. . . a catcher that knows YOU and calls the game accordingly goes a long way these days.
How about a catcher who knows the hitters in the league? He could know you and your tendencies but if he doesn't
know the hitters a little better, you're a dead duck before you throw the first pitch. If I'm a manager and I've got
a hot new young catcher, the first thing I tell him is get every scouting report you can get on every hitter in the
league, watch what these hitters do when you see them,
then worry about what your pitchers are going to
throw. The number one way to get your pitcher on the page is to know as much as you can about the hitters you're
going to face before you get out there. Otherwise, you're going to call for that delicious slider your man throws
thinking
no way they're gonna hit this but you're going to got some splainin' to do when that delicious
slider got hit for delicious distance.
I once asked Catfish [Hunter] why he never shook me off. He said, "It's your job to know the hitters. You just tell
me what to throw and I'll throw it.---Ray Fosse.
I looked confident out there but I really wasn't. It was Yogi [Berra] who gave me that confidence with what he knew about
me and what he knew about the other guys. If anyone else was my catcher, I couldn't have pitched the way I did.---Whitey Ford.
(A favourite Berra story: He happened upon a meeting of pitchers before an All-Star Game and the subject was pitching
to Stan Musial. "Forget it," Berra said, deadpan. "You guys are trying to figure out in fifteen minutes what nobody's
figured out in fifteen years.")
