Overview:
The Great Depression forced Joe Martin to move his baseball career from Santa Barbara State to Ventura College where he was discovered by New York Giants Hall of Famer John McGraw
UC Santa Barbara has sent 28 baseball players to Major League Baseball, and several others hope to break into the bigs this summer.
But no Gaucho’s journey to “The Show” was more improbable than the first.
William Joseph Martin, Santa Barbara State Class of 1934, made his MLB debut with the New York Giants 90 years ago this month.
He was nicknamed “Smokey Joe” after the same New York City firefighter who inspired the iconic “Smokey Bear” character of U.S. Forest Service fame.
But Martin’s flame with the New York Giants flickered much more briefly.
Martin had to use smoke and mirrors just to get a professional contract, considering the state of the baseball program at Santa Barbara State during the Great Depression.
The 1933 school yearbook, La Cumbre, noted that the team operated with a “pay as you play system” that year while placing sixth in its league.
Martin played third base that season and was the “social chairman” of the junior class, a position that also suffered from the times.
The yearbook reported that, “Due to requests from the administration, the junior class deemed it essential to the financial welfare of each student to abolish all social affairs for 1932-33.”
But you couldn’t quash the social spirit of a Santa Barbara collegian that easily, even with Isla Vista still just a beer-soaked dream: Martin got immortalized by that same yearbook as being “the life of the party, an able entertainer.”
The next season, however, he took his party to more fertile baseball grounds to play for Ventura College.
Giant Turn of Events
The move paid off in a big way when Oxnard city councilman Fred Snodgrass convinced John McGraw, his former big-league manager and a future Hall of Famer, to have his New York Giants train there that winter.
McGraw had already turned the managerial duties over to Bill Terry, and he would die just a few months later. But Snodgrass was still able to talk McGraw into auditioning the Santa Barbara expatriate.
Frank Graham chronicled the tryout in his book The New York Giants: An Informal History of a Great Baseball Club.
He noted that “McGraw liked him and kept him and called him ‘Smokey Joe’ Martin after his friend, a famous and gallant chief in the New York Fire Department” of the same name.
Martin played his first season of professional baseball that summer in the Class B Piedmont League, batting .318 for Greensboro.
He spent the next two seasons at Class A Nashville in the Southern Association. He batted .286 in 1934 and .302 in 1935.
The Giants figured he was ready for the big leagues after the 1936 spring training.
But life in the big city wasn’t easy for Martin.
He originally came to the West Coast from the small town of Seymour, Missouri. Graham wrote in his book, A Farewell to Heroes, how some of the veteran players had been “kidding him about the wonders of New York.”
Martin once asked where they were while their bus headed through the Holland Tunnel. Reserve infielder Gil English gave him the honest answer of, “Under the Hudson River,” but Smokey Joe thought he was just pulling his chain once again.
“Martin snarled at him, ‘I’ve taken enough of that nonsense from the regulars. Don’t you start,’” Graham wrote.
Smokey Joe got his big chance after infielder Dick Bartell got hurt during a brawl with Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Van Lingle Mungo at the start of the 1936 season.
He made his Major League debut on April 21 against the Philadelphia Phillies, going 2-for-3 while driving in two runs in a game the Giants rallied to win 7-6 in the ninth inning.
He also went 2-for-3 with a double the next day, helping Carl Hubbell beat the Phillies 7-2.
But Martin went hitless in his next eight at-bats. And even though he handled third base flawlessly, with eight assists and five putouts, his career with the Giants came to an end soon after Bartell returned.
Minors Adjustment
The Giants, who won the National League pennant that year, traded him on May 13 to Baltimore, a minor league franchise in the Class AA International League at the time, for third baseman Eddie Mayo.
Smokey Joe batted .297 with 23 home runs and 91 RBIs that season for Baltimore and eclipsed the .300 mark in his next three minor league seasons.
He hit .331 in 105 games for Class AA Buffalo in 1938 to earn a promotion to the Chicago White Sox.
But they hardly gave him a chance: His only appearance came when he pinch ran for Luke Sewell in a game against the Detroit Tigers.
He was promptly forced out at second base.
Martin got paid $4,200 that season — a fortune for many in those days — for running all of 90 feet. His major league career consisted of eight games and a batting average of .267 (4-for-15).
Smokey Joe played parts of three more seasons in Buffalo before his career was interrupted by the United States’ entry into World War II in December 1941.
He attempted a comeback with San Diego in the Pacific Coast League in 1943, but went just 4-for-26 over two seasons.
Smokey Joe later returned to Buffalo, where he died in 1960 at age 49.
The next Gaucho wouldn’t play in the majors until 35 years after Martin’s debut, but he lasted much longer.
Chris Speier was only 20 when he began the first of his 19 MLB seasons in 1971 by playing shortstop for Martin’s old club.
By then, the Giants were in San Francisco, and Smokey Joe was long forgotten — even at the school where he’d once been the life of the party.
