SARASOTA, Fla. — Good catchers are con men and mind-messers. Their biggest job is to make a hitter look stupid. You want a fastball? Here comes a slider. You're thinking slider? Hit this fastball.

        Suddenly, instead of guessing what the pitcher is throwing, you're wondering what the catcher might call. Your mind swims, and your knees buckle. You're looking at strike three, stupid. Good catchers can do this.

        “First at-bat last night,” Jason LaRue is saying. “Twins first baseman, (David) Ortiz. Big Sweat (Reds left-hander Dennys Reyes) gets him to swing at two bad sliders. He takes a couple fastballs, then we come back with a slider to strike him out.

Jason LaRue (AP photo) | ZOOM |

        “Next at-bat. Two fastballs freeze him, because he's looking for a slider. Now he's looking for the fastball. Sweat strikes him out with a slider.”

        You hear about the way catchers “handle” pitchers. Purists grasp the concept. Casual fans run for the remote. Catcher calls a pitch. Pitcher throws it. It works, or it doesn't. It's not an art form.

        “It's an art form,” says Bob Boone, who would know. Ask Boone, “Who was the best catcher you ever saw when it came to handling pitchers?” Boone answers, “Me.”

        Reds pitchers already like how LaRue handles them, and he's only had 67 games to work on it. They don't shake him off a lot. They don't walk around the mound wondering what his problem is. They know if they want to waste an 0-2 pitch in the dirt, LaRue will block it.

        Says Pete Harnisch: “The relationship (between pitcher and catcher) is huge. You got a catcher who has no idea what you're doing, it breaks your whole rhythm.”

        Late in his 19-year career, when he was catching for California, Boone was so good at running a game that his managers sometimes would tell young pitchers, “Just throw what he calls.”

        Boone's playing career spanned 1972-90 with Philadelphia, California and Kansas City.

        Boone has worked with LaRue for three years. Given Boone's attention to detail, being his catcher must be like painting ceilings when Michelangelo's arm gets tired. LaRue spent a week at Boone's house in the offseason two years ago, just talking about catching. What a wild seven days that must have been.

        “To me, the whole game is that pitcher-catcher relationship,” Boone said. “So many games are won and lost by making the correct pitch selection.”

        It's no coincidence the Reds' ERA was lower in the last two years with LaRue catching. It also helped LaRue that former backstop Eddie Taubensee was, well, lacking, when it came to handling pitchers. Compared to Taubensee, LaRue is Boone.

        But LaRue puts in lots of time talking to Reds pitchers and studying hitters. “I'm not just going out there throwing down fingers. I want those guys to be comfortable with what they're throwing.”

        As Harnisch put it, “If we throw a pitch we don't really want to throw, it ain't gonna be a very good pitch.”

        Said Boone: “You might have decided on the wrong pitch, but you want that pitcher to throw it with conviction. If he's got any doubt, that's when you hang curveballs.”

        In 1972, Steve Carlton won 27 games and the Cy Young Award. The next season, he had a new starting catcher. That would have been, uh, Bob Boone. Carlton lost 20. “Guess whose fault that was,” Boone said.

        E-mail: pdaugherty@enquirer.com. Past columns at Enquirer.com/columns/daugherty.

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