Martin treasures his bittersweet season

By Bill Tarrant

     Martin Charles had been doggedly practicing the swing for months: stride forward and get a good launch angle with backspin. On July 26, the Bucco got his swing off and launched a ball over the head of Orange’s left fielder. Martin, who had lost 50 pounds in the offseason, scampered around the bases for a home run.

     “I hit my first home run in a Culver City softball league game…I am absolutely thrilled and floating on cloud nine!” Martin proclaimed on Facebook alongside a picture of him wearing a Legionnaire hat, face smeared with zinc paste.

     I sometimes kidded him about that look. “There he is. Putting on his ghost face-game face.”

     But it was no joke.

     Martin has recently disclosed he will start chemotherapy in November to treat skin cancer.

     “I'd been battling skin cancer for, oh my gosh, a long time, and (after remission), I have skin cancer again,” he told me. “I have to do chemotherapy where they put a cream on my face and back and then put you under a blue light for 45 minutes. It brings the skin cancer to the surface and then you can't be out in direct sunlight and basically cover up for five days while your skin refills and rejuvenates.”

I.    n his first bout with melanoma, the surgeon sliced off the tip of his nose and then rebuilt it using skin from his forehead.

     Martin’s been in ghost-mode since then when outdoors. “I use zinc because it’s better protection than the usual sun blocks, which are oil based,” he said.

     His latest bout with canceer hasn’t slowed him down on the field. Quite the opposite, in fact. Martin’s on base percentage is up to .489 on the season – propelled by a second half surge that has seen his batting average flirt with the .600 mark.

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     Martin was born in the South-Central area of LA, but the family moved to Portland, Oregon when he was in elementary school. He received an associates degree from Mount Hood Community College, and not long after found himself at a crossroads. He was unemployed and had broken up with his finance in Oregon. So, he did what you do when living a BB King song: he hit the road in his Toyota Tercel and motored down to LA with $200 in his pocket.

    In LA, Martin got married and helped raise two sons, both now in the Army Reserve. He finished his humanities B.A. at Mount St. Mary’s. For the past quarter-century or so he’s been working in the collections department at Car Direct.

     “It's mostly collections from businesses and everybody's very professional. You know, it's none of the high-pressure collections when you’re collecting on traffic tickets or credit cards or medical bills, which I have done, and that's very hard.”

     Martin played soccer in high school and college and played for some “coed” softball teams at times. His senior softball career began in the Valley in the LA city league. That came to an untimely end, when his boss said he could no longer take personal leave time to play in the late afternoon league games in Encino.

     He joined the Culver City League in 2019 and became its treasurer three years ago when Cyrill Barnert was looking for someone to take over the post from him.

     “He said would you like to be treasurer and have you had any experience working in accounting. So, I told him of my past collection experience, accounting experience. I said I can do spreadsheets, and he said you're perfect for the job!”

     Martin said he likes the competition and especially “the pace” of senior softball (compared to playing as a soccer midfielder and “running all around the field kicking it to the forwards or kicking out”), not to mention the camaraderie.

He’s had his up and downs on his life’s journey.

“You just have to take it as it comes and make a decision on how you want to go down that journey,” Martin said. “I've enjoyed every bit of it, even the not so nice bits of it. Yes, it’s had its bumps on the road and some challenges, but you figure out how to get over those challenges.”