By Michael Farber

	Through Sunday, Martin led NL backstops in slugging (.454), RBIs (47), runs (42) and stolen bases (13). Phil Ellsworth/SI

"Is that a name," Dodgers pitcher Randy Wolf muses, "or a novel?"

The ambling story of Martin's still-young life has many devices of a novel. There's a journey: Martin was born in Toronto, moved to Winnipeg, split the rest of his boyhood between his mother's home across the Quebec border from Ottawa and his father's in Montreal, except for those two years (grades 3 and 4) with his mother and stepfather in Paris, a city he didn't much like at first because France didn't have the right kind of Game Boy.

There are issues of race, language, culture: His mother, an exuberant woman who works for the Canadian heritage department, is white; his father, a contemplative musician, is black.

There is an epiphany: the incident in Double A Jacksonville in 2005 when he and a teammate were robbed at gunpoint. (We will get to that episode later in the novel.)

There is a quirky backstory that includes a suitable amount of sax, which takes us back to Martin's evocative name.

Martin's father, who is also named Russell, is a tenor saxophonist of enough pedigree that he played the national anthem at Dodger Stadium last season; Coltrane was added to the boy's name in honor of one of the elder Martin's muses, sax legend John Coltrane. Gagné, who remains close to the catcher, describes his friend's father as "a down-to-earth guy." In fact, when he had Little Russell with him during summers in the early 1990s -- Martin and Susanne Jeanson separated when their son was about a year old -- Big Russell was a below-the-earth guy. At the time he earned his living principally as a busker in the Montreal subway. He would awaken early, nab a prime location, and then play his saxophone during rush hour in either the Snowdon or Villa-Maria métro stations, hurrying home to give Little Russell his breakfast by nine o'clock. Father and son would spend the rest of the day in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce parks playing games that sprung from Big Russell's fertile mind, including a modified version of pepper designed to improve bat control. (Martin would credit that game for his opposite-field, run-scoring single on a 1-and-2 slider in the 10-1 Los Angeles win against Toronto on June 19.) His father would leave the boy with friends while he serenaded commuters on their way home.

This was not a childhood ripped from the Chip Hilton novels of 50 years ago, but it prepared Martin for the big leagues of the 21st century, in which the ability to adapt and to work with teammates from other countries is invaluable. Martin's backup, 12-year veteran Mike Lieberthal, notes that Martin has soft hands, a strong arm and uncommon agility from the waist down -- a trait generally associated with an infielder, which Martin had been until Los Angeles switched him from third base after a season of rookie ball. Martin's handling of pitchers is equally distinctive. "He's really open-minded," Gagné says. "The thing about him is, he adapts not only to the pitcher's stuff but to the pitcher's personality."