Russell Martin (baseball)

Professional career

Martin was selected in the 35th round of the 2000 Major League Baseball draft by the Montreal Expos but did not sign. After two years at Chipola College, the Los Angeles Dodgers chose him in the 17th round of the 2002 draft as a third baseman. He played his first professional season with the Gulf Coast Dodgers, hitting .286 with 10 RBI in 41 games, then was converted to catcher in the offseason. In 2003, he batted .276 with 9 home runs and 50 RBI across 77 games for the Ogden Raptors and Class-A South Georgia Waves.

While with the Vero Beach Dodgers in 2004, he was a Florida State League All-Star catcher, playing 122 games and batting .250 with 15 home runs and 64 RBI. He also played in the Arizona Fall League that offseason. In 2005, he hit .311 with 9 home runs and 61 RBI in a career-high 129 games for the Double-A Jacksonville Suns, making the All-Star team. Martin began 2006 with the Triple-A Las Vegas 51s, hitting .297 in 23 games before his promotion to the Dodgers on May 5 after a wrist injury to starting catcher Dioner Navarro.

He recorded two hits, including a double, in his debut; his first hit came against Chris Capuano. On May 7, he hit his first major league home run off Dave Bush. On June 6, 2006, Martin and Éric Gagné became the first French Canadian battery in MLB history. Navarro was traded to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays on June 26.

Martin hit his first career walk-off home run on August 13, 2006, completing a sweep of the San Francisco Giants. On September 18, he hit a solo home run off Trevor Hoffman as part of four consecutive home runs in the bottom of the 9th inning to tie the San Diego Padres, the first such streak since 1964. On April 21, 2007, Martin hit a walk-off grand slam against Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Shawn Chacón in the bottom of the 10th inning, his first career grand slam.

International career

Russell Martin first suited up for Canada in the 2009 World Baseball Classic. That same year, hoping to kick his chewing tobacco habit, he wore a custom mouthpiece during the event and spring training. For the 2013 WBC, he planned to move to shortstop, explaining that he was already learning a new pitching staff in Pittsburgh and didn't want to tackle another one. He had played third base in the minors before becoming a catcher, but later withdrew from the 2013 tournament due to soreness. In December 2016, he again committed to play shortstop for Canada in the 2017 WBC, but was removed from the roster in February 2017 because of insurance issues tied to minor offseason knee surgery.

Personal life

Russell Nathan Coltrane Jeanson Martin Jr. was born in Toronto, Ontario, and grew up in Montreal and Chelsea, Quebec. The ballpark where he played as a child in Chelsea was later renovated and renamed in his honor. He played baseball in Montreal's Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighborhood and also played hockey for N.D.G. Minor Hockey. After graduating from Polyvalente Édouard-Montpetit High School, he attended Chipola College in Marianna, Florida on a junior college scholarship.

Martin is biracial; his father, Russell Martin Sr., is Black Canadian, and his mother, Suzanne Jeanson, is Franco-Manitoban. His full name reflects his father, a great-grandfather named Nathan, his mother's family name Jeanson, and the musician John Coltrane, whom his father admired. His parents separated when he was two. To help pay for his son's baseball training, his father played saxophone in Montreal metro stations, and later performed O Canada on saxophone before a 2015 spring training game.

When Martin was nine, his mother remarried and moved to Paris, France. For a year, he split his time between his mother in Paris and his father in Montreal. For the 2009 season, he changed the name on his jersey to "J. Martin" to honor his mother's family name.