It’s a tough job being a catcher. You are the captain of the defense because you can see the whole field and you are in charge of the pitching staff. In essence you are an additional coach added to the staff. There are a lot of things we can cover when you are running the show from behind the dish and today we are going to focus on giving a good target to the pitcher.
The target you give is extremely important when you are a catcher. The pitcher is aiming for the inside of your mitt and it’s important that you don’t move around too much because you don’t want to throw off his focus. The most common way to give a target is to have your 4 fingers pointed towards the sky and your thumb to the side. However this can put your wrist in an uncomfortable position and it also flexes the top part of your forearm.
It is imperative that your glove arm is loose in order to catch the ball most effectively and science shows us that loose muscles react quicker than tight muscles. Therefore once the pitcher gets his sign and begins his windup I suggest that you rotate your wrist a quarter turn and point your thumb towards the sky. This slight motion should not distract your pitcher and it will also loosen the muscles in your forearm. An added bonus is the fact that now you can easily catch inside pitches to right handed batters because your glove is already in the correct position to receive it and in my opinion this is the hardest pitch to catch.
