Framing Buster's Legacy
The retired Giants catcher did one thing better than anyone in the game, and because of this he changed it for good
In hindsight, it's easy to see that Buster Posey's retirement was baseball's worst-kept secret toward the end of the 2021 season.
Three separate incidents stick out to me as indicators: His quiet and meaningful exchange at home with his old battery mate Madison Bumgarner during the Giants' final stretch of the regular season.
The way he came out of the dugout with some of his gear still on and walked around the field at China Basin one more time to soak it in while his other teammates disappeared into the clubhouse after the Giants notched their franchise-best 107th win on the final game of the season.
And the way he stuck right by the side of emerging ace Logan Webb in the NLDS game one after Webb pitched one of the more dominating performances in Giants playoff history. It was Yoda with a new young padawan, sitting quietly, letting his guy have the moment.
Most sports scribes (including me) will make the mistake of falling right into the pit of a) acting a little passive-aggressively resentful over Buster's early exit, leaving money and at least a handful of productive years of baseball on the table. And b) hand-wringing over whether or not he'll be enshrined into baseball's hall of fame, as if that matters.
As if that place isn't filled with some of the world's most disastrous scumbags, racists, rapists, cheats voted in by a cohort that is (still) almost exclusively white men over sixty—while guys like Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmeiro, Dick Allen, Omar Vizquel, Kenny Lofton, Sammy Sosa, Hal McRae, Johan Santana (all of whom are minorities) and Mark McGwire, and Roger Clemens—a cohort so dominant in their respective eras that it gives the arbitrary faux-puritanical nature of the selection process such a tarnished Costasian veneer that the story is more about who doesn't get in and the timeless folly of such efforts at this point.
For the record, though, Buster Posey will be in the Hall of Fame alongside Johnny Bench, Gary Carter, Pudge Rodriguez, Carlton Fisk, Mike Piazza. Yogi Berra, Bill Dickey, Gabby Hartnett, Ted Simmons, Buck Ewing, Roy Campanella, Roger Bresnahan, Ray Schalk, Rick Ferrell, and Biz Mackey. Of the aforementioned legendary backstops only Berra (10) and Campanella (5) won more World Series than Buster.
Of his contemporaries who would (maybe) hope to be enshrined, there's Joe Mauer, a slightly better hitter in his prime, and Yadier Molina, a slightly better defender—though neither is forced to stroll by the blinding sheen of the stuffed trophy case as Buster who won literally every postseason award one can, and sometimes in multitudes.
But there's one difference that sets Buster above all others in the entire history of baseball—and that was his ability to control the narrative of the game by using his nerd brain to inform every at-bat and to execute that by framing every pitch to near-perfection.
Though they're not overlooked, it's telling that Buster caught two no-hitters and one perfect game in an era when that just doesn’t happen—much less multiple times to one catcher.
His pinpoint execution and calm, consistent demeanor was his trademark: "You were 60 feet from me in my greatest and worst moments in baseball. Your levelheaded approach to the game inspired me and every other player that set off in this Giants locker rooms through the years. I bet you had no idea," Barry Zito wrote in a heartfelt social media post yesterday.
The thing is, I bet Buster knew exactly what he meant, to the team, to the game. 2008's fifth-overall pick out of Florida State was never an underdog; he was always going to be a golden child, a savant, one man perfectly placed in an era that suited his skill set best.
The best Giants teams of Buster's tenure put the baseball in play more and quicker than all others in the game.
That wasn't an accident.
Watching Buster as defensive coordinator in the squat switch strategies within an at-bat; seeing him set up either to assure his pitcher or deceive a batter or an ump (or all three at the same time), plus his ability to call a sinker on a fastball count, a slider on a curveball count, and a what-the-fuck high changeup on a 0-0 count when the hitter's looking fastball—is his legacy.
It's an analytics world, yes, we know this—but Buster somehow also knew the 30-99% human error that goes into every at-bat, and he either made the best of it or exploited it, every time.
Buster will always be the best catcher in Giants history. His name will be up there with Mays, McCovey, Matthewson, and Bonds. If you ever need a reminder of what he did for his team—for baseball—do yourself a favor and watch the every-out compilation of Matt Cain's perfect game.
It's Buster, not Cain, controlling the game, pulling the strings. It's so seamless it almost looks like they’re just out having a catch.
Turns out, they were.