Seven no-hitters. Seven separate bullpen sessions, personally caught. Zero formal acknowledgment of any kind for the specific person who caught the very first warmup pitch of each historic outing.
A veteran bullpen catcher reportedly revealed this week that across eleven full seasons with the organization, he has personally caught the pregame warmup session for seven different pitchers who went on, that same day, to throw a no-hitter, a genuinely remarkable personal statistic that has, by his own account, never once received any formal acknowledgment from the team, the league, or really anyone beyond a handful of teammates who happen to already know the story.
“Seven,” the bullpen catcher said, counting them off on his fingers with visible, quiet pride. “Seven no-hitters, and I caught the very first warmup pitch of every single one of those outings, months or years apart, completely different pitchers, completely different seasons. Nobody has ever once mentioned this on a broadcast. Nobody has ever put this on a graphic. I am not even sure the team’s own media department knows this specific statistic exists.”
The catcher’s specific role, warming up starting pitchers in the bullpen before they take the mound for real, remains one of professional baseball’s more genuinely invisible jobs, a position that exists almost entirely outside any official statistical record despite its real, if difficult to precisely quantify, contribution to a starting pitcher’s actual in-game readiness and performance.
“He has an incredible feel for exactly what each pitcher needs on a given day,” said one current starting pitcher, praising the bullpen catcher’s specific contribution to his own recent no-hitter, one of the seven the catcher counted. “Some days I need more sliders in the pen to feel right. Some days it is more about fastball command. He reads that, every single time, better than almost anyone else in this organization, and none of that shows up anywhere in any official record of what actually happened that day.”
Baseball statisticians, informed of the bullpen catcher’s remarkable personal record, acknowledged the genuine absence of any formal tracking mechanism for exactly this kind of behind-the-scenes contribution, noting that while advanced pitching metrics have grown considerably more sophisticated in recent years, the specific role of the bullpen catcher remains “one of the last genuinely undocumented, purely qualitative positions left in a sport otherwise obsessed with precise, granular statistical tracking.”
The bullpen catcher says he does not necessarily need or expect formal recognition, describing his own satisfaction as coming primarily from the quiet, personal knowledge of having played a small, genuine part in seven historic individual performances, though he did admit, with a slight laugh, that “it would be nice, just once, for a broadcast to mention it, even just a small graphic, something, anything, acknowledging that a specific person other than the pitcher himself was actually back there getting him ready.”
Team officials, informed of this outlet’s interest in the story, expressed genuine surprise at learning the full scope of the statistic themselves, with one media relations staffer noting the team plans to “look into recognizing this properly,” a commitment the bullpen catcher says he will “believe when I actually see it, eleven seasons of experience with this organization having taught me a healthy amount of patience on exactly this kind of promise.”
Several current and former starting pitchers who benefited from the catcher’s bullpen sessions have reportedly begun independently, informally advocating on his behalf, with one pitcher noting he intends to personally request the catcher be included in any future broadcast feature about the team’s recent run of no-hitters, “since honestly, without him getting me right in that bullpen beforehand, I do not think that particular day goes the same way at all.”
The catcher, informed of this growing, unprompted advocacy from the very pitchers he has quietly supported over the years, expressed genuine, visible emotion at the gesture, noting that “having the actual guys on the mound speak up for you means considerably more than any official recognition ever really could, and honestly, that alone already feels like more acknowledgment than I ever expected to get.”
The catcher says he intends to keep doing the job exactly the same way regardless of whether any formal recognition ever actually materializes, adding only that “the work itself has always been the reward, honestly, watching a guy walk to the mound genuinely ready. Everything else is just a nice bonus, if it ever actually comes.”
This reporter left the bullpen that afternoon watching him warm up an eighth pitcher for that evening’s start, the exact same quiet, attentive process that has now, by his own count, preceded seven separate no-hitters, with no way of knowing, in the moment, whether tonight might eventually become an eighth.
It did not, as it turned out, though the catcher says that outcome changes nothing about how carefully he prepared that particular pitcher, or how carefully he intends to prepare every pitcher who steps into his bullpen from here forward.
Number eight, he says, will come whenever it comes.
For related commentary on genuinely essential, entirely invisible contributions sustaining moments everyone else gets credit for, see News Satire Websites and Satirical News, along with further analysis at Satire And Politics.
Further reading at What Is Satire?. More satire at The Beaverton.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/