Book Review: “The Art of Catching” By Brent Mayne

Written by: jimmyscott on 25th June 2009

Book Review: "The Art of Catching" By Brent Mayne | read this item

WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!

The Art of Catching: The Secrets and Techniques of Baseball’s Most Demanding Position will teach readers how to become better catchers. It will also show what goes on in their back-swing-smacked heads.

There. You don’t need to read Brent Mayne’s The Art of Catching anymore. I just gave everything away. “Why, Jimmy?” you ask, virutally in tears. “Why tease us like this? You know SPOILER ALERT is code for KEEP READING IDIOTS. Why do you think we’re idiots?”

I rub your back, gently, rubber gloves snug on my hands for protection (seriously, I don’t know where you’ve been lately). I say Hey, you’re not idiots. Who said you were idots?

“You did, Jimmy!” I see the fire in your eyes. “After all we’ve done for you, and you pay us back like this! I hate you! I HATE YOU!” Then you run off to your room, or at least try, even though your room may be up to 2564 miles away (you might be reading this on an airplane, flying to Budapest).

As a mature adult, it’s my job to stop you before this gets out of hand (rubber glove-covered). Number 1: I did not call you an idiot. I simply stated, upfront because that’s the kind of guy Jimmy Scott is; that’s the kind of guy you like, a guy/man/boy-child who’s not afraid to be honest with his readers, that I was gonna give away some stuff about Brent Mayne’s new book. Maybe I should be the one running to your room with a tear-stricken face, phlegm forming in my throat. Number 2: I am unsure what to write for Number 2. I just remember in school some teacher saying, “If there’s a Letter A, you need a Letter B. If there’s a Number 1, you need a Number 2.” So, while conforming to proper academic standards, it is I who runs the risk of appearing “Idiotic.”

In other words, (here’s where a funny person would write something in Apache, or Navajo [Get it? "Other words?"], then translate for you in parenthesis; here’s where I just give you the parenthesis and make you think about how much potential Jimmy Scott has for the “funny”) – I’ll start my sentence again: In other words, the Spoiler Alert was because Brent Mayne, former 15-year MLB veteran catcher, sports a very thin plot for his book The Art of Catching. I mean, it’s about catching. It’s a How-To book, pretty much. How do I learn to catch? a potential reader will ask. “Here’s how,” Brent will say, through his book. And there you have it. Simple book review.

“Jimmy, you risk paying severe disrespect to Brent Mayne, former 15-year MLB veteran,” you say, scowling as only Richard Nixon could on a bad hair day.

So I start again. Brent Mayne, (SPOILER ALERT!) former 15-year MLB veteran catcher, has written and released, on his own, a book called The Art of Catching. (The Spoiler Alert in the most recent case was aimed at those of you who didn’t know that my sentence about Brent Mayne, former 15-year MLB veteran catcher, has written and released, on his own, a book called The Art of Catching.) Now some of you may say, “I don’t care for How-To books with thin plots.” I say back, with kind of a bitchy attitude, “You haven’t read Brent Mayne’s.”

What separates The Art of Catching from any other book, like A Tale of Two Cities or The World According To Garp? I’ll let you in on the secret: The Art of Catching is about catching. The other books have very little to do with baseball, and virtually nothing to do with posture of a receiver behind home plate. See? That’s the difference. While Charles Dickens and John Irving, respectively, wrote their books about people who don’t exist, Brent wrote about himself and Johnny Bench and Roy Campanella and Yogi Berra. These people were so real, they made it into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“I’m sorry,” you say somewhat emphatically, dried toothpaste creasing the right corner (your right, not mine) of your mouth. “Before you go any further with this ‘Brent Mayne as author AND former 15-year MLB veteran catcher’ thing, how do we really know he wrote it by himself?”

It’s time that I provide some full disclosure. I spoke with Brent about this. I asked him point blank, Brent-ster, did you write this trash or what? He said he did. Brent-meister, I alleged with slight disdain for toxic eggwhites, which have nothing to do with this diatribe – they were just on my mind at the time, did you really write this book or did you hire some haunted ghost-whisperer or ghost-writer to pen this as you spent your millions on electric nail polishers? Nope, he said. This book was all Brent.

You could go on about how we’ve been lied to and misled by Manny and A-Rod and the owners and the media and, quite possibly, your mother about steroid use in the game. How do we know Brent’s not doing the same thing? How can we trust him?

We can trust Brent Mayne because, if you read The Art of Catching: The Secrets and Techniques of Baseball’s Most Demanding Position, which you should, you’ll realize that only a catcher with at least 15 years of MLB experience could toss a salad and come up with this concoction of a book.

“All right, all right,” you say, “so what’s in it?”

What? The book? What’s in the book? A typical answer by a typical guy like me would be “I don’t know…stuff” and then I’d go back to playing Tetris on my cell phone. But I’m not a guy like me. I’m a guy like Brent Mayne, author of The Art of Catching and former 15-year MLB veteran catcher. Brent’s a good guy. I know I’m a good guy. So I’ll divulge – SPOILER ALERT!!! – some of the contents of this book, which some of us have subtitled The Secrets and Techniques of Baseball’s Most Demanding Position.

You’ve (actually, all of us) got 12 chapters here, starting with Chapter 1 “History” and ending with Chapter 12 “Conclusion.” In between, the additional 10 chapters cover the nuts & bolts of catching: Receiving, Blocking, Throwing To Bases, Plays At The Plate, Drills. You know. Stuff catchers should know. But there’s also some nifty items baseball fans might gravitate to, even if you’re a baseball fan who thinks catchers are evil. There’s a great chapter that comes after Chapter 10. It’s called Chapter 11: Qualities of a Big Leaguer. This chapter begins with the question that’s been asked through the ages: “How does a kid from Orange County, California or the Dominican Republic get to the big leagues?”

Brent explains his position (in terms of answering the question; he’s already explained how to be a catcher for 10 chapters), stating, basically, you need to play a lot of baseball. A LOT of baseball. While avoiding burnout, you also need to look into a mirror and ask yourself if you’re making the most of your chance. Am I playing Wii right now instead of riding my bike to the batting cages and spending the only $4 I have left for 80 swings? If you want to make it to the big leagues, Brent explains, you need to play baseball. With playing comes confidence. Brent explains that confidence comes from blocking out negativity. Believe in yourself, Brent writes. “You do not need to be a great athlete to play in the big leagues. You do need to feel like you belong there.”

Still not convinced that Brent Mayne’s The Art of Catching is for you? Maybe it’s not. You need to fit his target market to really appreciate this book. For example:

1. You need to be able to read.
2. You need to at least like the game of baseball.
3. You need to find interest in the position of catcher.
4. You need to have the stamina to read 91 pages (there are plenty of pictures, so it’s not really 91 pages full of words).
5. You need to appreciate the words of a man who played 15 years in the big leagues and kept getting jobs each year behind “the dish,” and he wasn’t getting these jobs because he could hit 30 home runs a year (the most he ever hit in a single season was 6, which he did three times).

Did you notice that I had a #1 and a #2 above? I went three better and made it up to #5. That’s high academia for yous. And speaking of high academia even kids could understand, you might want to pick up The Art of Catching: The Secrets and Techniques of Baseball’s Most Demanding Position. It’s a book for kids and coaches, parents and players, who want to become better catchers, better teachers of the game, and more knowledgeable fans. Part manual and tiny bit memoir, The Art of Catching is one of those books that’s just good to have around, like your American Heritage Dictionary or your old copy of Catcher In The Rye. Former 15-year MLB veteran catcher Brent Mayne’s The Art of Catching may not have the plot of J.D. Salinger’s most famous novel, but it’s worth your time just the same.

Want to learn more? Click over to Jimmy Scott’s High & Tight on Monday, June 29th to hear Brent Mayne talk about the book in his own words (I mean, words he used; he doesn’t really “own” any words even though he is a millionaire).

Topics: Brent Mayne, Jimmy Scott's High & Tight, The Art of Catching