Are Catchers the Drummers of Baseball?

We used no mattress on our hands, No cage upon our face;
We stood right up and caught the ball, With courage and with grace.

-George Ellard, catcher on the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, Baseball's first professional team.

Lovingly dubbed "the tools of ignorance" by Herold "Muddy" Ruel—a lawyer turned backstop who caught for greats like Walter Johnson with the Washington Senators in the 1920s—the protective gear worn by the catcher has always struck me as the most distinguishing equipment in sport. Simply put, only in baseball is one player so dramatically differentiated from his teammates. In football, with the exception of the occasional neck roll, variously sized facemasks, and the now extinct shoeless place kicker, every player wears roughly the same thing. For the most part, the differences in equipment are just variations. Hockey diverges a bit more, but again, all of the players are heavily protected and equipped, thus making the goalie's robust padding seem less an anomaly on the ice.

To me, catchers have always stood out, aside from being the sole carriers of the tools of ignorance on the diamond. Literally, they see the game in a different way. Their point of view on the field is shared only by the home plate umpire. They interact with the umpire, the pitcher, and opposing hitters more than anyone else. They are the field generals, responsible for calling the game, aligning the defense, watching baserunners, and directing cut-off throws.

My father was a catcher, and at an early age I began to understand that he saw baseball differently. My father is also a musician and imparted a similarly unique perspective whenever we'd see live music. In either context, it seemed to be the subtleties that interested him: a catcher's footwork when fielding a bunt or a drummer signaling changes. Not that this stopped my father from making jokes at the expense of the drummer. His band churns through them at a Spinal Tapish rate. The stereotypes, he has found, are generally true: they are a bizarre bunch, often showing up late or not at all for practice with embarassingly implausable excuses. A good drummer, like a good catcher, is hard to find.

Like the catcher with all his conspicuous gear, the drummer is always set apart from the rest of the band. He sits as they stand, a gesture that physically resembles the catcher's crouch. Generally, the drummer is placed at the back of the stage, the only performer who can see the performance unfold in its entirety, a point of view analogous to the catcher's. Just as the catcher controls the pace of the game through pitch selection, mound visits, and the ubiquitous palms down "calm down" gesture to the pitcher, the drummer drives the tempo. In general, the contributions of both catchers and drummers are generally underrated and underdiscussed, at least in any sort of popular discourse on baseball or music. The battery and the engine are essential. So, to paraphrase James Brown, give the catcher some! Or, at the very least, start referring to drum sticks and cowbells as the tools of ignorance.