What a Catcher!

Of all of the positions in baseball and softball, catcher is the one I love the best. It involves a lot more than just sitting behind the plate and catching the ball. You have to be thinking all of the time. A good catcher can make a big difference in the game.

In the amateur game, you have control over the pitch selection. The pitcher can reject your suggestion, but I usually am in sync with him. I rarely have a sign shaken off.

Warren Spahn, one of the great pitchers of all time, once said that hitting is timing and pitching is upsetting timing. The catcher is the conductor who orchestrates this performance. Do a good job and you are successful. A poor job often means the batter launches rockets.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? It is a lot more complex than that. It is like chess on a playing field. Sometimes the strategies are obvious; other times they are subtler. You usually have to look for little cues. How close is the batter to the plate? How high are his hands? Does he take a full or a condensed swing? Your job is to analyse all of this data and come up with a pitch-by-pitch battle plan.

The job is not over yet. Having the proper mechanics is important. You have to have a good arm, be able to withstand the force of somebody trying to knock you over and be able to block balls in the ground effectively.

A catcher can have all of these elements, yet not be as effective as he can be. There are other things, little things, that can make all of the difference. It involves talking with people.

First, I make sure I have my pitcher focused on my glove. If he puts his mind on anything else, he can get in big trouble. He has to be zoned in.

I also talk to the umpire. I want to make him happy that I am with him. If I feel he has missed a pitch, I might gently ask him if I blocked his view in any way. Sometimes I will laugh and tell him that I really wanted that pitch, as long as it was close. I want the umpire to like me more than the other catcher. Will it affect his calls? Let’s just say that it can’t hurt.

Finally, I chat with the batter. The topic doesn’t really matter. It can be the weather, mosquitoes or federal elections. The idea is to take a bit of the focus off the batter’s concentration. How do I know this works? There are times when I have lost my concentration, resulting in my hitting the ball poorly.

This reminds me of the story when Hank Aaron went up to the plate. Since he was using a wooden bat, the label should have been facing him, but it wasn’t. The catcher made him aware of this. His response was, “I didn’t come up here to read.” He didn’t want anything to break his concentration.

We can apply this lesson to reaching our goals. Isn’t it often the little things that make the difference between failure and success? For one moment we didn’t pay attention and all was lost.

How much do you want to succeed? Is it enough that you will pursue your goal passionately, not allowing anything to take your eye off the prize?