A few interesting facts about catchers and the Hall of Fame. I think these will help illuminate a growing problem.

For instance, were you aware that that the average Hall of Fame catcher caught under 1,600 career games? Only since the World War II have catchers' careers stretched toward the 2,000 mark. Seven of the top-ten catchers on the all-time games-caught list, including each of the top-five, began their careers in 1968 or later.

Beyond mere durability, the list of career hitting leaders among catchers is also dominated by those who played out their careers in the latter half of the 20th Century. This includes all ten of the top-ten home run hitters, seven of the top-ten RBI leaders, and seven of the top-ten in Total Bases.

Defense also can't be ignored. All of top-ten catchers in career putouts played after the war. All ten of the top catchers in average putouts per game are also Baby Boomers and Gen Xers. The same is true of career fielding percentage and total chances.

Now obviously many of these numbers are skewed. The eras in question were hardly equal in terms of season length, available equipment, game strategy, offensive production, even the dimensions of the field and the rules of the game. We could equalize for some of these, but that's not the point.

The point is simply that you are now watching the Golden Age of catching. No, they don't call their own games anymore, but how much of that is a function of megalomaniac managers who try to control every aspect of the game or multi-millionaire pitchers who are going to let some backstop control their fate? Quite a bit I suspect. Ever since Elston Howard and Tim McCarver, through Bill Freehan and Johnny Bench, all the way up to Mike Piazza and Charles Johnson, modern catchers are bigger, healthier, more powerful, faster, and better equipped.

Hey, maybe Ray Schalk and Roger Bresnahan would still be exceptional catchers today, but the fact is that they simply can't compare to modern catchers in any way. The position and the game have changed that much.

Despite these facts, only four catchers who began their careers after World War II - Johnny Bench, Yogi Berra, Roy Campanella and Carlton Fisk - have been inducted into the Hall of Fame. Subtracting the five year waiting period needed in order to be eligible, that's a fifty-year span with just four Hall-quality catchers. That's a bit odd, don't you think? This is particularly true when we note that the previous fifty-year span, from 1896 through 1945, produced nearly twice as many, seven to be exact.

For some reason, despite all evidence to the contrary, voters for the Hall of Fame continue to view modern catchers as poor second-cousins of "real" catchers. No player has been more affected by this than Gary Carter.