Today, Jason Varitek will officially retire after 15 major league seasons. All of those seasons were played with the Boston Red Sox. Eventually, Varitek would be named the first captain of the team since Jim Rice. When the announcement was made that Varitek would be wearing the ‘C’ on his shirt after the historic 2004 season, no one questioned the Red Sox decision. Varitek deserved that honor. Unlike most people, I believe that Varitek also deserves the honor of enshrinement in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
His offensive numbers do not compare to any other catcher’s in the Hall. His are far worse. But Varitek has done so much more than some of them. For one, he has caught four no-hitters, which is a Major League record. On this stat alone I think that Varitek should have a home in Cooperstown. A record like that should not go unnoticed.
Some of the things that Varitek has done for the Red Sox pitching staff don’t even go on the stat sheet. The preparation that this man put into each and every game was amazing. He knew what pitches hitters looked for and when they looked for them, when runners liked to steal and so much more. If preparation was a statistic that would get a player into the Hall, Varitek would be a first-ballot inductee.
That isn’t to say that the preparation that Varitek made did not translate into the games. When Varitek was behind the plate, pitchers were calm, composed and didn’t have to work as hard as most because Varitek did all of the thinking for them. Seldom did you see a pitcher shake off a sign that Tek threw down.
The fact is that these things don’t get noticed, numbers do. This is a special case where the writers need to look past numbers and see how much this guy did for his career-long team off the stat sheet.
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