Jason Varitek
Sky-HIgh 'Tek
August 2005 | Boston Baseball Magazine | By John Thomase
They are two moments, two snapshots, frozen in time. And they do a better job of illustrating what Jason Varitek means to the Boston Red Sox than an encyclopedia of words.
Both come from the 2004 season. The first is one of the iconic images of that campaign, Varitek driving his mitt into the face of Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez. Varitek looks part William Wallace, part granite fortress, exhorting his teammates into battle while establishing a line he would maintain through sheer force of will.
The second depicts an equally emotional Varitek on his knees, his face buried in the Busch Stadium sod after the final out of the World Series. The shot of him leaping into Foulke’s arms was more widely disseminated, but no image conveys the raw emotion of that moment like a prostrate Varitek finally exhaling amid the exhaustion and euphoria.
A pair of ground-zero moments in Red Sox history, each with Varitek at their epicenter.
“It’s not every day that you’re lucky enough to find a player who embodies everything you want a franchise to be,” said general manager Theo Epstein. “When you’re lucky enough to have that player, you don’t let him get away. You lock him up for as long as you can and you make him the rock of your franchise.”
Varitek arrived in 1997 as a possible catcher of the future. Eight years later, he has outlasted Mo Vaughn, Nomar Garciaparra, Pedro Martinez, and Derek Lowe. He’ll probably be here beyond Manny Ramirez and Curt Schilling, too. Faced with the dilemma of which of their Big Four free agents to sign last winter, the Red Sox bid three of them adieu and inked Varitek to a four-year, $40 million contract.
He responded by earning his first starting All-Star nod and establishing himself at age 33 as the best all-around catcher in baseball, bettering Ivan Rodriguez, Jorge Posada, and Mike Piazza.
He’s the heart, soul, blood, guts and brain of the Red Sox. They may not be good enough to repeat, but it won’t be for lack of leadership.
“The word ‘captain’ gets thrown around loosely sometimes, but he is”, said pitcher Matt Clement. “And to top it all off, he’s clutch too. There’s no better combo.”
C is for Captain
He wears the captain’s C, but it doesn’t begin to describe Varitek’s impact on the Red Sox.
He plays baseball’s most demanding position without complaint, his body beaten and his faculties drained each night before being reborn the next day. Sisyphus had it easier.
“He’s a special player,” Clement said. “Unless you’re on this team, you don’t realize the stuff that isn’t out there – not the home runs or throwing a guy out stealing, but the communication with the pitchers, the taking of the extra base when it’s there, getting the guys ready to go in the clubhouse.”
While Varitek was born with some of these traits, others he had to learn. He remembers being shocked at his total cluelessness the first time he squatted behind the plate at Double-A Port City in 1995.
“I didn’t even know what I didn’t know,” Varitek said. “I had no footwork, no technique. There were so many things I had to improve on.”
Chief among them were the mental drain of handling a pitching staff, skills that now stand as his hallmark.
“Learning how to control the mental drain has been a learning process,” he said. “It’s an easy game to second guess. You can’t constantly beat yourself up.”
Nor can you take it out on your pitchers. With a boulder of a torso, intimidation comes easily to Varitek. But intimidation doesn’t get the best out of everyone, not on a staff that runs the gamut from the soft-spoken Clement to the fiery Schilling.
“You’ve got to find out who you can push, who you can pat on the back, who you need to say nothing to,” Varitek said. “ I learned in college that yelling at people all the time doesn’t work.”
Varitek now lords over the Red Sox clubhouse as it’s resolute leader. When Manny Ramirez refused to pinch hit in Philadelphia in 2003, Varitek and Kevin Millar called him out over it. When the Red Sox seemed a bit too pleased with themselves after a September victory in Yankee Stadium that same season, Varitek demanded silence in the postgame clubhouse to remind them work remained. When Pedro Martinez refused to speak after his starts, Varitek always made himself available.
Given Varitek’s position, it should come as no surprise that when the 2004 Sox needed a dramatic wakeup call, he was front and center.
In Your Face
It still rankles the Red Sox that management didn’t even want to play last July 24th. So what if the team was battling injuries, ineffectiveness, and a beat-up bullpen? So what if a night of rain had soaked the field? So what if the Sox had lost three of four and were in danger of falling 10 ½ games behind the Yankees in the AL East?
New York was in town and the Red Sox wanted to play. JasonVaritek wanted to play.
“We didn’t need a day off,” Varitek said. “We needed momentum.”
Momentum arrived in the third inning when Bronson Arroyo hit Rodriguez with a sinker. A-Rod took exception, Varitek interceded, and in the melee that ensued, the fortunes of two teams changed.
“It was nice to see the guy you know is the leader of the team on the field sticking up for his teammates,” Arroyo said. “He was fighting for us.”
Over a year later, Varitek downplays the significance of the fisticuffs.
“If someone’s yelling at your pitcher, you stand in the middle of it,” he said. “Plain and simple. I’m done with it. It was what it was.”
But it was so much more.
“We had so much talent on that team, playing better was unavoidable,” said Schilling. “It was either sink or swim, and I just don’t think we could have sunk with the people we had around here. You could say we needed that.”
Varitek provided the lift for a talented team that was spinning its wheels.
“He’s the captain and he basically said enough’s enough,” said former Red Sox reliever Alan Embree. “We weren’t going to be walked on.”
Everyone knows what happened from there. The Red Sox traded Garciaparra, got hot, rode their momentum past the Yankees in the greatest postseason comeback ever, and ended their World Series drought at 86 years.
And when it was officially ended, Varitek fell to his knees, his quest finally complete.
“That was relief and joy,” he said. “All at the same time.”
Staying Power
He’s probably not heading to Cooperstown, but Varitek has cemented his place in the pantheon of Red Sox greats. His no-trade clause kicks in on September 24th, the eighth anniversary of his Boston debut. He will then be assured of staying here through 2008, if he so desires, at which point he will have spent more seasons in Boston (12) than Carlton Fisk.
“It’s very rare for a player to be able to reach that level,” said Epstein. “We feel that loyalty should be rewarded. That’s a good policy. By definition, if a player is here eight years straight, he’s given up at least two of his free agency years, if not more, to be here. I think that was a worthy compromise. It’s a credit to Scott Boras, who initially came up with the idea.”
He’s just the third team captain since 1966, joining Carl Yastrzemski and Jim Rice. And it may be a while before the Sox bestow the distinction on someone else.
“Everyone knew he was the captain before it was actually acknowledged, but I think it’s a great honor that the Red Sox were able to put the ‘C’ on his jersey and officially call him the captain of the team,” said Tim Wakefield. “It means a tremendous amount not only to me personally, but to the team, and most important, to the city of Boston and Red Sox Nation.”
Varitek never wanted to be anywhere else. And neither did his wife Karen nor their three daughters.
“I just had the feeling deep down that we were going to be back, “ Karen Varitek said on Christmas Eve when her husband signed his contract. “We honestly never entertained the thought of going somewhere else.”
Red Sox fans have a hard time envisioning him elsewhere, too. But that’s Okay. Because Jason Varitek is here to stay. And whether he’s fighting for his team or collapsing in joy, his goals haven’t changed.
“The biggest thing is having the opportunity to develop another championship team,” Varitek said. “That’s what we do here and that’s what we’ve done. We have the foundation. Hopefully we can do it again.”