so I can go ahead and show you that I can.”
“Hockey just wasn’t as good,” he says, in answer to why he never played the national game. “I could always skate really well, but you put me in possession of the puck and it felt like everything slowed down. I didn’t work at it. I didn’t have the passion for it. Baseball was always the most fun I ever had.”
And why not? The kid was a natural. He tells stories of shagging flies with neighbourhood kids in Montreal, or doing carefully crafted drills with his dad, a jazz saxophonist by trade and a lover of the game of baseball, who imparted that love onto his son at a very early age. “I have pictures of myself at two years old, with a little Expos hat and a little red bat you can get from Canadian Tire,” says Martin. “I knew right away baseball was my favourite sport.”
Martin took to it instantly, playing throughout his childhood and into college. He grew up idolizing guys like Ozzie Smith and Roberto Alomar — “guys who looked natural playing the game, and like they were having fun.” His heroes were sprightly, athletic infielders, and so was he. Martin came up as a shortstop. He was even drafted as one. He only became a catcher to fill a need for the Dodgers and get more playing time. (Ironically, his first stint as a full-time big league catcher was as a replacement for then-injured Dioner Navarro, the man whose starting job he’s once again taking here in Toronto.) He took to that naturally, too, and became a brilliant pitch framer, a better game caller. At catcher, Martin is effortlessly in control — even, as he’s shown this spring, when it comes to catching R.A. Dickey’s notoriously uncatchable knuckleball.
