Russell Martin might be through in Blue

He hobbled into a Dodgers clubhouse wearing checkered shorts, cocked baseball cap and a defiant grin, the precocious kid who once caught nothing but love.

He was using crutches, but he was going to be in uniform. He couldn’t catch pitches, but he would be in the dugout cheering for them.

“I’m still part of this team, man,” he said, as if to remind us he was still Russell Martin.

But then he sighed, paused, and his pained words confirmed that he’s no longer that Russell Martin.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s going to be tough, man.”

Tough as in, this may finally be one plate that the Dodgers’ endearing catcher cannot block. Martin’s body may have betrayed him for the last time in blue, the torn labrum in his right hip suffered Tuesday ending his season and perhaps his Dodgers career.

“It stinks,” he said. “It really stinks.”

Manager Joe Torre said Thursday that he did not expect Martin to return this season, and Martin couldn’t really argue with him. With Martin expected to make at least $6 million next season in arbitration, the Dodgers could reasonably decide that he is no longer worth the investment, and the departure could be permanent.

Crazy, huh? Wasn’t it just yesterday that he was the consistent gray concrete under the Dodgers’ future? Wasn’t it just yesterday that he was your favorite player?

“When I got here, people told me, he was really something,” Torre said.

Tuesday’s injury, suffered in the second inning against the San Diego Padres, typified how that “something” became something else entirely. Steaming toward home plate from third base on Jamey Carroll’s fly ball, Martin didn’t know whether to slide or try to score standing up, so he did a little bit of both, twisting around catcher Nick Hundley in such an abrupt fashion that he tore his hip without Hundley ever touching it.

“I was running as hard as I could, then I heard it pop,” Martin said.

Thus he described a Dodgers career that began with sprinting promise and has perhaps ended in awkward pain.

Remember 2006? The kid showed up out of somewhere up north, toting a hockey player’s mentality and a Canadian’s graciousness. In 121 rookie games, he hit 10 homers, including one in the Dodgers’ historic four-homer comeback against the Padres. The next season, he hit 19 homers with 87 runs batted in, and suddenly he was starting an All-Star game and stealing hearts.

The pitchers loved how he called games aggressively. The batters loved how he swung smartly. Fans loved how he was such a good guy, honoring his street musician father by arranging for him to play the national anthem at Dodger Stadium, honoring his mother by wearing a “J” on his jersey for her last name, Jeanson.

But then, as happens sometimes to wide-eyed kids in this giant spotlight, things turned weird.

In 2008, he suffered a precipitous drop in power and reputation, with some folks wondering whether he had once used steroids, and others claiming that he had totally gone Hollywood. He has denied the steroids, but the Hollywood stuff seemed beyond dispute, and the Dodgers spent the summer trying to set him straight.

“I had heard a lot of great things about him, so I expected more,” said Torre, who was in his first year here. “We spent the year sorting it out.”

Even late in that disappointing season, he was still one of baseball’s best catchers, and the Dodgers felt comfortable enough to trade top catching prospect Carlos Santana to Cleveland in the deal that brought them Casey Blake. That now looks like a huge mistake, but it’s hard to blame the Dodgers for still believing in Martin, because nobody ever wanted to believe otherwise.

“You have to remember what he was at the time we made the trade,” General Manager Ned Colletti said.

He is not that player anymore. He is not even close. Martin showed up healthier and happier last year, but perhaps the scars of old habits remained, and his body and his offense were never the same. He had seven homers and 53 RBIs last year, and this season had only five homers and 26 RBIs in 97 games at the time of Tuesday’s injury.

Still, he always played hard and never complained, even with a workload that made him baseball’s most-used catcher in the past four years. The Dodgers trotted out awful pitchers and he caught them with grace. The Dodgers brought in a veteran backup in Brad Ausmus and still, Martin insisted on carrying the weight.

“He’s one of the few guys out there who just had to play every day,” Ausmus said. “I don’t care how bad he was hurting, he wanted in there.”

Even Tuesday night, Martin refused to leave, catching five innings after tearing his hip, departing only after the Dodgers brought in Hong-Chih Kuo and Martin made a confession.

“I can’t move enough to block his slider,” he told Torre.

If that was Russell Martin’s last act as a Dodger, it was a noble and fitting one. He played until it hurt, hobbled away quietly, and played no more.

bill.plaschke@latimes.com

twitter.com/billplaschke

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