Russell Martin sat quietly in the dugout six hours before what he called one of the best moments of his life.
Rogers Centre was almost silent. The only sound was the rhythmic crack of the bats as his Blue Jays teammates took batting practice. Martin was in an exceedingly positive mood, talking about how he had spent the day before the decisive game of Toronto’s American League Division Series playing video games and tuning out the baseball world.
“Did the Dodgers win?” he asked someone sitting with him on the bench. “What happened in the Cubs game?”
Martin created a vacuum in his approach to playing in his own game later on that day, and it did not include watching any baseball.
Martin, though, became a spectator of Game 5 of the ALDS against the Texas Rangers. He went from being the central figure in what might have become one of the most infamous gaffes in postseason history — along with Mickey Owens’ dropped third strike, Merkle’s Boner and Bill Buckner’s error — to cheering his teammates along with millions of fellow Canadians, watching an unfathomable seventh inning unfold.
“I was watching from the bench hoping for the best like everyone else,” Martin said, “And we got it.”
Martin was devastated when he made a bizarre, rarely seen play that almost ended the Blue Jays’ season. In the top of the seventh his toss back to the pitcher hit the bat of Shin-Soo Choo. The ball rolled onto the field, allowing Rougned Odor to score the go-ahead run from third base (after lengthy arguments between managers and umpires, several replays and ugly disorder from the fans.)
“There’s two ways to handle it,” Martin said. “You either feel sorry for yourself, or you do something about it.”
Martin and the Blue Jays chose to do something about it. Fittingly, he led off the bottom of the inning with a routine ground ball to shortstop and catapulted himself down the first base line. Shortstop Elvis Andrus misplayed the ball — the first of three consecutive errors in the inning — and Martin was safe. He said it was as hard as he had run down the line all season.
“I’m thinking, ‘I better do something,’” he said. “I mean, I knew what I did.”
Martin reached second on an error by Mitch Moreland and then was removed for a pinch-runner. He took a seat in the dugout and watched as history unfolded — another error, a bloop out that made the score 3-3, and then one of the best moments of his life: Jose Bautista blasting a three-run homer that hit the facing of the second deck and then flipping his bat toward the Rangers dugout like a defiant matador tossing aside his cape as Rogers Centre exploded in joy. Now, Martin would never be remembered as a villain in his country.
“I don’t know if it’s karma or something out of our control that helped us in that moment,” Martin said. “But, 1-1 pitch, and he crushed it. He knew it, we knew it; the whole stadium knew it. The place went nuts. Magical moment, one of the best moments of my life.”
For it to happen in Toronto, less than 5 miles from where Martin was born at the East York Hospital, made it even more enjoyable and perhaps even cosmic for Martin. He grew up in Montreal, and spent time in Paris as a boy and was a Montreal Expos fan. He always enjoyed the Blue Jays, too, but never more so than on Wednesday.
The odyssey that brought Martin back to the town of his birth had taken him to other North American cities — Los Angeles, New York and Pittsburgh — and now Martin is returning to the league championship series for the first time since he went with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2008 and 2009.
“It’s a great feeling,” he said as teammates celebrated in the clubhouse.
Martin has been to the postseason with every team for which he has played. He helped the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Blue Jays end playoff droughts of at least 20 years.
When he left the New York Yankees as a free agent after the 2012 season, the Yankees failed to make the playoffs for the next two years. Coincidence or not, the next year, Martin’s Pirates won the National League wild-card game after breaking a 20-year playoff drought. Pittsburgh lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in the division series.
The Pirates made it to the wild-card game again in 2014, and then Martin transferred to the Blue Jays as one of their key offseason acquisitions. Call it another coincidence, but the Blue Jays ended a 22-year playoff absence.
“He’s a winning player,” Blue Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos said recently.
And he is also a part of baseball lore in one of the best games in Canadian baseball history.
“At that moment I’m just a fan,” Martin said. “And they came through for me.”
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