The Tools of Ignorance

By Aaron Morse

Anderson De La Rosa squats behind the plate as he awaits a 98 mph fast ball from former first round draft pick Mark Rogers. The ball will arrive at home plate in about four tenths of a second. That’s literally in a blink of an eye. It doesn’t go straight into De La Rosa’s glove. Instead the batter fouls the ball off the 26-year old catcher’s foot. Catchers wear lots of protective gear. A mask, a chest protector, and shin guards make up what’s known in baseball parlance as the “tools of ignorance.” Unfortunately, those protective measures don’t include one’s foot. All De La Rosa has there are his shoes. He hops up and down in pain and bends at the waist to try to will the pain away.

There’s no more physically demanding position in the game of baseball than catcher. No one knows that better than the Stars’ oldest player, nine-year veteran Patrick Arlis. At 29 years of age, Arlis has spent most of his career with the Florida Marlins’ organization. He’s had two stints in independent ball and came to the Brewers’ organization in 2009.

“The main thing people don’t realize is you can’t take a great hitter and turn him in to a catcher just because of the fact that the grind on your legs is unbelievable,” Arlis said. “You can catch nine innings and be not gassed one night. And the next night you catch three innings and you don’t have anything left in the tank.”

That makes hitting rather difficult.

“You’re supposed to go up there and try to turn on a pitch in a situation; it’s tough to do because you don’t have any legs,” Arlis said. “So you have to take care of yourself day in and day out. During the day, at night, during the game, everything, your legs are your most important asset.”

Arlis is the Crash Davis of the Huntsville Stars. He’s been around the game for many years and loves it with a passion. But he realizes that nothing lasts forever.

“Baseball, you want it to be life,” Arlis said. “In the end it’s not always that way. A plan is something not a lot of these guys have. I’ve been released, not like a lot of these guys that I’m playing with now.”

Arlis has a plan. He’s been working the past two years to earn his Master’s Degree in Elementary Education through the University of Phoenix, an online school. He wants to be a middle school Physical Education teacher when his playing days end. When speaking of his younger colleagues in the game of baseball, he emphasizes the need to have a plan of action if baseball does not work out.

“They don’t understand that it’s not that easy to get another job,” Arlis said. “When the game is over, you know, it’s over. If you don’t have anything to do, you’re in trouble. I had a coach my first year tell me, baseball is a suspended state of adolescence. And when it’s over, you wake up, you’re 25 years old, and you don’t have anything.”

Dayton Buller, 29, describes Arlis as the hardest working player on the team. Buller started playing professional ball the same year as his fellow catcher and has also had a stint where he was out of affiliated baseball. The Brewers purchased his contract from Camden of the Atlantic League this year after Martin Maldonado earned a promotion to Triple-A Nashville. He came to the Stars and smashed a home run in only his second game. But hitting is not the primary focus when you’re serving as the captain of the infield.

“Calling a game and handling a staff and just controlling the game; you get so many good things out of it,” Buller said. “When you win you really feel like you did something even if you go 0-4.”

Every detail matters. Fans tend to notice the big events in a game. The 450-foot grand slam, the dominating pitching performance, the spectacular catch, those are the things that make Sports Center. Buller even had a “big moment” this year when he hit a walk-off home run against the Carolina Mudcats. However the catcher is responsible for the stuff that does not necessarily show up in the box score.

“Controlling everything, making sure the infielders know when a bunt situation is on and who bunts, who’s fast, and stuff like that [is important],” Buller said. “Making sure the pitcher knows exactly what the situation is; and who’s on deck and everything. You’ve got to know every single thing that’s going on in the game; you cannot take any pitches off or that one pitch could be the game.”

Not only that, but you have to also manage some pretty interesting personalities when it comes to working with the pitchers. Arlis says the key for the men wearing the tools of ignorance is…knowledge.

“You just learn about everybody,” Arlis said. “You get thrown into the fire; you start talking to a lot of guys, you learn their personality. What they can take, what they can’t. You’ve got to know what guys you have to go out [to the mound] and talk nice to and what guys you go out and be a real jerk to. What’s going to fire them up and make them more successful? The more successful they are the less work you have to do in the end.”

Work is not something the Stars’ catchers are afraid of, that’s for sure. They don’t really get days off. If one guy is not catching a certain day, he’s down in the bullpen helping the relievers warm-up. There’s no such thing as a designated “bullpen catcher” at the Double-A level.

However the Stars are lucky they have three catchers (Buller is currently on the DL, but all three have been active at the same time in previous weeks), instead of the normal two. That brings us to the aforementioned De La Rosa. The 26-year old out of Venezuela has a cannon for an arm. He has thrown out 41 percent of would-be base-runners during his six years as a backstop in the Brewers’ organization.

“[This year] I am focusing more on my defense and blocking everything, working for the pitcher, throwing guys out at the bases,” De La Rosa said. “I feel really good when I throw guys out at second base.”

De La Rosa smiles as he talks about his ability to play a bunch of positions. He says before he signed with the Brewers in 2003 he played a lot of outfield and some corner infield as well. In 2005, Milwaukee asked him if he’d want to try out catcher. De La Rosa had played the position as a young kid so he was very receptive to the idea. But he says it hasn’t been a cakewalk.

“Everything’s hard, when you play catcher, everything’s hard,” De La Rosa said. “You want to be focused on the game so you can call good pitches. You need to study every hitter. Every at bat is different. The pitchers are top prospects so you have to work really hard to help them do well.”

Talking to De La Rosa, one gets the sense that he takes more pride in helping the pitching staff succeed than his own personal accomplishments. This self-less attitude is a quality Arlis and Buller have as well. None of these men are considered prospects to play in “the show”, nor do they put up big offensive numbers at the Double-A level.

But the Stars would be a lesser team without them.

“Too many guys in pro ball are just here because they think they’re going to make it to the big leagues,” Arlis said. “They don’t want to play the game and they don’t play the game properly. Personally, I’ve had a great time.”

De La Rosa shakes off the pain of the foul ball. He gets back behind home plate and gets ready for some more Rogers heat. There are still seven more innings to catch.