Nearly every catching instructor you speak to, and every published book and article on catching, will point out that footwork is the key to success for a backstop. But how many tell you what that means, exactly?

If you are a catcher, and have been catching for any significant length of time, then you know all about jammed fingers. A jammed, or sprained, finger is often the result of your bare hand being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Similarly, if you are a baseball player that plays “hard”, you’ve [...]

There are dozens of books on the “basics” of baseball playing, but few are authored by someone with the cachet of Cal Ripken, Jr. After reading it from cover to cover (twice), I also have to state that few other books on the fundamentals are as clear, correct, and, most importantly, applicable to nearly every [...]

Nearly every young catcher I meet is either proud to show me how well he can “frame” a pitch, or he wants to know how to do it.
So here I will teach all about framing, for the masses who do not have the pleasure to learn from me. However, you may be unhappy with what [...]

Through the years, I’ve used catcher’s gloves from Wilson, Rawlings, Spalding, Mizuno, and most recently, Akadema. As a youngster, and through high school, I used a glove with a double break; one break on each side of the wrist pad. It was a clumsy, heavy design, and in college switched to single-break gloves. The Rawlings [...]