The Tao of the Backup Catcher: Playing Baseball for the Love of the Game
By Tim Brown with Erik Kratz
(Twelve, 304 pages, $30)
Veteran baseball writer Tim Brown has created a very readable tribute to the least celebrated member of most teams’ rosters. The backup catcher may not get a lot of playing time, and his offensive numbers are usually less than impressive. But he plays an important role. He adds value. In The Tao of the Backup Catcher: Playing Baseball for the Love of the Game, Brown gives him his due.
Though he cites many other examples of the form, Brown centers his compassionate treatment around the life and career of one Erik Kratz, a likeable and hardworking product of Middle America who spent 19 seasons in the professional game, more time in the bushes than in the bigs, and almost all of that time as a backup. Kratz was the very definition of journeyman. He played on so many different teams, and his unscheduled promotions and demotions came so frequently, that his wife likely had to write him care of the commissioner of baseball. While Kratz never stayed long with any team and was only a starter briefly a couple of times, he added value everywhere he played. He contributed even when he didn’t hit his weight, which was most of the time. (Kratz played most of his career at 250 pounds. His lifetime batting average in the bigs was .209.)
READ MORE: The Honorable Backup
Teams would have a hard time functioning, let alone succeeding, without a reliable backup for the number one guy behind the plate. Longtime fans and admirers of the Grand Old Game, like me, already know this. But let’s review for the casual fan.
Of the nine defenders on a baseball team, the catcher has the most physically and mentally demanding job. Also the most dangerous. Physically demanding because of the need to crouch and then get up and throw the ball back to the pitcher about 150 times per game. The catcher must have a rifle arm and be able to come out of his crouch quickly and throw in order to keep opposing runners from stealing him blind. On infield ground balls, he has to run to the right of the hitter in order to backup first base. And he must do all these things wearing enough bulky gear to make him look like a medieval knight ready for the day’s jousts.
The position is dangerous because catchers have to deal with a 5.5-ounce baseball, with the approximate density of a rock, hurtling at them at 90+ miles per hour (more and more today registering triple digits on the speed gun). Thanks to foul tips and pitches in the dirt, catchers are hit by the ball numerous times per game, sometimes in unspeakable places. There’s always the risk of the batter taking a wide swing and the bat striking the catcher in the helmet or elsewhere. And then there’s the business of home plate collisions, when 200+ pound runners at speed are eager to make contact with home plate before the catcher can tag them and then hold on to the ball. New rules have made home plate collisions less frequent, though hardly extinct. So aspiring young ballplayers who are not genuine tough guys should not even consider being a catcher. (READ MORE: Baseball’s Pitch Clock Era)
As the late, great Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver said: “This ain’t football. We do it every day.” With the game-a-day nature of baseball and the catalogue of hazards above, it’s easy to see how even the most talented catchers need the occasional day off to mend and meditate. Not even the Bionic Man could catch every game of the grueling six-month, 162-game MLB schedule. Enter the backup catcher, who probably only catches a game or two a week, but who has to be always ready to enter the game at a moment’s notice if the starter is injured or pinch hit for. He has to be willing to do the donkey work of bullpen catching, and much else that starters are excused from, without complaint.
The guy behind the plate had a lot to do with delivering the W.
Then there’s the mental side of the game. One of my favorites of Yogi Berra’s always entertaining, sometimes insightful, but often off-plumb sayings is: “Baseball is 90 percent mental. And the other half is mental.” OK, Yogi exhibits some pretty dodgy arithmetic here. But the late, great Yankee catcher and clutch hitter had a point. Baseball is a very cerebral game, even if many people in the stands or watching at home miss much of the complexity of it. It’s like an onion in that when you peel one layer of it back, there’s yet another layer. And another and another. It’s the catcher who must be most in command of all these layers in order to fulfill his role as the quarterback of the defense. (And make no mistake. Yogi may not have been book smart or articulate, but he was a very bright guy who missed little or nothing on the baseball field. There are NO dumb catchers, save for the ones unconditionally released long ago.) (READ MORE: MLB’s Woke Politics Strikeout)
In order to call a good game, catchers need to know opposing batter’s strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies and how to best them with the strengths of that day’s pitcher. He has to quickly recognize which of his pitcher’s pitches are working that day and which he’s left in the clubhouse. Before putting down the sign, he has to take into consideration countless variables, even down to the wind direction and speed. What pitch is the batter anticipating, and which would get him off balance? Which pitch will the pitcher deliver with the most conviction in this situation? It’s a nine-inning mind game. With victory, the pitchers and the hitting stars will get the spotlight, and the post-game interviews with the baseball babe. But the guy behind the plate had a lot to do with delivering the W. The deep baseball savvy required to be a Major League catcher, starter or backup, goes a long way to explaining why so many baseball field managers have been former catchers. Many of these, like the Chicago Cubs’ David Ross, were career backups.
To be content as a backup, players, some who may have been the best athlete at their high schools — even all-everythings at their college — have to accept that competition gets tougher as they ascend the professional ladder; they aren’t ever going to be Johnny Bench. They won’t be on any team’s lineup card five times a week. They’ll never make the gaudy salaries the stars command, nor will the spotlight linger on them. But if they can get comfy with this necessary job, they can enjoy a long career playing the game they love, and that has been an important part of the cultural connective tissue of so many Americans (mostly boys and men, but not exclusively). They would have to love it to accept this subsidiary roll, the value of which only baseball professionals fully understand. And let’s not forget — these days even the Major League minimum salary is not chump change. So there’s a living to be made.
Brown profiles a number of backups, enumerating how these men have dealt with the challenges and pleasures of a career as Second Hand Rose. Perhaps too many profiles, some readers might complain. If the book has a weakness, it’s that Brown can be repetitive in his points. If one were to argue that Brown has a great 200-page story that he takes 283 pages to tell, I would have no rebuttal. And he has a tendency to wax a little more poetic than the subject calls for. This is a temptation many baseball writers are prone to. But these are quibbles. It’s clear that after decades of covering baseball, Brown still has a deep understanding of and affection for the game and for those on the field who make it so entertaining.
Even longtime baseball fans will understand and appreciate the game and its practitioners better after reading The Tao of the Backup Catcher, a fine use of the reading time of a couple of summer evenings.
