RSS
 

Baseball’s “Tools of Ignorance”

15 Jun

 

I’m very proud of my grandson Josh who is the regular catcher on his youth baseball team this year and doing a fantastic job. I have to admit though, that he is poking a hole in my theory of how a coach picks his catcher on a little league team. I always enjoyed coaching my son’s Babe Ruth league teams when he was growing up, and one of the enjoyable things was taking a group of 12-15 kids who show up at the first practice and organizing them into something that resembles a real baseball team. There’s always the short, agile, quick kid who can hit, field and throw (usually because he had 3 older brothers who had him out in the field playing with them at the age of 2). He is automatically the pitcher / shortstop. Then there’s always a tall, gangly kid who doesn’t throw very well but catches the ball and for some reason always seems to be lefthanded. He is your first baseman. But I always joked that I had a method for picking out a catcher each year and Josh doesn’t fit the mold. The first practice session was usually held in early spring and up here in Buffalo that means the players are all decked out in winter jackets, winter gloves under their baseball mitts and winter wool hats instead of baseball caps. Then there was always one kid who would show up late, flying in on his BMX bike, hair messed up, decked out in shorts and a camouflage t-shirt, with snot hanging out of his nose. His idea of parking his bike would be to jump off it and let it crash into the backstop to stop it. You just waited for this kid to show up, pointed at him and said “Get the gear on, you’re the catcher!”  I always assumed this was pretty close to the same method hockey coaches used to choose their goaltender, and football coaches  their nose tackle, since all these positions require a “special breed” of person. There’s a reason baseball has always referred to the catcher’s equipment as the “tools of ignorance”. The poor guys who play the position take a beating and work harder than anybody else on the field. Actually I think it was a catcher who made up that term, and I always hear Fox broadcaster Tim McCarver, a former catcher, use it.

 
  1. admin

    June 16, 2010 at 3:04 pm

    That wouldn’t have worked since we all had snot running out of our noses back then.

     
  2. Louise

    June 16, 2010 at 11:16 am

    Great post! Is that how the Lee/Revere Avenue kids chose their catcher for the pickup games back in the days?

     
  3. admin

    June 16, 2010 at 2:02 am

    OK..I looked it up and the word I was thinking of was “chutzpah”, definition: the quality of audacity, good or bad. A person who would be considered to have “chutzpah” is “someone who killed both their parents, then pleaded with the court for mercy because they were an orphan.”

     
  4. Diana

    June 16, 2010 at 12:58 am

    By the way, Connor is looking for a blog on his next game…:)

     
  5. Diana

    June 16, 2010 at 12:58 am

    This is a great article! By the way the spelling is correct. “Hootspa: Meaning to have energeic nerve or to be feisty without violence using humor.”

     
  6. admin

    June 16, 2010 at 12:33 am

    It is definitely the hardest position to play in baseball. By the way, I love your spelling of “hootspa”. I’d correct it but I have no clue how to spell it.

     
  7. Marcy

    June 15, 2010 at 6:53 pm

    Evan pulled 2 groin muscles this year while playing catcher. Definitely a position that takes a lot of “hootspa.” He’s still walking around like he just got off a horse!

     
  8. Margaret

    June 15, 2010 at 6:07 pm

    Great picture of Josh. He fits the bill of a catcher who is smart enough to call the pitches and catch runners stealing and have leadership ability by seeing the whole field and guiding all the other players. Plus he probably is good at having a rapport with the umpire behind him during the game.