His real name was Elwood Good Martin, but nobody called him that. During his six year big league career, he was always known as Speed.

Speed Martin could get the ball up to the plate in a hurry. He was a member of the pennant winning 1918 Cubs team, but only appeared in nine games for them that year, and didn't appear in the World Series. He became a bigger part of the team the next few years (winning 11 games in 1921), but he also started getting hit pretty hard. By 1922, his time in the big leagues was done.

Speed ended his career with a losing record (29-42) and a high ERA for that era (3.78), but with one of the coolest nicknames in Cubs history.