New Book an Ode to Backup Catchers

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The Tao of the Backup Catcher

The 2018 Milwaukee Brewers, one of the most successful and memorable teams, certainly had their share of stars. Further down the roster, however, that team’s success was at least in part due to countless players who got less of the spotlight but made the most of their opportunities.

One of those players was 38-year-old veteran backup catcher Erik Kratz, who had played in 1309 professional regular season games across 17 seasons before appearing in a postseason game for the first time that year. Longtime national baseball columnist and New York Times bestselling author Tim Brown and Kratz worked together on the book The Tao of the Backup Catcher: Playing Baseball for the Love of the Game, which was released last week.

We talked to Brown about backup catchers, working with Erik Kratz and the surprises and takeaways from his third baseball book.

What made you want to write a book about backup catchers?

It was a long time coming, Kyle. I began covering Major League Baseball in 1989, ’90, right in there, and along the way I just found that the backup catchers were humble, they had a great perspective on the game and the world, and a young idiot like myself could go to those guys and get educated about both of those things. They were accessible, they were welcoming, and I just, over the decades, just found myself going to those guys to just sort of find my own sort of perspective on the game.

So, I was carrying that with me when I met Erik about five, six years ago, and it just dawned on me that this would be the guy who could carry a story about not only one backup catcher but all of the backup catchers, and about the culture of backup catchers. It just seemed to humanize the game for me along the way, that there was more to it than numbers, more to it than whatever we’re turning the game into. His story: 19 professional seasons, 14 organizations, 120 transactions, it was just so emblematic of what that part of the game is all about. We have our eyes on the stars all the time, but there are an awful lot more guys like Erik than there are stars.

You talk about a lot of backup catchers in the book, but Erik Kratz’s name is the one alongside yours on the cover. What was his role in this project?

He and I spent an awful lot of time together over the last couple of years, and I thought that his story reflected a lot of the stories, the difficulties, the fights, the verge of quitting, the occasional successes and the occasional glory. And I was particularly taken by him late in that 2018 season with the Brewers and then into that postseason, where at the time he was 38 years old. He finally, for one of the first times in his professional career, had become close to something like a #1 catcher. I remember them calling it “Kratztober” in Milwaukee, and I was so charmed by his experience at such a late age and how hard he had worked for it, all that he had endured. And not just him, but his wife Sarah, and three young children who had gone along on a whole lot of this journey with him. It just seemed to make sense to me. He embodied what that job, what that life is all about.

What, if anything, surprised you while you were researching this book?

You know what I think it is? I think we tend to view major league ballplayers, and even professional ballplayers, as almost robotic, almost a product of all of their numbers. I know I had a sense of it going in, but the difficulty in walking around with a .197 batting average, the assorted trials of that, and how it soaks you in self-doubt and really works on your ego, in terms of your self-worth. If you pour everything you have your entire life into being good at this thing and then these numbers, whether it be batting average or the deeper analytical numbers, suggest that you’re bad at this game, the toll it takes on you as a human being can’t be discounted.

It’s so difficult to show up every day and feel like, “oh boy, there’s a big ugly batting average up on the scoreboard today and everybody thinks I’m terrible at this game. It’s all I’ve ever done and all I’ve ever wanted.” That’s hard, I think.

What’s the biggest thing you’re hoping people will take away from reading the book?

You know, I think there’s two levels to this. One, I really wanted to do an ode to these guys, an appreciation. There’s a lot more guys like Erik Kratz and Matt Treanor and Bruce Bochy and these guys who sort of toiled away as backup catchers for so long. There are a lot more of these guys than there are stars. And I know all of our eyes sort of settle on the stars, and this is particularly pertinent given a few days ago there was the All Star Game.

There weren’t a lot of backup catchers there, although a semi-backup catcher (Elías Díaz of the Rockies) hit the big home run. So, I think that sort of population of ballplayers needs to be recognized as being part of the fabric of the game.

The other thing, more broadly, is outside of the game we’re all on a journey, right? A lifetime journey that includes our careers and our relationships, and we all get to decide who we’re going to be on that journey. Somewhere along the line, it was in Asheville, North Carolina or Bakersfield, California, many of these guys woke up and realized for the first time in their lives, “I’m not going to be the next Johnny Bench.” 

I think at that moment, when this big dream that you have for your life becomes something different, you get to decide, “how am I going to handle this? Am I going to go home, or am I going to acquire some of these values and virtues that will allow me to continue on and find fulfillment in the game?” That’s these peripheral elements of “how do I win a game in the 21 hours around a game? I’m not going to be in the box score, how do I make these other guys better? How do I become a better friend? How do I become a therapist or a big brother figure? How do I get as much as I can out of this guy in a bullpen session and make him successful? Maybe I’m not, at the moment, reaching everything that I once believed I would reach, but that doesn’t mean I can’t help the next guy find his success and find his glory.”

So, I think there’s a crossover element to it, and maybe I’m just an old sap, but I think that people outside of the game might be able to draw some things out of this as well.

Brown is on Twitter at @ByTimBrown, and The Tao of the Backup Catcher is available now: