May 11, 2004
TOOLS OF IGNORANCE SEEMS A MISNOMER::
Last Man Crouching The cushy life of the backup catcher. (Stephen Rodrick, May 10, 2004, Slate)
I've always had an unhealthy obsession with the welfare babies of sports. As a kid, Terry Bradshaw didn't amaze me. My hero was Steelers backup Terry Hanratty, who nabbed two Super Bowl rings while completing three passes. God bless the Jack Haleys, Joe Kleines, and Chuck Nevitts of the NBA who sit like installation art at the ends of benches, earning fat paychecks without taking off their warm-ups. Hockey? Who could forget Steve Janaszak, the no-minute backup goaltender on Team USA's 1980 Miracle on Ice squad. I can still see him looking cool on the bench, a white towel wrapped around his precious neck for warmth.But these superior athletes can't match the feats of the ultimate sports freeloader: the backup catcher. Backup catchers are harder to kill than cockroaches and just as unsightly. The fraternity is the athletic equivalent of Skull and Bones: Once you're in, you've got membership until you're 40 or bat below .180. And sometimes even that won't get you bounced. The Backup Catcher Society has helped Tom Prince (.208 batting average and a .331 slugging percentage, eight points higher than pitcher Rick Rhoden's) and Chad Kreuter (.237, 54 home runs in 2505 at-bats) "earn" $4 million and $8 million respectively. Sure, that's chicken feed compared to Bonds and Sheffield, but it's more than they'd make as PE teachers.
The society's sitting president is Gregg Zaun. He's got the bloodlines for the job: Zaun's the nephew of Rick Dempsey, a starting catcher with the .233 batting average of a backup. "Uncle Rick said that if you want to play in the majors, you have to be a left-handed hitting catcher," he told the Montreal Gazette. So, Zaun learned to switch-hit. A switch-hitting backup catcher is like an uncoordinated 7-footer in the NBA—somebody always figures they can use one.
Zaun, though, can't hit either way—he's in his 10th year in the big leagues and has topped 30 RBIs only once. He also can't field. In 2002, Zaun threw out only five of 44 runners who attempted to steal. OK, his elbow was screwed up, and he was getting a divorce, but I expect more for $1.2 million a year.
Hard to beat the great Cliff Johnson who actually refused to warm guys up, thereby forcing the Yankees to hire the first full-time bullpen catcher. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 11, 2004 11:50 PM
Except Cliff could hit, not many back-up catchers have almost 200 career HR's. He only played 179 games at catcher, he played more at 1B and DH.
Posted by: Jeff at May 12, 2004 8:40 AMIn the lower levels of the game (say high school)
the starting catcher and the starting pitcher (who
is often a starting shortstop on his off days)
are often the big sluggers. This obviously changes when division of labor becomes more extreme.
Let's not forget the "oddest" backup catcher of all time: Moe Berg.
I've always wondered why Hollywood never made a movie of his life. James Bond with a baseball bat.
A surefire winner.
SMG
Posted by: SteveMG at May 12, 2004 6:25 PMI think there might have been a TV movie on Moe Berg; Discovery Channel or some such. He's also the subject of some wonderful books, the best known of which is MOE BERG: ATHLETE - SCHOLAR - SPY.
His life will always be an enigma. What American of his era would get a degree at the Sorbonne, and then settle for being a "mere" ballplayer? (His father wanted him to be a professor; certainly he had the brains for it.) To succeed in espionage, one must be inconspicuous; he managed to do it as a semi-public figure who got his Tokyo photos because all assumed they were souvenirs of his All-Star tour. And his last words were absolutely perfect for a baseball player: "How did the Mets do yesterday?" Pretty much an outsider in all regards, he surprised all, and does to this day. Certainly he deserves a movie.
Posted by: John Barrett Jr. at May 12, 2004 10:08 PMJohn:
The Catcher Was a Spy:
http://www.brothersjudd.com/blog/archives/000085.html
Posted by: oj at May 12, 2004 11:26 PMI've always thought, as Mr. Rodrick does, that being the back-up is pretty much the perfect career, especially in the NFL.
Great paycheck, no injuries.
However, I'd also assumed that the downside was that to even REACH the big time, one must be pretty competitive, and to be always riding the pine would be torturous.
Perhaps one gets used to it.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at May 13, 2004 2:22 AM