
The Tao of the Backup Catcher
Playing Baseball for the Love of the Game
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Narrated by:
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Justin Price
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Tim Brown
About this listen
This fascinating book chronicles the unsung men of baseball who serve the job, the hardships they face, and their love for a game that would not always love them back―told partly through the experiences of an MLB veteran.
In baseball there are superstars and stars and everyday players and then there are the rest. Within the rest are role players and specialists and journeymen and then there are the backup catchers. The Tao of the Backup Catcher is about them, the backup catchers, who exist near the bottom of the roster and the end of the bench and between the numbers in a sport–and a society–increasingly driven by cold, hard analytics.
The Tao of the Backup Catcher is a story of grown men who once dreamed of stardom and generational wealth. Instead, they were handed a broom and a deeper understanding of who wins and why, who stands tall and who folds, and who will invest their own lives in catching bullpens and the back ends of doubleheaders.
Backup catchers survive in part because every team needs one. They are necessary, once or twice a week. They prosper because the game, like the world around the game, still needs good souls, honest efforts, open eyes and ears, closed mouths, compassion for the sad parts, a laugh for the silly parts, and a heart that knows the difference. Backup catchers are sports’ big brothers, psychologists, priests, witch doctors, player coaches, father figures and drinking buddies, all wrapped in a suit of today’s polycarbonate armor and yesterday’s dirt. They come with a singular goal–to win baseball games. They play for the greater good. After that, they play for themselves. A reverie on loving the grind and the little things baseball can teach us, The Tao of the Backup Catcher profiles Erik Kratz, Josh Paul, AJ Ellis, Bobby Wilson, Drew Butera, Matt Treanor, and John Flaherty to name a few.
“This isn’t just a story about baseball. It’s about life and the beauty of knowing and accepting who you are.” ―Jeff Passan
©2023 Tim Brown (P)2023 TwelveListeners also enjoyed...
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“Lend Tim Brown’s inimitable voice to a sporting subculture overflowing with personality, mix in Erik Kratz’s tale of perseverance and what blossoms is magic. This isn’t a story about baseball. It’s about life and the beauty of knowing and accepting who you are.”—Jeff Passan, ESPN baseball columnist and bestselling author of The Arm
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Story
Lawrence "Yogi" Berra was never supposed to become a major league ballplayer. That's what his immigrant father told him. That's what Branch Rickey told him, too—right to Berra's face, in fact. Even the lowly St. Louis Browns of his youth said he'd never make it in the big leagues. Yet baseball was his lifeblood. It was the only thing he ever cared about. Heck, it was the only thing he ever thought about.
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"YOGI BERRA HITS A GRAND SLAM!"
- By USA VETERAN on 05-15-20
By: Jon Pessah
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The Game
- Inside the Secret World of Major League Baseball's Power Brokers
- By: Jon Pessah
- Narrated by: Jeremy Arthur
- Length: 20 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In the fall of 1992, America's national pastime is in crisis and already on the path to the unthinkable: cancelling a World Series for the first time in history. The owners are at war with each other, their decades-long battle with the players has turned America against both sides, and the players' growing addiction to steroids will threaten the game's very foundation.
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Bad Narration
- By Sally Harrison-Pepper on 08-15-15
By: Jon Pessah
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The Last of His Kind
- Clayton Kershaw and the Burden of Greatness
- By: Andy McCullough
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 13 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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More than any baseball player of his generation, Clayton Kershaw has embodied the burden of athletic greatness, the prizes and perils that await those who strive for it all. He is a three-time Cy Young award winner, the first pitcher to win National League MVP since Bob Gibson, and a surefire, first-ballot Hall of Famer. Many of his peers consider him the greatest pitcher to ever climb atop a big-league mound.
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Last of his kind is one of a kind
- By Anonymous User on 01-28-25
By: Andy McCullough
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A Baseball Gaijin
- Chasing a Dream to Japan and Back
- By: Aaron Fischman, Don Nomura - foreword
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Like many American boys, Tony Barnette yearned to one day make it to “The Show,” playing baseball professionally. The Arizona State pitcher was drafted in 2006 by the in-state Diamondbacks. Gradually ascending the minor-league ladder, it looked like this was the beginning of a blessed life, where he could play the game he loved on the grandest of stages. But things don’t always work out the way we want. On the verge of achieving his lifelong dream after notching a league-high 14 wins in Triple A, Tony looked ahead to 2010 with optimism. That’s when Japan came calling.
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Inspiring baseball biography
- By LSmith on 06-05-25
By: Aaron Fischman, and others
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Coach
- Lessons on the Game of Life
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Michael Lewis
- Length: 57 mins
- Unabridged
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There was a turning point in Michael Lewis' life, in a baseball game when he was 14 years old. The irascible and often terrifying Coach Fitz put the ball in his hand with the game on the line and managed to convey such confident trust in Lewis's ability that the boy had no choice but to live up to it. "I didn't have words for it then, but I do now: I am about to show the world, and myself, what I can do."
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A Nostalgia Tour of a Great Man
- By Darwin8u on 08-23-14
By: Michael Lewis
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Long Road
- Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of a Generation
- By: Steven Hyden
- Narrated by: Ron Hippe
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Ever since Pearl Jam first blasted onto the Seattle grunge scene three decades ago with their debut album, Ten, they have sold 85M+ albums, performed for hundreds of thousands of fans around the world, and have even been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of a Generation, music critic and journalist Steven Hyden celebrates the life, career, and music of this legendary group, widely considered to be one of the greatest American rock bands of all time.
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Just ok
- By IndyMATT on 11-06-23
By: Steven Hyden
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How to Talk Dirty and Influence People
- An Autobiography
- By: Lenny Bruce, Lewis Black - preface, Howard Reich - foreword
- Narrated by: Ronnie Marmo
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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During the course of a career that began in the late 1940s, Lenny Bruce challenged the sanctity of organized religion and other societal and political conventions; he widened the boundaries of free speech. Critic Ralph Gleason said, "So many taboos have been lifted and so many comics have rushed through the doors Lenny opened. He utterly changed the world of comedy". Although Bruce died when he was only 40, his influence on the worlds of comedy, jazz, and satire are incalculable.
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Where is the Lenny Bruce of this era?
- By Amazon Customer on 02-20-19
By: Lenny Bruce, and others
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Ball Four
- The Final Pitch
- By: Jim Bouton
- Narrated by: Jim Bouton
- Length: 18 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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When Ball Four was published in 1970, it created a firestorm. Bouton was called a Judas, a Benedict Arnold and a “social leper” for having violated the “sanctity of the clubhouse.” Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force Bouton to sign a statement saying the book wasn’t true. Ballplayers, most of whom hadn’t read it, denounced the book. It was even banned by a few libraries. Almost everyone else, however, loved Ball Four.
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Three Ten Year Updates Give Bouton a 5th Star
- By Byron on 08-09-12
By: Jim Bouton
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Winning Fixes Everything
- How Baseball’s Brightest Minds Created Sports’ Biggest Mess
- By: Evan Drellich
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Baseball has been defaced and consumed by corporate America. As Moneyball-thinking and Ivy League graduates grabbed hold of the sport, the Astros set out to build a cost-efficient winning machine on the principles of the outside business world, squeezing every dollar out of every transaction, player and employee. In less than a decade, Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow helped revolutionize the game and create an environment that led to one of the worst cheating scandals in baseball history, a Shakespearean tragedy of innovation and failed change management.
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The Houston Trashstros
- By DavidF on 02-20-23
By: Evan Drellich
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Why We Love Baseball
- A History in 50 Moments
- By: Joe Posnanski
- Narrated by: Joe Posnanski, Ellen Adair
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times bestselling author Joe Posnanski is back with a masterful ode to the game: a countdown of 50 of the most memorable moments in baseball’s history, to make you fall in love with the sport all over again. Posnanski writes of major moments that created legends, and of forgotten moments almost lost to time. It's Willie Mays’s catch, Babe Ruth’s called shot, and Kirk Gibson’s limping home run; the slickest steals; the biggest bombs; and the most triumphant no-hitters.
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Narration
- By Peter on 01-10-24
By: Joe Posnanski
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76 Hours
- A Novel of Tarawa
- By: Larry Alexander
- Narrated by: John Pirhalla, Brian Nishii
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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The island of Tarawa, a tiny spit of sand out in the middle of the Pacific, teemed with five hundred pillboxes filled with artillery pieces and highly motivated Japanese soldiers. Their commanding officer encouraged his troops, saying, “It would take one million men one hundred years” to conquer Tarawa. They were convinced that the Americans would be slaughtered before they ever got ashore.
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War Is Hell
- By Rebecca Hill on 03-24-23
By: Larry Alexander
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Vertigo
- The Rise and Fall of Weimar Germany
- By: Harald Jähner
- Narrated by: Sam Peter Jackson
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Out of the ashes of the First World War, Germany launched an unprecedented political project: its first democratic government. The Weimar Republic, named for the city where it was established, endured for only fifteen years before it was toppled by the insurgent Nazi Party in 1933. In Vertigo, prizewinning historian Harald Jähner tells the Republic’s full story, capturing a nation caught in a whirlwind of uncertainty and struggling toward a better future.
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How. Did It Happen?
- By Bettyb on 10-19-24
By: Harald Jähner
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Talking to GOATs
- The Moments You Remember and the Stories You Never Heard
- By: Jim Gray
- Narrated by: Tom Brady, Jim Gray, Carol Burnett, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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A journalist who many iconic athletes have trusted to tell their stories (of both triumph and disgrace), Jim has had unprecedented access to the people, places, and extraordinary events in the world of sports. Asking tough but fair questions, he has broken numerous stories, and landed squarely in the middle of others, from the Ben Johnson and Barry Bonds steroid scandals, to Michael Jordan’s surprise retirement, to the off-the-court Kobe/Shaq feud which led to their on-the-court break up, to being part of the live broadcast for 22 Super Bowls.
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Writing a book is not easy, Dan.
- By TheDadAbides on 11-17-20
By: Jim Gray
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Shit, Actually
- The Definitive, 100% Objective Guide to Modern Cinema
- By: Lindy West
- Narrated by: Lindy West
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Shit, Actually is a love letter and a breakup note all in one: to the films that shaped us and the ones that ruined us. More often than not, Lindy finds, they're one and the same.
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How Woke
- By R. Squyres on 02-27-21
By: Lindy West
Loved it
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Different and Interesting Persoective
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A great book for baseball and non baseball fans
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Wonderful Book
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Insightful, optimistic, and encouraging
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The story and background of the players.
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An inspirational and detailed account.
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loving baseball
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This book provide tremendous insight into the hidden game of baseball and hidden aspect of a baseball players life. It takes a very special person to be a back up catcher and have a career like Eric Kratz has had
Every Baseball fan should read this book
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I too was a backup catcher.
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