Talkin' Art of Catching with Brent Mayne...

Whenever you get the chance to talk to someone that has been there, it’s always special to see it through their eyes.



On June the 19, 2009, I was given the pleasure of an audience with Brent Mayne, a 15 year Major League Veteran. My connection with Brent was made through a gentleman named Bob Salomon one of the driving forces behind A Glove of Their Own.



Bob had originally connected with Brent by reaching out to him through checkswing.com. Which is a social networking site for former and current players and coaches.



As we slid into the interview, I asked Brent what his first impressions of A Glove of Their Own were, and he opened up with a great answer. You can tell this book continues to go that extra mile to touch people.



“You know it’s a really neat thing” he said, “the point it is getting at is, if you do things correctly, you do them the right way and for the right reasons that success kind of comes. For me playing baseball that was a real big concept…if I did things correctly and didn’t worry about the results, than the process would take care of the results.”



As I would come to learn, process is a staple for Brent. He is a big believer in being part of things for the right reason. In the case of Brent the there are many right reasons, and one of them he mentions when talking about why he wrote the art of catching, is giving back.



Now to better understand Brent’s journey and thought process you really do have to start at the beginning. “I grew up in a baseball family, my dad was a high school baseball coach, and I’ve been around the ball park since the time I was in diapers.”



When I asked him where his equivalent of the Old Oak Tree stood. Brent paused, “That’s a great question…the first baseball park that I remember was at Eisenhower High School in Rialto. That was my place; I didn’t play in front of anybody there. But I spent a good portion of my young life there.”



It’s funny how 15 years in the majors or 40 years in the mailroom all start out with a similar story. Whether your David Allan or Brent Mayne, and whether it’s Eisenhower High School or the Back Stop at Rose Schymanski Park the lessons are the same.



The other thing that doesn’t change no matter who’s answering the question is, “Did you have any quirky rules? What were they?"



Brent paused (with what I took as a where to start?). For a moment before answering, “Anybody who’s in their 40’s or late 30’s definitely is going to have stories about that. I don’t think kids now days play baseball that way. It’s not so much the over the line or three fly’s up or sock ball or rock ball or whatever the heck games we’d make up.”



I really think Brent gets the heart of why A Glove of Their Own has been so successful in connecting with adults. It really takes them to a place isn’t about Little League as he described it today.



As Brent went on is more about todays game he described, “year round baseball, uniforms, and competitive, but back then when we were playing you name it, there were all kinds of rules, there were ghost runners, missing bases, their were rules about what were home runs and not home runs, where you could hit the ball and where you couldn’t hit the ball depending on how many players you had in the field."

"We had eight billion rules and that was half the fun.”



Talking to Mayne there is certain ownership, a responsibility to his youth playing days to pass that along and let every child feel like George Brett or Todd Helton. You feel that he and his friends on their own field, own a little piece of baseball. They had their own rules, a set of rules that were universal and yet universally different.



Geography or not, if you were 8, 10, 12 year old Brent Mayne, or future team mates like Todd Helton in Knoxville, Tennessee, Mark McGwire in Pomona, or George Brett who years earlier made up rules from West Virginia to El Segundo there is a tie that binds in baseball, organized or otherwise.



Just as each of the 30 major league stadiums has it quirks, the short porch in right as Yankee stadium, the Monster at Fenway, the huge outfield at Dodgers stadium, or the thin air of Coors, so did each neighborhood. So did each and every different version of the fields of their youth.



During his transition from high school to Orange Coast College was where he made his move from the middle infield to behind the dish.



I asked him if it was a difficult transition. He was more told that college was in his future and if he was doing that he might as well be playing baseball for his Dad while he did it. As Brent mentioned though it came with a catch, “The caveat he (Brent’s Father) said, is you have to start catching, you are too slow, too weak and too small to play any other position.”



Brent had told me he was 5’6 and 135lbs. upon graduation of high school.



To Brent it offered a fresh start because the truth as his father laid it out was, “whether it be with me or much less at a four year school, you’re going to have to start catching and to be honest with you, not having any success at any other position I was eager to play the catching position and explore it, their was no downside for me.”



Now right around the time Brent said yes, as he described, “A couple of things happened, he (Brent’s father) along with a couple of other guys were reinventing the catch position…trying to take it from a 1970’s Johnny Bench style position to something that could deal with the speed of the modern game.”



From there he went on to spend a couple of years at Cal State Fullerton and then on to the major leagues.



It is that change from the stocky Johnny Bench, Carlton Fisk, or Thurmon Munson style catcher that has helped facilitate the change in catching that we have seen in recent history. Mayne points to Bob Boone as a bridge between what a catcher was and what he was going to become.



It’s the principles that his father was experimenting with using his son as a “Guinea Pig” that not only carried Brent to the Majors. But it is these principles that Brent Mayne is promoting with his book The Art of Catching and at his website www.BrentMayne.com



When I asked Mayne about his time at Cal-State Fullerton and his fond memories of playing their, you can tell he still feels an attachment to the young men that are currently playing at the College World Series. He also mentioned his dad Mike was the pitching coach for the 2008 NCAA Champion Fresno State Bulldogs.



So it is clear that teaching is in the blood.



When talking about the joy and excitement he felt for his father as he got to watch him enjoy the Bulldogs win, and his son getting to be the team’s bat boy. I am brought back to the children, everywhere, the thrill of victory.



So I asked, “Is there anyone you played with, whether it was in the minors or the majors that had that level of joy or excitement that we talk about with little kids?”



His answer was as refreshing as it was instant.



Almost before I could finish the question he responded, “Almost without a guy (sic), every great player is like that. To a guy about every great player, for me uh, George Brett, Mark McGwire, to Todd Helton were great players, and almost to a man the really good players are the guys that approach the game like little kids.”



He continued on in describing how that child like mentality allowed them to stay in the moment and brush off failure without being rattled by it. He continued, “This game will crush you if you take it too seriously or get too down on yourself when you do poorly because that’s the way the game is designed.”



He then went on to acknowledge, baseball is a game of failure and bounce back, a quality we definitely have more of in our youth. Brent continued, “If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a Billion times, if you get a hit three out of ten times you get to go live on a Yacht.

"But you have to be able to deal with failing seven times, or striking out seven times out ten which is a tremendous amount of failure.”



As he talked I wandered back to A Glove of Their Own. It maybe the reason we stay connected to baseball so long, the game is full of great lessons. It was at that point that Mayne had planted one right in front of my face, which I hadn’t even thought of.



Of course I had understood failure, but where had I learned to deal with it more effectively than on a diamond where you weren’t allowed to hit it right because there was a bee’s nest?



Where had failure been more obvious than the fly ball I didn’t hit to score the run from third base?



He explained an innocent quality to the greats, “there is no ulterior motive, and they aren’t playing to make money.”



He went on to explain that for 90% of big league rosters that is the case. Brent doesn’t have his head in the sand. He knows there is an exceptional living to be made from playing baseball, that being said, “Their main motivation is that they love the game, and they love competing.”



He went back to a point that he made repeatedly from the beginning of the interview, “it goes back to what we talked about in the very beginning, in letting the process take care of the results.”



We have seen a couple of manager use position players in relief this year, but while with the Rockies Brent managed to get a relief win. When asked if he could pitch, he responded, “Absolutely!” the result from a stat line that year 1 – 0 with an ERA of 0.00.



Mayne did admit that the competitive nature of athletes is such that they all think they can pitch, and every pitcher thinks he can hit. He mentioned it certainly gave him a new perspective and respect for pitchers to go out there and actually do it.



When I asked him later about what he tried to impress on young catchers, he said, “Try every position.” In this respect you’d have a hard time convincing me that Brent Mayne didn’t practice what he preached.



“You know the funny thing about baseball,” he continued, “the way baseball is, it’s so upside down, I spent my whole life trying to be a great catcher but the thing I’ll probably recognized most for when I die is that I won a game as a pitcher, that’s so like baseball.”



We continued on down memory lane, discussing a night in 1991 when he was behind the plate with Brett Saberhagen on the mound pitching a no hitter, I asked, "what does it feel like to be the catcher in that situation?"



He quickly found the words, “As a catcher you take it personally ...you have a portion of that win or that loss that you are responsible for.”



“In my mind I am right there… I am just as nervous and just as anxious as he probably is”, said Mayne.



Now what came next amazed me, as you hear about their being something special in the air. It’s a term that really relates to those great nights in sport. It’s that intangible that you can’t put your finger on.



As Brent was telling the story, he mentioned that he had done something that night, something different that he hadn’t done before and hadn’t done since. What caught me off guard was not that he had such a moment, but was how direct it was.



“It was a unique, experience, I don’t know how to explain it other than it was really intense and pins and needles, but it was also very enjoyable because coming out of the bullpen that particular game (after the 10-15 minute warm up session) I said he’s going to throw a no hitter today, because it just felt like it was that kind of stuff.



Brent also made the point, “to succeed at that level you have to do it more than 99% of the people in the world, and if you are doing something more than 99% of the people in the world, you probably enjoy doing it.”



To further address the process, he went on to say, “the money is simply a bi-product of approaching your craft the right way.”



As I listened to Brent my brain took me back to the start of the interview. His credo, of “take care of the process, and the results will come” is as powerful a message as A Glove of Their Own’s, Play it Forward. Both are about setting yourself up for success. One is the hand you’re given, and the other is the one you use to pull yourself and others up.



There are plenty of times in life we could take a short cut, we could leave someone out, or off the list. It’s when you talk to a guy like Brent Mayne you realize the only way to get to the top is to have tremendous support and to go after your goals and your dreams with dedication.



I know it seems obvious, but he makes the point that it is about more than time spent, it’s about quality time spent, and I think that can be applied to parenting, teaching and learning.



When you’re young they tell you to go practice, be it the piano, algebra or hitting the cut off man. What they don’t tell you is to practice correctly, and that is the proactive approach that Mayne has taken.

It is a lesson that once learned can help and individual excel in all aspects of his or her life. It is the correctly part, that Mayne is trying to address with The Art of Catching.



When we finally got around to talking about The Art of Catching, you realize that Mayne simply saw as he called it, “a void in information” around this particular position.



As he said it, “is not true for any other position.” He goes to talk about the importance of catching, “arguable the most important position on the field is just slipping through the cracks.” (In regard to readily available info.)



Mayne goes on to describe it as, “mistaught, if it is taught at all, and more often than not it’s just take the biggest kid and throw him back there.”



As he mentioned not only the way he was taught, but the knowledge he gained over 1279 games behind the plate in the big leagues. (He ranks 75th all time.)



The intention of the book was simply explained by Mayne, “it’s a lot of information that I had and I thought I’d share it, that was my main motivation.”



The book is being followed with instructional videos, as well as his website.



We got a chance to discuss the style he brought to the game; the style which he describes in The Art of Catching has what has become the norm, the standard in today’s Major Leagues.



With the aid of ESPN Classic he mentioned, “It’s really easy to see the progression if you click on an ESPN Yankee game and watch Thurmon Munson catch, and compare that to the way Jorge Posada catches, its light years different.”



When I asked Brent about The Art of Catching, he spoke about the book audience and how diverse it could be.



He mentions that that whether you be a little leaguer or a major leaguer he doesn’t treat or teach anyone any differently. He feels the concepts are straight forward, and it not only makes you a better catcher, but considering, “the catcher touches the ball on almost every play.” It gives you a chance to enhance your team’s chances of winning.



Mayne was very candid about catching opportunities, whether it be in the MLB, little league, or college stating, “The truth of the matter is that catcher, that is the easiest position to play in the big leagues, or to go on and play at any level is catching because their just aren’t that many good ones.”



As he first talked about the book it seemed obvious that coaches and players would be interested in the book but he then made the point, “even as a curious fan, if you just want to know what the heck is going on back there….I think it can totally enhance your enjoyment of the game.”



As players and fans, isn’t that what we all strive to do, is enhance our enjoyment of the game? To better understand it strategy? Luckily along the way we are able to gather some life lessons.



To go back to excellence, you have to be doing whatever you’re doing more than 99% of the other people out there.



I asked Brent about the 12 month, 365 days sports cycle that Americans have fallen pray to, and he made some very interesting points about the structure of practice and the opportunities to practice you craft.



He used the example of the kids that are coming from, The Dominican Republic or Mexico, where they have other priorities in life, but nearly all of their experience in life mirrors that of the kids in a glove of their own.



Most of those future major leaguers coming out these countries are currently playing, rock ball, sock ball, over the line, or a version of three flies up. Most of these young men and women play a game that was more common to American before the invention of the 12 month sport cycle.



They and treasure a baseball, because it means they get to play tomorrow, and it doesn’t matter if their backstop is a half broken down fence, and home plate is a bicycle rim. In front of that fence, stepping up to that rim they may take 25 or 50 swings a day.



When these children along with so many others practice and play, they aren’t coached to use two hands, they are forced to. Maybe one had that won’t be the case in Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Florida, Texas, New York, California, or anywhere else for that matter, but one at a time people are trying to make sure they have A Glove of Their Own.



Brent Mayne is a former major league catcher that spent 15 years playing amongst the best in the world. He was drafted 13th over all in the first round by the Royals. He also played for The Mets, Athletics, Rockies, Giants, Diamondbacks, and Dodgers. He can be reached at www.BrentMayne.com.

It contains information regarding his career, catching tips, and a link where you can pick up The Art of Catching.



Bob Salomon is a father, little league coach, and one of the driving forces behind the message in A Glove of Their Own. www.agloveoftheirown.com



And I am David Allan, your fellow Bleacher Creature, available for free lance work. mr.david.allan@gmail.com

I Want The Truth! But Can We Handle the Truth?

Usually I’d take as much joy and pleasure as anyone in watching the dismantling of that smug look off of A-Rod’s face. Unfortunately for me today there lies out there a bigger question. Why is it just A-Rod taking the fall and is what he did so bad in the grand scheme of things? I mean the lying to cover it up is, but let’s just talk about the steroid issue.

A-Rod is taking a lot of heat, but he’s not alone. There are 104 names on that list. I want to know who they are. They all submitted samples that were to be used to determine how deeply the problem of steroids in baseball went. It wasn’t supposed to be for disciplinary reasons. Well considering how hard Alex is about to be /is currently being judged in the court of public opinion I want answers, not just from Alex, from the other 103 as well.

Since my faith that we could see the home run record be broken by someone not on drugs has ultimately been shattered, I’ve got to know. I’ve got to know if Albert Pujols is on that list. I’ve got to know if Ken Griffey Jr. ever tested positive. I want to see if I need to start turning a blind eye to the accomplishments of Manny Ramirez. Or at least reconsider how I frame him in the all time discussion, good or bad.

I can no longer sit back and defend the players I love based on the fact that I love them. I hated A-Rod the Yankee; I hated him because he was better than any player I had ever seen. I hated him for all the right reasons. He plays for the Yankees and he was unbelievably talented. But if you thought for one second I wasn’t going stand up and applaud when he broke the homerun record your fooling yourself. I sat in my chair one night and discussed with a friend of mine whether we thought Alex could get to 800 homeruns or not.

That’s right 800 pause and think about it for a minute. As it sits today Alex is at 553 homeruns. Oh and he is only 32 years old. So now the joy of both him surpassing a tainted 762 and the day of possibly hitting number 800 should be thrown into question. Then I started to wonder, who was “clean” and do I care?

Cause with the drugs Alex was better than anyone I’d ever seen. Then again isn’t that the case to be made for the previous record holder too? I mean we all know the case against Barry, lets talk Hank, let us just see how deep the rabbit hole goes.

But what’s makes the record legitimately Aaron’s? I mean didn’t he partake in performance enhancing drugs. On page 268 of his on his own autobiography, “I had the Hammer: The Hank Aaron Story” he admits to trying Greenies.

“The 500thhome run came against Mike McCormick of the Giants, which meant that Willie Mays was on the field at the time. Willie elected not to have his picture taken with me that day, saying it wasn’t appropriate for him to fraternize with a player whose team had just beaten the Giants. For years Willie had been king and I’m sure that he wasn’t crazy about me elbowing into his territory. Most fans and critics still considered Willie to be a better player than me. It seems like the only ones who took up my cause were my team mates. Guys like Uecker and Boyer used to argue with the visiting writers who didn’t think I belonged in the class with Mays. It made me feel a little awkward to sit by my locker and hear them going on like that, but don’t think I didn’t appreciate it. [new paragraph begins] Actually, the 1968 season wasn’t the best time to present my case. It was the first time since my rookie year that I didn’t drive in or score 100 runs. I was so frustrated that at one point I tried using a pep pill—a greenie—that one of my teammates gave me. When that thing took hold, I thought I was having a heart attack. It was a stupid thing to do…”



Now why in the world would I drag that up you ask? Well that goes hand in with some interesting information printed by Dr. Bennett Foddy, PH D. and holder of the Harold T. Shapiro Fellowship in Bioethics at Princeton University’s Center for Human Values. He makes a very compelling case for why Greenies would have been performance enhancing drugs.

“What this example shows is that baseball is a sport in which the usual set of performance enhancements is ill-suited to enhancing player’s number. The core skills of baseball- pitching, catching and hitting – are not best enhanced by drugs that make a player stronger or faster. The strongest player can still miss the ball or hit it straight up in the air.
In fact baseball – like golf, cricket, or archery – is a quintessentially brain-centered sport. The most important weapons any player has are in his brain: the speed of his reflexes, his spatial processing, his vision and his fine tuned muscle memory. In the case of baseball, only the ball needs to go faster, higher and longer.” Pg. 77-78, Your Brain on Cubs.

Then later on Foddy sites specific examples of the effects of amphetamines specifically on baseball players.

“Amphetamines produce little or no enhancement in reaction time but significantly reduce the effect of fatigue on a person’s ability to track a moving object such as a ball. Dextroamphetamine, an amphetamine variant this is popular as a recreational drug, improves decision-making and reduces impulsivity in healthy human beings, which would be an effective enhancement for batters that tended to swing at balls outside of the strike zone.” Pg. 79 Your Brain on Cubs.

So what if Hammerin’ Hank was getting better pitches to hit, not because of keen eye, but because he was drug enhanced? Is 755 really a legitimate number? Is that really the record?

This is just another witch hunt through the grand old game, if we are going to continue with this non-sense. I am sick of half truths and half information. We’ve all seen the game soiled enough. Can we just flush out all the non-sense so I don’t have to endure another Jose Canseco book?

I want to truth, Bud, WE CAN HANDLE THE TRUTH!! The game needs it, and its fan I need it, cause to be honest, I want to say I am comfortable with them all being cheaters, but I’m not.

***special thanks for Bennett Foddy for the quotes from Dan Gordon’s, “Your Brain on Cubs.”

The Island of Misfit Toys(sorry the info is old just haven't had time to post this one.)

Welcome to the Bullpen, baseball’s island of misfit toys. Quick which Major League Pitcher won 20 games last year? Beckett. Or how about who had the top three strikeout totals? That’s right Peavy, Kazmir, and Santana. Can you name the top three save totals in order? Ok it’s a slightly more difficult question, but I am sure there were some of you saying it was Velverde, Borowski, and Cordero, was I right? But who led the major leagues in holds? I am sure it was only a true baseball junkie that came up with the name Brandon Lyons. What did we find out? The bullpen is baseballs special teams, like a tackler on an NFL kickoff they have the potential to make the play in unspectacular fashion, or blow it and turn it into a highlight reel. Like special teams in football it is a group guys just filling out the roster. In 2007 Red Sox starters combined to pitcher 1006 1/3 innings. In the same year we saw the Diamondbacks starters combine for 899.7 innings of work. Now in the case of the Diamondbacks starter account for about 62.5% of all innings logged. In the case of the Red Sox the starting pitchers put in 70% of innings thrown over the course of the regular season. So I know what you are asking yourself, what the hell does this have to do with anything? Well I think it has everything to do with the teams that win year in and year out in the major leagues. To me it’s less about how good your starters are and how long they stay in the game; because both these teams were among the 8 playoff participants in 2007. What is more telling is that between 30 and 40% of innings pitched in the majors these days are by relief pitchers. The collective groups of quiet and unheralded seed chewers that enter in the worst possible situation to earth shaking rock anthems are often the forgotten link in the team. When do relievers pitcher? In the most critical innings of a game, coming and pitching out of jams where they are protecting leads and inheriting runners. And who do we put in these all important rolls? Japanese imports that we know little or nothing about like Okajima, a move that obviously paid dividends for the Red Sox last year, but who could have seen that coming? He is coupled with other casts off like former, Jays, Red Sox castoff Brandon Lyons. Or guys like Julian Tavarez that has proven time and time again with Colorado, Cleveland, St. Louis, Giants, Cubs, Marlins and Pirates, with a career ERA of 4.50 and WHIP of 1.47. Joba Chamberlin and Jonathan Papelbon have shown promise and in the case of Papelbon the plan to make him a starter has been scrapped, but it was there at the start of 2007, and as the rumblings that Joba “Justin” Chamberlin will one day start in pin stripes. Why does filling the pen seem to be a game of trial and error? Especially when the error in the bottom of the 8 can be so critical? A perfect example of critical times in the game came with Josh Beckett leaving the Sox vs. Jay’s game on Sunday. The bases were loaded; a veteran with power was coming to the plate in Frank Thomas, and out of the pen comes, not Papelbon but Delcarmen? I mean in a 2-2 game with a Dangerous hitter and the bases loaded isn’t this the most critical juncture in the game? I would think so, instead of sending out Papelbon to get one out, they decide to save him, send out Manny and by the time Jonathan entered the game in the 9 his appearance and three strikes out did nothing. Nothing but show us, why he was a better choice to try to get Thomas out.