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Erik Kratz

Biography

Erik Kratz

Erik Kratz played baseball for 14 different MLB organizations over a 19-year career --- 13 years in the minor leagues and six years total in the big leagues --- many of them as a backup catcher.

Erik Kratz

Books by Erik Kratz

The Tao of the Backup Catcher: Playing Baseball for the Love of the Game
by Tim Brown, with Erik Kratz - Nonfiction, Sports

In baseball, there are superstars, stars and everyday players...and then there are the rest. Within the rest are role players, specialists and journeymen...and then there are the backup catchers. THE TAO OF THE BACKUP CATCHER is about them, the backup catchers, who exist near the bottom of the roster, the end of the bench, and between the numbers in a sport --- and a society --- increasingly driven by cold, hard analytics. It is a story of grown men who once dreamed of stardom and generational wealth. Instead, they were handed a broom and a deeper understanding of who wins and why, who stands tall and who folds, and who will invest their own lives in catching bullpens and the back ends of doubleheaders.