The Tao of the Backup Catcher
Playing Baseball for the Love of the Game
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- ¥2,400
Publisher Description
This fascinating book "reminds us of the beauty of baseball" and chronicles the unsung men of baseball who serve the job, the hardships they face, and their love for a game that would not always love them back―told partly through the experiences of an MLB veteran. (Jim Abott, former major league pitcher).
In baseball there are superstars, stars, and everyday players—and then there are the rest. The Tao of the Backup Catcher is about them, the backup catchers, who exist near the bottom of the roster and the end of the bench and between the numbers in a sport—and a society—increasingly driven by cold, hard analytics. The Tao of the Backup Catcher is a story of grown men who once dreamed of stardom and generational wealth. Instead, they were handed a broom and a deeper understanding of who wins and why, who stands tall and who folds, and who will invest their own lives in catching bullpens and the back ends of doubleheaders.
Backup catchers survive in part because every team needs one. They are necessary, once or twice a week. They are sports’ big brothers, psychologists, priests, witch doctors, player coaches, father figures and drinking buddies, all wrapped in a suit of today’s polycarbonate armor and yesterday’s dirt. They come with a singular goal: to win baseball games. They play for the greater good. After that, they play for themselves.
A reverie on loving the grind and the little things baseball can teach us, The Tao of the Backup Catcher profiles Erik Kratz, Josh Paul, AJ Ellis, Bobby Wilson, Drew Butera, Matt Treanor, and John Flaherty to name a few.
“This isn’t just a story about baseball. It’s about life and the beauty of knowing and accepting who you are.” ―Jeff Passan
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Brown (coauthor of The Phenomenon) teams up with retired Major League Baseball catcher Kratz for a compassionate look at the life of a journeyman professional athlete. During his 19-year career as a pro, Kratz played for 15 teams and never rose above the rank of second-stringer before he retired in 2020. Brown chronicles the highs, which included batting .367 during a stint with the Yankees, and the lows—while with the Brewers, Kratz was barred from a team meeting because everyone expected he'd be traded and couldn't be trusted with the team's protocol for using players on second base to communicate their opponents' pitch signs to batters. Passion for the game kept Kratz going; he taught batting lessons to make ends meet while playing in the minor leagues and learned to view trades to bottom-dwelling teams as opportunities for "more at-bats." Diverting anecdotes about other backup catchers entertain (Cincinnati Reds second-stringer Bill Plummer took pains not to snore when sharing a hotel room with the team's celebrity starting catcher: "Johnny Bench needed his rest"), but this focuses squarely on Kratz, finding pathos in his unglamorous fight to stay in the game. The result is an empathetic tribute to athletes who spend their lives just outside the spotlight.
