Catcher Quotes

As a teenager, I read a lot of science-fiction, but then I read ‘Catch-22’ and ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ and started reading more literary fiction.

One of my favorite books is ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ by George Orwell, and ‘Catcher in the Rye,’ obviously, is a big influence and is one of my favorites.

I don’t really look at the catcher at all. I think you steal bases off the pitcher.

I like the style of National League baseball. I like the different moves that have to be made. I like the fact that the No. 8 spot in the lineup can be one of the more challenging spots. It’s a lot more strategy for that hitter and for the catcher sometimes with the pitcher coming up.

Catcher in the Rye had a profound impact on me-the idea that we all have lots of dreams that are slowly being chipped away as we grow up.

I’m a great pass catcher. I’m excellent in pass protection, which is the most important thing. You can’t play, you can’t get on the field if you don’t protect that franchise quarterback.

I’m aware that many of my friends will be saddened and shocked, or shock-saddened, over some of the chapters in ‘The Catcher in the Rye.’ Some of my best friends are children. In fact, all my best friends are children. It’s almost unbearable for me to realize that my book will be kept on a shelf, out of their reach.

As a catcher, you have to put your focus on what you’re doing defensively. You learn how to put your at-bats aside if you’re struggling.

Between 1961 and 1982, ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ was the most censored book in high schools and libraries in the United States. But all the talk about banning it made me rush out to find it.

In 1952, when I was 15 and living on Governors Island, which was then First Army Headquarters, I encountered the newly-published ‘The Catcher in the Rye.’ Of course, that book became the iconic anti-establishment novel for my generation.

A catcher must want to catch. He must make up his mind that it isn’t the terrible job it is painted, and that he isn’t going to say every day, ‘Why, oh why with so many other positions in baseball did I take up this one.’

I played American Legion ball starting when I was 14. But I didn’t catch until I was 17. I was 75-3 as a high school pitcher, but it was like everybody knew that I was supposed to be a catcher. When the scouts would come around, and I was pitching, they’d make me take infield practice so the scouts could watch me throw.

The catcher is a groundhog. He’s a guy squatting down, digging for the ball in the dirt, and sweating under a pile of uncomfortable protective gear while his knees creak.

As a base runner myself, the moment I reached second base I began to fantasize about the potential contact at the plate. Every time I met a catcher in front of the plate throughout my career, the response I received from my teammates when returning to the dugout was a true hero’s welcome.

My kids and I make pasta three days a week now. It’s not even so much about the eating of it; they just like the process. Benno is the stuffer, and Leo is the catcher. They’ve got their jobs down.

Everybody has always put this on me, this label, that I’m not a very good defensive catcher. To me, I don’t see it that way.

I do not believe ‘Newsweek’ is the only catcher in the rye between democracy and ignorance, but I think we’re one of them, and I don’t think there are that many on the edge of that cliff.

Very few teachers or leaders in my small Michigan community ever discussed the issue of ‘The Catcher in the Rye,’ and certainly no one came to the 1951 Novel’s defense.

I never show my books to Ricky. His writing is very different, and anyway, he’s only read one novel in his life: ‘The Catcher in the Rye.’

The best stories in our culture have some sort of subversiveness – Mark Twain, ‘Catcher in the Rye.’ You provide kids with great stories and teach them how to use the tools to make their own.

I really didn’t have a favorite Major League catcher in college, but I would watch a lot of games. If one was on, I’d try to pick up little things from whomever was catching at that time.

The forbidden things were a great influence on my life. I was forbidden from reading A Catcher in the Rye.

When I was 16 years old, my brother Frank said, ‘You’d better become a catcher, because you’re too big and fat to do anything else.’ Well, I took his advice. It was a quick way to get to the big leagues, and I’ve never regretted it.

I really like The Catcher in the Rye a lot.

It’s nice to have a catcher who knows my mechanics, too. That way if I get into trouble he can stop it before I get out of control.

Were it not for Jackie Robinson, Branch Rickey would be remembered, if at all, as a Bible-thumping midwestern Methodist windbag who neither played baseball on Sundays when he was a mediocre catcher for the St. Louis Browns and the New York Highlanders, nor attended games on the Sabbath as a baseball executive.

‘Catcher in the Rye.’ I feel like any brooding teen loves that book.

I have a lot of nicknames. They called me Kingo in Japan, they called me the Young Vagabond, but that sounds bad, then Soldier of Fortune, now they call me the Dream Catcher.

In America, people of a certain age ask, ‘Where were you when Kennedy was shot?’ In my house you were more likely to be asked, ‘Where were you when you first read ‘The Catcher In The Rye?’

In the White House, you can be on the pitcher’s mound or you can be in the catcher’s position. Put points on the board. Show people you can govern. Deliver on what you said you were going to deliver on.

The catcher is in the middle of everything. He sees it best.

I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

Any book that can help you survive the slings and arrows of adolescence is a book to love for life; ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ did just that, and I still do love it.

You have to have a catcher because if you don’t you’re likely to have a lot of passed balls.

When I got out of the Army, I started writing the usual ‘Catcher in the Rye’ imitations, and then I wrote something that was done Off-Off Broadway in a theater. It was called ‘What Else Is There?’ and it was four or five people playing missiles in a silo waiting to take off.

When I was 15 years old, I used to actually dream I was pitching in Yankee Stadium. Bill Dickey was my catcher.

You can’t go to medical school and come out and be like, ‘I’m going to be a dog catcher.’ That would be so pointless.

‘Goodnight Moon’ is a staple of any nursery bookshelf. So, too, are ‘Harold and the Purple Crayon’ and ‘Madeline.’ These books are just as much a part of mainstream reading culture as ‘The Catcher in the Rye,’ and they are passed down from generation to generation.

One of my clearest, happiest memories is of myself at fourteen, sitting up in bed, being handed a large glass of warm buttermilk by my mother because I had a sore throat, and she saying how envious she was that I was reading ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ for the first time.

I was fantastically well versed by the time I left school. I had a teacher who put ‘A Clockwork Orange’ my way, and ‘Catcher in the Rye.’

When I stepped into the box, I felt the at-bat belonged to me. Everybody else was there for my convenience. The pitcher was there to throw me a ball to hit. The catcher was there to throw it back to him if he didn’t give me what I wanted the first time. And the umpire was lucky that he was close enough to watch.

There is only one Mariano Rivera. There won’t be another person who will come along and do what he did. No one does it like him. It was an honor to catch him and play alongside him for as long as I did. He made my job as a catcher so much easier. Mariano is a special person and obviously a special player.

No baseball pitcher would be worth a darn without a catcher who could handle the hot fastball.

As a catcher, I know the pitcher is trying to get ahead in the count.

Winning the game is the single most important thing. If you go 0-for-4, but you catch a shutout or a one-run game, and your pitcher goes seven, eight innings, and the closer closes out the game, that’s the ultimate satisfaction for a catcher. Much more than going 4-for-4 and losing.

I want to throw my best pitch and I want to throw it a certain way, regardless of where the runners are. But it does take the catcher being able to handle that.

I was a baseball player. I played in high school and a little bit in college. I was a catcher. I don’t know if I could have played any other position. As a catcher, you’re always on the ball.

‘The Catcher in the Rye’ was targeted by some schools as a book too risque to read and certainly not appropriate for young minds. My parents certainly would not have approved of the book, but I secretly read it when I was in 7th grade. I felt so rebellious, and my young mind loved it.

Even the pictures I was doing at college – a little narrative based on a butterfly catcher, or a chimney sweep – the images were always telling stories. They were all scenarios and moods which I storyboarded and worked through – it’s exactly what I do now.

‘The Catcher in the Rye.’ When I was a teenager, that was my book; yes, somebody gets it, somebody gets adolescence.