The Roadie (One Sixty-Two: Day 94)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day Ninety-Four: Drew Butera, Minnesota Twins

I’ve never been much of a George Thorogood fan. But last night, as we strolled the grounds of the balloon festival we attended near our home, we heard the blues-guitar riffs and gravelly voice of Mr. Thorogood himself. He was the main musical act at the festival Saturday night, in between Friday’s Air Supply concert and today’s Rick Springfield performance. I’m not embarrassed to say that I’ve actually seen Air Supply in concert before. And I’ll proudly sing along to “Jessie’s Girl” whenever prompted. But Thorogood just never did it for me. Yet, here he was, and my younger girl wanted to see and hear him. So we hung around for a while, long enough to hear “Who Do You Love?” but not long enough to catch “Bad to the Bone.”

By not staying to the end, we weren’t able to watch Thorogood’s roadies clear off the stage after the concert. This might have helped my older daughter and me, as we were asked to be roadies of a sort today. It turned out that my wife had a ton of real-estate work to do before her open house, so she asked us to help set up her show by bringing all the open-house signs to different spots around the neighborhood of the showcased house. It was easy work, really: Inflate some balloons, bring the balloons into the car, put the signs in the car, then drive to assorted corners to place the signs and balloons where others could see them.

We got all the work done in a half-hour. It felt a little like plugging in some electric guitars before a concert. Not a big concert, mind you; balloon-festival size. By the time the open house was ready to begin, the stage was set for Mrs. Hynes to do her thing.

The baseball equivalent of the roadie is probably the backup catcher. Men such as Drew Butera of the Twins spend most games doing whatever needs to be done – warming up relief pitchers, catching the last few innings of a blowout, or charting pitches. A backup like Butera is expected to be dependable and mostly invisible. But when called upon, he’s expected to perform.

Today, Drew Butera stepped in as understudy to the Twins’ lead catcher, reigning MVP Joe Mauer. Hitting from the ninth spot, Butera had a couple of hits – one of them a triple – and a run batted in. It raised his average to .179. Such is the world of backup catchers; rarely are their hitting statistics impressive. But hey, no one ever asks a roadie how many minutes it takes to clear off that stage – just whether or not the job got done.

I did my pre-concert roadie work all right today, but at around 10 o’clock this evening I realized that I had told my wife I’d also pick up the signs after her open house. And I hadn’t done that yet. So in the cool, dark evening, with headlights and a full moon illuminating my path, I drove back to the assorted street corners, found each sign, and placed them in the back of my car. I drove them home, clipped off the ribbon and balloons, and brought the signs inside.

It was invisible work. But it got done – eventually. Like the roadies and the backup catchers, I was working in the shadows, with nothing but the voice of George Thorogood in my head. The stage was clear and the pitchers warmed up, just in time for Jessie’s girl and Joe Mauer to arrive.