Russell Martin on retirement, time with Blue Jays, and hard seltzers
Some baseball players like Mark Buehrle go quietly into the night, occasionally showing up in the stands at St. Louis Cardinals games sipping a Bud Light. Others take a year-long victory lap around the league after announcing their departure from the game.
Then some, like Russell Martin, are somewhere in the middle, leaning towards the Buehrle “Irish goodbye” exit, but with a bit more closure. After 14 seasons in the big leagues, Martin made his retirement from baseball with an announcement on Instagram.
He thanked his family, teammates, and fans who were instrumental in his journey from 35th-round draftee of the Montreal Expos in 2000, to a four-time All-Star, a Gold Glove and Silver Slugger award recipient, and someone who relished the thrill of October baseball on 10 separate occasions.
Closing the door on a 14-year MLB career
“It felt like it needed to be done,” Martin told Daily Hive in an interview. “It was one of those things that was lingering. I was leaving the door cracked open just in case that itch got back to the point where I was like: ‘Maybe I’ll give it one more chance,’ and it really never came.
“It was nice to be able to thank the people who played a part in my career, and give them a bit of recognition. It feels like I’m breathing easier now that it’s official and I can move onto the next chapter.”
View this post on Instagram
After spending four years with the Blue Jays from 2015 to 2018, the Jays traded Martin to the Los Angeles Dodgers. His last game in the majors was Game 3 of the 2019 NLDS against the Washington Nationals, when Martin hit a double and a home run as LA’s starting catcher.
At the conclusion of the 2019 campaign, the Montreal native figured he would prepare like he would any other offseason, but the pandemic threw a wrench into everyone’s plans. It also caused Martin to ask himself the one lingering question about the future of his career.
As a player entering his age-37 season, likely having to fight for playing time in a backup role, the prospect of playing a shortened season with empty stadiums didn’t spark his fire anymore.
“I just had a really hard time trying to motivate myself to play with no fans in the stands,” Martin said. “The pandemic kind of helped me out in the sense that I didn’t have that same desire because I knew there wouldn’t be any fans.”
“After the first year of the pandemic, the next spring training, I thought that I’d get the itch, and it didn’t really come. I guess that means that’s it. If you don’t get excited and you don’t have those little butterflies, it probably means you should step away.”
Diving head first into the hard seltzer game
View this post on Instagram
As Martin put baseball on the back burner during the early days of the pandemic, as the world locked down, he partook in some adult beverages. Upon a trip to his local SAQ in Quebec, he came up with an idea to create his own hard seltzer to fill a void in the market.
“It was just one of those things where we were kind of bored. We wished we were on vacation. We can’t be on vacation. Let’s create a brand that makes you feel like you’re on vacation,” Martin said.
“That’s kind of how we started Cruise; that’s where the name came from. I’ve never personally been on a cruise, but it sounded like something fun to do while you were locked up during the pandemic.”
Earlier this year, he launched Cruise hard seltzer, available in the LCBO in Ontario and SAQ in Quebec. They hit the market with two flavours: mango-dragon fruit in Ontario and peach-pear in Quebec, with more flavours to come in the future.
Working on his golf swing
Another hobby which came into focus for Martin during the pandemic was his golf game. During his playing days, he devoted little time to swinging the sticks, but in the last few years, golf scratched his competitive itch.
Through repetition and practice, he progressively improved, to where he boasted a career-best 71 round earlier this year. For golfers curious about what’s in the bag for the former Blue Jay, he has a TaylorMade Stealth driver, a Callaway Mavrik 3 wood, TaylorMade P790 irons, Vokey wedges, and a Scotty Cameron putter.
Next week, Martin tees off at the RBC Canadian Open Pro-Am at St. George’s Golf & Country Club in Toronto, which will be his first pro-amateur tournament.
Like baseball, golf is a game of failure, but often it’s about limiting damage and negating potential disaster on the field or at the plate. As someone who’s been there before, Martin offers some sage advice for amateur golfers looking to shave strokes off their game.
“Take your bogey and go to the next hole instead of trying the hero shot and hitting a branch and then being in the woods again,” Martin said. “The worst thing that can happen is you hit a couple of good shots when you probably shouldn’t be doing it, then you think you can do it all the time and it ends up costing you so many strokes.
“You learn a lot about yourself on the golf course. You can’t blame it on the referee or the umpire, it’s you. There’s no hiding.”
Looking back at his Blue Jays days
Martin’s last season with his home country Toronto Blue Jays came in 2018, but he was front and centre for some of the franchise’s most memorable moments during those electric 2015 and 2016 postseason runs.
As a team that once had the longest playoff drought in baseball, every player on those Blue Jays teams felt the weight of two-plus decades without a taste of October baseball hanging on their shoulders. Which made it even sweeter when that 2015 team finally exorcised those demons.
“For me, it was even more awesome because I grew up cheering on the Blue Jays and I got to see them win a World Series, and I understood how cool it can be when you have a winning team,” Martin said. “To be a part of a winning team and seeing the people excited again, it meant everything.”
His most memorable regular season moment was arguably his clutch late-season three-run home run to fend off the New York Yankees on September 23, 2015, But Martin is best known as a central figure from one of the wildest games in baseball history: Game 5 of the 2015 ALDS between the Blue Jays and Texas Rangers.
The craziness stemmed from a seemingly innocuous throw back to the mound by Martin in the seventh inning, but Shin-Soo Coo’s bat casually intervened, which led to Rougned Odor scoring the go-ahead run for the Rangers in what can only be described as a one-in-a-million play.
As the players, fans, and countless observers struggled to process what they witnessed, Martin felt like he was hallucinating. A play so absurd that you might only see in spring training threatened to end the Blue Jays’ Cinderella 2015 campaign.
“I’m thinking: ‘I can’t believe this happened for me the first time, at this moment, in the playoffs in front of 60,000 people,'” Martin said. “It felt like it was a nightmare. I was like: ‘Is this real?’ It’s not an error, it’s just really, really unlucky.”
After initially ruling it a dead ball, home plate umpire Dale Scott determined it was a live ball, and the run counted against the Blue Jays. The Rangers held a 3-2 lead heading into the bottom of the seventh.
That was merely the first act of one of the craziest postseason games in recent memory. As Martin sat dumbfounded as beer cans rained upon the field, he was about to be rescued by his old Chipola College teammate, Jose Bautista.
“You had the drama, and then you had the rise of the hero Jose Bautista the next half inning after we cleaned the field from 15,000 empty beer cans,” Martin said. “That’s like fuelling the fire of the story and letting the drama build.
“And then the next half inning they make a couple errors and you can sense the momentum shifting back towards us after they had the biggest break they could ever get, scoring the easiest run they’ve ever scored, probably.
“Then Jose with the bat flip heard around the world. It was the dagger. And the crowd erupts and knocks the roof off the Rogers Centre. I’m looking up in the air and I’m thanking the big guy up there.
And this will always be the lasting image of Russell Martin as a Blue Jay, thanking the baseball gods for justice. https://t.co/KG8JROAqsT pic.twitter.com/RVaIdFh28b
— Ian Hunter (@BlueJayHunter) August 22, 2019
“I’m like: ‘Dude. Thank you, Jose, first of all, for saving what could’ve been a nightmare story into one of the best baseball moments in recent Blue Jays history. Thanks to my boy, who I actually went to college with, who had my back once again.'”
That 2015 Blue Jays squad never made it past the ALCS, but it represented one of seven consecutive playoff seasons for Martin and one of 10 separate postseason runs.
By the time the 2018 season rolled around, the Blue Jays were a shell of their former selves, as longtime manager John Gibbons finished out the last days of his managing career. In a highly unorthodox move, the Blue Jays skipper handed the manager’s keys to his backstop for the last game of the season.
“That was all Gibby,” Martin said. “Gibby’s one of my all-time favourite managers. He just had that cool dad vibe. It was his last year, and he said: ‘Russ, what do you think about managing the last game?’ I’m smiling ear to ear and said: ‘That would be awesome.’ It was fun, but it was just Gibby being Gibby.
“Unfortunately, we lost, so I have a zero win percentage record.”
Retiring with a sparkling 0.00 ERA as a pitcher
Although he retired with a losing managerial record, Martin has the distinction of going into the record books with a pristine 0.00 ERA. He made four pitching appearances during the 2019 season, all scoreless.
While pitching appearances by position players are usually relegated to lopsided losses, the then Dodger made a historic footnote as the first non two-way player in 102 years to pitch in a shutout win for his team.
“It feels nice knowing that there will never be somebody with a better ERA than me,” Martin said. “They might match it, but there will never be somebody better.”
“It went from being a joke, to being put in a situation where we had the lead, to being in a situation where I’m pitching in a game where we could still come back to win. It escalated, but I had a lot of fun competing.
“At the end, I got serious. I was like: ‘You guys can’t catch this stuff,’ topping out at 90 miles an hour.”
What’s next for Russell?
Not everyone gets to walk away from the game on their own terms, and Martin’s grateful for the opportunity to have closure on his career. His body didn’t break down, and he didn’t suffer a career-ending injury. He decided that chapter of his life was over. Now, he’s onto the next one.
With two young daughters and a third child on the way soon, he’s focused on caring for his home team. Perhaps one day, when his kids get a little older and he needs something else to occupy his time, he might contemplate getting back into baseball.
Despite those 10 playoff seasons with the Dodgers, Yankees, Pirates and Blue Jays, he never reached the pinnacle of every kid’s baseball dreams. That hope hasn’t flickered out; it’s only a tad further down his personal depth chart.
“Until then, I’m probably going to enjoy some golf, keep working on the Cruise hard seltzers, and maybe one day make a little comeback,” Martin said. “I still haven’t won a World Series. It would be nice to see what the big dance feels like.”
- You might also like:
- Fans from viral video at Blue Jays game get to meet Aaron Judge
Follow Channels and Categories