When Quebec’s Russell Martin took up his position behind home plate at baseball’s annual All-Star game in San Francisco in July, he did something no Canadian baseballer has ever done before. He started the game at the catcher position. Extraordinary is the only word for it.

Martin, just 24 and already a fan favourite, is the day-to-day receiver for the Los Angeles Dodgers of the National League, a position he assumed barely one year ago. He has risen to the top of the class with such alacrity that old-timers are already comparing him to that greatest of all Dodgers backstops – Hall of Fame legend Roy Campanella.

And it’s not simply because both share the same stocky build and café au lait good looks.

Like Campanella, Martin has earned his stripes because he does two things very well – handle pitchers with authority, and hit the ball. He possesses what New York Mets receiver, Paul Lo Duca, calls the “the complete package.”

“He’s been good ever since we got him,” veteran starting pitcher Derek Lowe recently told the New York Times, adding that Martin has “gained the respect of everyone. You want your catcher to be the leader of your team.”

At the plate Martin is no slouch, either. His 2006 rookie numbers were impressive enough - a .282 average, ten home runs, 65 runs batted in, and most surprising, ten stolen bases – but this year he is on a pace to surpass them all. With the season now at the half-way point, Martin leads his team in batting (.301), homers (10) and rbis (57). And he has already stolen 16 bases, an all-time record for Dodgers catchers.

Of mixed race heritage as was Campanella, Martin was born in Toronto but grew up in Quebec, first in Chelsea and later in Montreal. His father, a jazz saxophonist of African descent, so admired the inimitable John Coltrane that Russell now bears Coltrane as one of his middle names. His mother is Susanne Jeanson, a Franco-Manitoban who currently lives in the Outaouois region.

Son Russell is himself a bilingual francophone who still considers Montreal home. “On peut dire qu’il est Québécois,” is how Jeanson once described him to La Presse. As a lad who always wanted to play baseball, the young Martin first mastered the sandlots against older kids and then moved on to Polyvalent Edouard-Montpetit in Montreal where he was accepted into Quebec’s stellar sports-études programme.

Following graduation Martin continued his baseball education for another two years at Chipola Junior College in Florida. It was here that the L.A. scouts began to keep an eye on him.

The Dodgers drafted Martin in 2002 and assigned him to their Gulf Coast rookie league affiliate. By 2004 he was playing third base for Vero Beach in the Florida State League, and beginning to show some power, although at the time there was little in his performance to foretell his meteoric rise to the big leagues.

That is, until they shifted him behind the plate, to the catcher’s position. Then, as Martin’s demeanor and toughness started to coalesce around his new role, the scouts realized that they had found their man, that this young backstop had a real chance to make it all the way.

“Martin is very, very, very good” said one scout, speaking with Amy K. Nelson of ESPN.com. “He does everything well and plays his [butt] off.”

Martin’s break-out occurred the following year at Jacksonville and in 2006, after a strong start at Las Vegas of the Pacific Coast League the Dodgers called him up to replace the injured regular catcher Dioner Navarro. That was all he needed. Martin was an instant hit: Navarro never had a chance.

Martin is quick to acknowledge the welcome mat that L.A. teammate Eric Gagné laid out when he first came up. “He treated me like a brother,’ says Martin of  his fellow-Quebecer, now on the comeback trail with the Texas Rangers, but who once was the most feared relief pitcher in baseball. “He showed me how to handle myself.”

When Gagné was at the height of his success Dodgers fans treated his every appearance with the type of raucous reception usually reserved for rock-stars. How delightfully ironic then that this mantle of popularity has now found another set of Quebecois shoulders, those belonging to Russell Martin!

The young rearguard views his rapid progress with a healthy dose of Canadian-style humility. “I don’t like thinking I’m a leader,” he has said. “I like going out on the field and playing hard and…leading by example.”

For baseball fans who could have never imagined that the bouncy old standard, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, would some day become a lament: or that the joyful optimism of a lyric like, «Let's root, root, root for the home team, « would take on the dripping melancholy of the blues, there is hope. And it is to be found in Quebec City.

Certainly, now that July is ending and options diminishing, anyone in these parts who is burning with the desire to see real professionals play real baseball could do much worse than head for Quebec City, where the boys of summer are becoming the talk of the town.

Unlikely as it sounds, the elegant Vieille capitale - with its rock solid historical roots and imposing grandeur, and where a certain joie-de-vivre fills the evening air with mystery and romance + does indeed have a long and honourable baseball tradition.

In fact, these days you will find the hometown club, les Capitales de Quebec, sitting comfortably on top of the Can-Am League standings. They got there by playing exciting ball. The team is already assured of a spot in the play-offs. The league employs the split-season format and Quebec closed out the first half leading the Northern Division.

The Can-Am League is an independent eight-team circuit comprised mostly of clubs from the northeastern U.S - the Capitales being the only Canadian club. The calibre of play is high, much like that found at the Double-A level.

Les Capitales are winning with a line-up high in Canadian content, including several stalwarts from Quebec. The manager is Michel Laplante, a Val D'Or native who is something of a sports legend in the province.

Laplante, modest and soft-spoken, was the Capitales' starting pitcher in their inaugural game in 1999, and until arm trouble did him in, was in line for a shot with the National League Atlanta Braves and the Expos. A superb tennis player, he once had a stint as practice partner for Wimbledon winner, Maria Sharapova, when she was preparing for the 2003 Bell Challenge. «I've never hit the ball better in my life!» he said at the time.

Les Capitales came into being in the late 1990s, when current owner, Miles Wolff, a native of North Carolina with a passion for minor-league baseball, was introduced to Quebec City and its baseball history.

'When my wife and I first saw the city, we fell in love with it,» he says today. «And with the stadium.» As Wolff began to ask around, he discovered that Quebec had enjoyed a long history as a powerhouse in minor league baseball, and showed the potential to become such again.

«Establishing the team was not as difficult as you might think,» Wolff maintains. The city was very accommodating, especially as the historic ballpark was not in use and slated for demolition.

«And the Nordiques had just left town,» he notes, «leaving behind a number of employees experienced in sports management. They just took right over.»

Wolff, who has owned several minor league teams, including the Durham Bulls at the time Kevin Costner was making the movie of the same name, is pleased with his Quebec experiment. «The fans support our team,» he says, «and many of the players are now known outside the game.»

A perfect example is Eddie Lantigua, the Capitales slugging third baseman who leads the league in both home runs and runs batted in. Now an established star in Quebec, this 32-year old native of the Dominican Republic was originally drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers. He only discovered the old capital after long travels through the minor leagues.

«When they called me, I had no idea. Quebec City? Where is that?» He laughs now + because once he discovered it everything else in his life changed. In yet another rendition of a story that will never grow old, Lantigua met a young Quebecoise; fell in love and got married. And although he continued his baseball odyssey for a year or two, he soon returned and made Quebec his home.

Lantigua is now a permanent resident, and with his wife and their three children, lives in Quebec year-round. When asked if that might change after baseball, he grinned, and shaking his head, replied empathically, «No. We have just bought a house!. In Beauport.»

In the off-season Lantigua regularly visits schools and offers baseball clinics. He is delighted playing in Quebec. «It is a great park,» he says, «and the fans are so much fun.»

For Ed Nottle, manager of the rival Brockton Rox, agrees. «Quebec fans are totally unlike any others in the league,» he claims, «they have energy and are passionate about what's happening on the field - and they sure tell you about it.» And he should know. «After all,» he says, «2005 is my 45th straight year in baseball.

The crowning glory of any baseball visit to Quebec has to be the stadium. One of the oldest in Canada, Stade Municipal sits in the centre of Parc Victoria, a sizeable patch of lush greenery in Quebec's lower town.

«Le Stade Municipal was built in 1938 by Maurice Duplessis, when he was premier of Quebec,» recounts baseball historian, Daniel Papillon, as he guides fans through a striking exhibit of early photos and artefacts mounted on the stadium walls, «it was a Depression-era make-work project.»

«There is a lot of history here. In fact,» Papillon continues, «the 1949-Quebec Braves, champions in the original Can-Am League, were so dominant they were named one of the top 100 all-time teams in the history of minor league baseball.»

Papillon, who coordinated the exhibit, points to photos of Warren Spahn, Levis' Georges Maranda in a Giants uniform, and Jean Beliveau as a ball player, among others + and to Gary Carter's catching gear, on loan from the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. «All of these guys once played in Quebec,» he says.

Everything about this old facility recalls baseball the way it used to be. Even if the travelled corridors were painted a thousand times, they could never lose the earthy patina that only time lays down. And the well-worn benches on the upper levels, high backs rigid as church pews, have been there so long they now form part of the history they once witnessed.

The playing surface would not seem out of place in Fenway Park. Its emerald-coloured grass carpet, looking not unlike a putting green, is closely cropped and neat + no wayward hotdog wrappers here + while the carefully groomed infield has been raked and dragged a thousand times. Out beyond the right-centre field wall stands a retro scoreboard, where kids on a scaffold still put up large number cards as each inning unfolds. And out beyond that, the verdant Parc Victoria provides a perfect backdrop to the summer game.

«It is a wonderful place to play baseball,» says Michel Laplante.

Indeed it is - the kind of place that makes you want to return

Baseball is a family enterprise. Life bubbles over with tales of fathers and sons, parents and kids, spending hours together - shagging flies, hitting grounders, catching nascent fastballs, and sharing moments that stay with us for the rest of our lives. And it is not restricted to the sandlots, as we all know.

Take for example, Philadelphia southpaw, Rhéal Cormier. This spring, on a hot March day at the Phillies brand-spanking-new training facility in Clearwater, Florida, while the host team was struggling to find its game face against the visiting Indians, and an overflow crowd was content just to soak up the sun, out on a practice field behind the stands, and out of view, there was Cormier, playing baseball with his youngsters.

Not slated to pitch this day, Cormier had staked out a position on the diamond for himself and his two pre-teenage children, and the bunch of them were joyfully jousting with each other, batting and pitching and running down foul balls, and delighting in the moment. They were just doing what families do – playing ball together.

It is an enduring ritual, this ballet of parent and child on the baseball fields, a steady reminder of the universal attraction, the unstoppable appeal, which the game holds as a family endeavour.

And it is not any different for those who are paid to play the game. In fact, think of the many instances where members of families meet up in the major leagues, even stretching across the generations – as the adventures of the Bells, the Boones and the Hairstons readily reveal.

Even within the Montreal Expos, several of those who toiled for Nos Amours over the years had family connections to the big leagues – through a brother or a cousin, a father or indeed, a mother.

Because this is Fathers’ Day, I thought it would be fun to look at some of these father and son combos, and remind ourselves again just what families mean to baseball, and what baseball means to families.

Felipe and Moises Alou The Alou family is part of baseball royalty. Their story begins with Felipe and his brothers, Matty and Jesus, all of whom enjoyed lengthy major-league careers. And it continues today as both Felipe and his son, Moises, possibly the best of all the Alous, are still connected to baseball at the big-league level.

From 1992-1996, father and son were together on the Montreal Expos - Felipe as manager, and Moises playing left field. Filling out the family portrait during this same period was cousin, Mel Rojas, a relief pitcher.

Jesus Alou almost had a fling with the Expos as well. He was one of the original thirty players selected in the 1968 expansion draft. However, in January 1969, well before he even got fitted for his Expos’ uniform, Jesus was shipped off to Houston as part of the Rusty Staub deal.

In 1963, Felipe and his brothers, then with the San Francisco Giants, established a couple of significant big-league firsts. On September 10, against the Mets, the three siblings all batted in the same inning. Jesus, making his entry into the majors, appeared as a pinch-hitter and grounded out. Matty, struck out, and Felipe grounded out. The pitcher was Carlton Willey, who curiously enough, broke into professional baseball in 1951 with the Quebec Braves of the Provincial League. The Mets went on to win, 4-2, and Willey threw a complete game.

A few days later, on September 15, the three brothers formed the starting outfield for the Giants - the only time this has ever happened. The three are the first brothers to each amass more than 1000 career hits.

Entering this season, the Alou family – Felipe, Matty and Jesus, and Moises - had accumulated 60 seasons of playing time, and appeared in more major league games (6784, and counting) than any other family collective.

When Felipe managed Moses in Montreal this marked the 5th time in the major leagues that a player/son had suited up for his manager/father. Once Moises joined his father on the San Francisco Giants in 2005, the Alous became the only family where this father/son connection had occurred on two different occasions, with two different teams.

In 1996, after signing with the Florida Marlins as a free agent, Moises found himself in the awkward position of having to face his father from the opposite side of the field. This had only happened once before, in 1980, when Maury Wills – once a reluctant member of the 1969 Expos, himself - was piloting the Seattle Mariners and son, Bump, lined-up for the Texas Rangers. Moises hold a record of sorts in this category – most home runs hit by a son against a team managed by his father, 6.

Moises also holds the family-hitting streak, having broken his father’s run of 22 straight games, which Felipe set when playing for the Atlanta Braves in 1968.  

Tim Raines ‘Rock’ and ‘Little Rock’. That’s what they called Tim Raines and his son, Tim Raines, Jr., who was raised, so to speak, in the Expos’ clubhouse while his father was launching his All-Star career.

Tim Raines, the father, joined the Expos in 1979 and remained with the club through 1990 before heading to Chicago and another round of success with the White Sox.

After battling the debilitating disease, systemic lupus erythematosus, which had taken him out of the game for a year, he returned to the Montreal formation in 2001,just in time to join his son, now a Baltimore Orioles prospect, in a couple of interesting baseball encounters.

Rock spent part of 2001 on the disabled list, and when, in August, he was about ready to rejoin the line-up, the Expos’ assigned him to their International League Ottawa Lynx for a couple of days of rehab at the Triple-A level.

It so happened that the Rochester Red Wings, the Baltimore Orioles’ Triple-A affiliate, with Tim, Jr. in the line-up, were in town. And so for two memorable games - an August 21 double-header - the Raines family, father and son, got to play against each other in regular season encounters, the first time this had ever happened in professional baseball history.

To underscore the family day atmosphere of the event, the duo also handled the pre-game line-up exchange at home plate. “This was a great day,” Tim Raines, Jr. told the Ottawa Citizen. “I’m glad it was able to happen. It was another learning experience.”

But more fun still lay ahead. Tim Raines Jr. was a September call-up to the Orioles, and with the Expos mired in last place, the Expos and Baltimore arranged a trade so that the two Tims, Senior and Junior, could play together in the same Baltimore outfield. On October 4, 2001 both were listed in the starting line-up, the first time such had occurred since 1990, when the Griffeys, Ken and Ken Jr. both played for the Seattle Mariners.  

Randy St. Claire Randy St. Claire was both a pitcher (1984-1988) and a pitching coach (2003-2004) with the Expos, and in fact, accompanied the team to Washington in 2005. He was originally signed by Montreal in 1978 and made his first major-league appearance in 1984.

Randy’s father was Ebba St. Claire, a journeyman, switch-hitting catcher who was thirty when the Boston Braves called him up in 1950. That year he tied a major league record for catchers, participating in three double plays. This feat was not matched again in the National League until 1999, when Damian Miller of the Arizona Diamondbacks pulled it off.

It is generally believed that as a younger man, Ebba St. Claire played in the Quebec Provincial League for a couple of years, under the pseudonym, Eddie Thomas. If this is indeed true, and it seems likely, he would have faced Sal Maglie, then with Drummondville, who went on to stardom with the New York Giants. This coincidence might help explain why St. Claire seemed to have less trouble with Maglie in the National League than many other big-time sluggers. In fact, one of Ebba’s seven career-home runs was hit off Maglie. The two became teammates when Ebba was traded to the Giants in 1954.   

When Randy St. Claire joined the Braves in 1991, he and his father became the first father-son combination ever to have played for the Braves, albeit at very different times.

Chris Speier This fondly remembered Expos’ shortstop has a son, Justin, who started the 2005 season as a pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays. During most of their seven years in Montreal, the Speiers lived year-round in the Montreal area, meaning Justin did not have quite the same baseball opportunities that he might have enjoyed in the United States. Writer Wayne Stewart tells of a good-natured Chris describing Canada. "Up there,” Chris recalls, “you have two seasons, and it's basically hockey season and then you have a week off and then it's hockey season.

Jeff and Dale Torborg When Jeff Torborg replaced Felipe Alou as manager of the Expos in 2001, he brought along son Dale as a batting-practice pitcher. The athletic Dale, who stands 6'8" and weighs upwards of 300 pounds, was between jobs. When working, Dale is a professional wrestler who grapples under the name "Demon". Torborg also found a spot for son Greg in the family entourage, enlisting him to handle the team’s computer work.

And the list does not end here. One can add Terry Francona, now the celebrated manager of the 2004 World Champion Red Sox and son of Tito Francona, who enjoyed a long career in the majors. Terry was signed by Jim Fanning, later his manager in Montreal. Terry always says that Fanning considers this signing to be the easiest negotiation of his whole career. “He came to the house,” says Terry, “my mom cooked him a dinner, and it was done as cordially and professionally as you can imagine.”

Consider Vance Law, primarily a second baseman during his three years in Montreal, although manager Buck Rodgers would not hesitate to use him as a relief pitcher in games where the outcome was not close. Vance’s father is Cy Young Award winner, Vern Law, one of the greatest of all Pittsburgh Pirate pitchers. Vern was the dominant force in the Bucs’ 1960 World Championship drive, going 20-9, with a league-high 18 complete games and winning the first and fourth games of the World Series against the New York Yankees.

What about Hal McRae or Pete Rose or Ozzie Virgil, all of whom had sons who made it to the big leagues, or David Segui and Del Unser who were the sons of big-league fathers. The John McHales, both active in shaping the game at the administrative level, belong in here someplace. John J. was CEO of the Expos for 22-years, while John, Jr. is currently part of Commissioner Bud Selig’s staff.

Then there is Casey Candaele, the ultimate utility player, who holds the distinction of hitting the shortest home run in Olympic Stadium history. His mother, Helen Callahan, was an outstanding outfielder with the Fort Wayne Daises of the All-American Girls Baseball League, the ‘Ted Williams of women’s baseball,’ but with speed (she stole 354 bases in 388 games). The film, "A League of Their Own," still one of the best in the baseball canon, was inspired by her life-story.

And who can forget Vladimir Guerrero. One of the most indelible of all images that Expos’ fans share is of a laughing Vladimir Guerrero, toddler son at his heels, bounding across the turf at Olympic Stadium. Both garbed in their Expos’ uniforms, these two Guerreros would take over the diamond, and our hearts, at father/kids games, and indeed, whenever they got the chance. There was an innocence and pure joy in these moments that transcended the stuff of daily life and gave us all an opportunity to see once more a little something of ourselves. 

Baseball is a family game.