Morris Webster Martin (September 3, 1922 – May 24, 2010), nicknamed "Lefty", was an American

professional baseball Professional baseball is organized baseball in which players are selected for their talents and are paid to play for a specific team or club system. It is played in leagues and associated farm teams throughout the world. Modern professional ...

player Player may refer to: Role or adjective * Player (game), a participant in a game or sport ** Gamer, a player in video and tabletop games ** Athlete, a player in sports ** Player character, a character in a video game or role playing game who ...

. The left-handed

pitcher In baseball, the pitcher is the player who throws ("pitches") the baseball from the pitcher's mound toward the catcher to begin each play, with the goal of retiring a batter, who attempts to either make contact with the pitched ball or draw ...

worked in 250 games in

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...

over ten seasons with the Brooklyn Dodgers (1949), Philadelphia Athletics (1951–1954),

Chicago White Sox The Chicago White Sox are an American professional baseball team based in Chicago. The White Sox compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Central division. The team is owned by Jerry Reinsdorf, and ...

(1954–1956),

Baltimore Orioles The Baltimore Orioles are an American professional baseball team based in Baltimore. The Orioles compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. As one of the American League's eight charter ...

(1956),

St. Louis Cardinals The St. Louis Cardinals are an American professional baseball team based in St. Louis. The Cardinals compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) Central division. Since the 2006 season, the Cardinals ha ...

(1957–1958),

Cleveland Indians The Cleveland Guardians are an American professional baseball team based in Cleveland. The Guardians compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Central division. Since , they have played at Progressive Fi ...

(1958) and Chicago Cubs (1959). Martin was born in

Dixon, Missouri Dixon is a city in northern Pulaski County, Missouri, United States, with a population of 1,549 at the time of the 2010 census. History Dixon was platted in 1869 at the time a railroad was extended through to the neighborhood and a post office b ...

; he was listed as standing tall and weighing . Martin's professional career began in 1941 in the White Sox' organization. After two seasons, including 25 games in the top-level

American Association American Association may refer to: Baseball * American Association (1882–1891), a major league active from 1882 to 1891 * American Association (1902–1997), a minor league active from 1902 to 1962 and 1969 to 1997 * American Association of Profe ...

, he entered the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...

. Assigned to the First Army's 49th Combat Engineers, he participated in Operation Torch, Operation Overlord,

Operation Cobra Operation Cobra was the codename for an offensive launched by the United States First Army under Lieutenant General Omar Bradley seven weeks after the D-Day landings, during the Normandy campaign of World War II. The intention was to take adv ...

and the

Battle of the Bulge The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Offensive, was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II. The battle lasted from 16 December 1944 to 28 January 1945, towards the end of the war in ...

. According to Gary Bedingfield's

Baseball in Wartime Gary Bedingfield (born 20 January 1963) is a British historian of baseball. He is a native of England and developed an interest in baseball as a youth. As a catcher, he played in competitive league baseball for over twenty years with the Enfield ...

, Martin was badly wounded in action at least twice: "At the Battle of the Bulge, he suffered a bullet wound to the thigh and nearly lost a leg after gangrene set in. It took more than 150 shots of penicillin to spare him from an amputation." However, Martin was able to return to baseball in 1946, the first full peacetime season. Now a member of the Brooklyn farm system, he had his first MLB trial with the pennant-bound 1949 Dodgers, appearing in ten games, including four starts. After spending 1950 back in the minor leagues, he was selected by the Philadelphia Athletics in the Rule 5 draft and had a sparkling campaign, winning 11 of 15 decisions ( .733) for a sixth-place team that played at only a .455 pace over the entire season. Along the way, Martin threw his only big-league

shutout In team sports, a shutout ( US) or clean sheet ( UK) is a game in which one team prevents the other from scoring any points. While possible in most major sports, they are highly improbable in some sports, such as basketball. Shutouts are usuall ...

, a five-hitter against the Detroit Tigers at

Briggs Stadium Tiger Stadium, previously known as Navin Field and Briggs Stadium, was a multi-purpose stadium located in the Corktown neighborhood of Detroit. The stadium was nicknamed "The Corner" for its location at the intersection of Michigan and Trumbul ...

on July 19.

Retrosheet Retrosheet is a nonprofit organization whose website features box scores of Major League Baseball (MLB) games from 1906 to the present, and play-by-play narratives for almost every contest since the 1930s. It also includes scores from every major ...

br>box score: 1951-07-19 (1)
/ref> He became more of a

relief Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces are bonded to a solid background of the same material. The term '' relief'' is from the Latin verb ''relevo'', to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that th ...

specialist as his big-league career progressed. In his 250-game MLB career, Martin posted a 38–34 won–lost mark, 15 saves, eight complete games and a 4.29

earned run average In baseball statistics, earned run average (ERA) is the average of earned runs allowed by a pitcher per nine innings pitched (i.e. the traditional length of a game). It is determined by dividing the number of earned runs allowed by the number ...

. In 604 innings pitched, he permitted 607 hits and 249 bases on balls, with 245 strikeouts. He retired after the 1960 minor-league season and died in

Washington, Missouri Washington is a city on the south banks of the Missouri River, 50 miles west of St. Louis, Missouri, and the largest in Franklin County, Missouri, United States. The estimated population in July 2021 was 14,916, an increase of 7% since the 2010 ...

, at age 87 in 2010.

References

External links

Bedingfield, Gary, ''Morrie Martin.''

Morrie Martin
- Baseballbiography.com * 1922 births 2010 deaths United States Army personnel of World War II Asheville Tourists players Baltimore Orioles players Baseball players from Missouri Brooklyn Dodgers players Chicago Cubs players Chicago White Sox players Cleveland Indians players Danville Dodgers players Deaths from lung cancer in Missouri Fort Worth Cats players Grand Forks Chiefs players Houston Buffs players Major League Baseball pitchers People from Pulaski County, Missouri Philadelphia Athletics players St. Louis Cardinals players St. Paul Saints (AA) players Vancouver Mounties players {{US-baseball-pitcher-1920s-stub