Why do catchers wear so much stuff?

Nail Polish

Catchers wear nail polish and other nail adornments like peel-off stickers to help signal to pitchers what pitch type to throw. They usually do this by indicating with the number of fingers they put down but also may indicate location via other movements or gestures. Most catchers wear either white or yellow stickers/tape for for visibility, but some may favor team colors (esp. for manicures) or various neons. Here, Dodgers catcher Will Smith (yes, really) is wearing pink nail polish.

In UNWRITTEN RULES, Zach favors nail stickers, while Eugenio comes to embrace full manicures as a means of self-expression.

Photo credit to Inplay_runs on twitter.

Wrist Bands/Sign Cards

Catchers signal pitch type and location by putting down a set number of fingers (one for a fastball, two for a breaking ball, etc.). However, if there's a player on base who can signal the batter on their own team for what pitch to expect - or the team is engaged in more nefarious forms of sign-stealing - catchers often put down a series of signs and have a pre-determined code for which sign is correct. This code can vary from "the third sign in the series" to the "sign in a series that is equal to the number of outs in the inning minus one." The latter can often get confusing - and can vary even within an inning - so catchers wear the sign codes on their wrist bands (the laminated section of the wrist band). Pitchers keep similar sign cards in their hats/pockets.

This all lead to the tremendous Onion Headline: "Catcher Keeps Signaling 'I Love You'." Which... tells you what you need to know about my book.

Photo credit to Inplay_runs on twitter.

Masks

There are two general kinds of catcher masks: traditional and hockey-style masks. Traditional masks have less protection at the neck and on the sides of the head than hockey-style ones (which is what Buster Posey is wearing in this gif). Hockey-style masks are, however, harder to take off to field pop-flies, as Buster shows here. Catchers can’t just tip them up, but have to remove them completely for visibility in seeing where the ball is (which is often against the clouds/stadium lights/sky).

In UNWRITTEN RULES, Zach wears a traditional mask—with a hat, catcher’s helmet, and mask—in part because he also wears a hearing aid, and the hockey-style masks could cause feedback/distortion. And in part because I like when catchers have to fling off a bunch of gear onto the field.

Stances

This isn’t exactly within the realm of “stuff” catchers wear, but something people may notice is that catchers have moved from more traditional stances (basically, a squat with their thighs resting on their calves) to stances where they have one leg in almost a half-squat and stretch the other leg out, as pictured here.

Why are they doing that? To frame pitches better.

Pitch framing is when a catcher essentially moves a ball thrown outside the strike zone into the strike zone to make it look more like a strike. Having a stance where it’s harder for the umpire to tell if/where the ball moved over home plate allows for easier framing (and somewhat more concealed movements).

The working title of UNWRITTEN RULES was actually “Pitch Framing and Other Lies.” Because framing is about things not being as they appear. It was gently suggested to me that “pitch framing” isn’t super-common terminology (and I came to like UNWRITTEN RULES as a title more).

The book is told in two timelines: past (about three years ago as a set of flashbacks) and present. Part of the “past” scenes involve a character retraining his catching stance to be more similar to what’s pictured. (This is… sweaty as a process.) I took a look at a number of catchers, including Willson Contreras, who has worked to retrain his stance pretty heavily to improve his framing. He is also… not ugly if y’all want to check him out.

Photo credit to Inplay_runs on twitter.