Russell Martin

Russell Martin caught for the New York Yankees for exactly two seasons, 2011 and 2012, and he's still the answer to one of the better trivia questions in franchise history: name the three guys who each hit a grand slam in the same game. On August 25, 2011, Martin himself hit the second one -- sandwiched between Robinson Cano and Curtis Granderson -- as the Yankees became the first team in Major League Baseball history to hit three grand slams in a single game. He also went 5-for-5 that night with six RBI. Not a bad way to spend a Thursday.

The Guy Who Replaced a Legend

Martin didn't come to New York because the Yankees went out and won a bidding war. He came because the Dodgers, his team since his 2006 debut, non-tendered him. LA reportedly offered him $4.2 million guaranteed plus incentives for 2011; Martin wanted at least $5 million locked in. The two sides couldn't agree on the contract structure, so instead of going to arbitration, the Dodgers just let him walk. The Yankees scooped him up on December 15, 2010, for a one-year, $4 million deal -- less guaranteed money than LA had offered him. (Sometimes the market just doesn't make sense.)

The job Martin inherited wasn't small. Jorge Posada had caught in the Bronx since 1995, and 2011 was going to be his last year in pinstripes one way or another. Martin walked into a clubhouse full of guys chasing one more ring with a legend's position and zero margin for a bad transition. He handled it fine. Better than fine, actually -- he made the All-Star team that summer as the AL's third catcher, his first All-Star nod since 2008, and led every catcher in the majors with 35 runners caught stealing. A .237 average with 18 homers and 65 RBI in 125 games isn't going to win anybody a batting title, but a Gold Glove-caliber defender who calls a good game and pops the occasional bomb is exactly what a pitching staff wants behind the plate.

Three Grand Slams. One Game. Never Happened Before.

Here's the whole absurd sequence. The Yankees hosted Oakland on August 25, 2011, and fell behind 7-1 through three innings -- the kind of deficit that gets fans reaching for the remote. Martin cut into it first, a solo shot in the fourth. Then Cano hit a grand slam in the fifth off starter Rich Harden to make it 7-6. One inning later, Martin himself connected -- a fly ball off reliever Fautino De Los Santos that barely cleared the auxiliary scoreboard in right, good for a grand slam and a 10-7 Yankees lead. Two innings after that, with two outs in the eighth, Granderson launched a no-doubt shot into the right-center bullpen off Bruce Billings for grand slam number three. Final score: 22-9, Yankees.

No team in the history of Major League Baseball had ever hit three grand slams in one freakin' game. The Yankees did it in a four-inning span, and Granderson -- who hit the last one -- had actually been on base for both of the other two before he cashed in his own. Martin's night alone was a career day: five hits in five at-bats, a double, two home runs, and six RBI, all career highs. If you'd told him in April that he'd out-produce his entire month in a single game that August, he probably wouldn't have believed you.

Year Two, More Power, Less Average

2012 was a strange season for Martin individually -- a career-high 21 home runs paired with a .211 batting average, the kind of year where the power spikes and the contact just doesn't show up. He still caught 133 games behind a rotation trying to hold off the rest of the AL East, and he still had one more signature moment left. In Game 1 of that October's ALDS at Baltimore, with the score knotted at 2-2 in the top of the ninth, Martin led off with a go-ahead home run off Orioles closer Jim Johnson, sparking a five-run inning in a 7-2 win -- the kind of shot that swings a series. It wasn't enough on its own (nothing about the 2012 postseason came easy), but it's the kind of at-bat that sticks with you.

Across both Yankees seasons combined, Martin appeared in 14 postseason games and hit just .167 with a single home run -- his lone postseason blast being that ALDS leadoff shot off Johnson. The regular-season production (39 homers, 118 RBI over two years) told one story. October told a much quieter one.

That November, the Yankees moved on. Martin signed a two-year deal with the Pittsburgh Pirates, and New York handed the catching job to a much quieter combination of Francisco Cervelli and Chris Stewart -- a real step down in star power from the guy they'd just let leave. Two years, one signature night, and a franchise trivia answer that'll outlive most of his actual stat line.

A Name With a Story, and a Career That Kept Going

Martin's full name is Russell Nathan Coltrane Jeanson Martin Jr. -- Russell for his father, Nathan for a great-grandfather, Jeanson from his mother's side, and Coltrane as a tribute to jazz legend John Coltrane, whom his dad admired. His father, Russell Sr., is Black Canadian; his mother, Suzanne Jeanson, is Franco-Manitoban. Growing up in East York, Ontario (now part of Toronto), Martin's dad used to play saxophone in Montreal metro stations to help pay for his son's baseball training. That's a hell of an origin story for a guy who ended up catching in the Bronx.

The Bronx chapter was short, but the career kept rolling long after. Martin left the Yankees for two seasons in Pittsburgh, then signed a five-year, $82 million deal with the Toronto Blue Jays in November 2014 (going home, more or less) and helped end Toronto's 22-year playoff drought in 2015. He closed out his 14-year career back where it started, traded from Toronto to the Dodgers in January 2019 for a final go-round. Four-time All-Star, a 2007 Gold Glove and Silver Slugger with LA, and a reputation as one of the sharper pitch-framers of his generation, back when framing was just becoming something people actually measured. In June 2024, Canada made it official and inducted him into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.

Two seasons, one absurd night, and a franchise record that still hasn't been matched anywhere in baseball. Russell Martin never became a Yankees icon the way Posada was before him or the way the position's future occupants would be after him. He didn't need to. He just needed one August evening in 2011 to make sure nobody ever forgets his name showed up in the middle of baseball history.