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Pure Velocity. Few athletes have the protean talent to do that, which is why there have been only a handful of authentic superstar catchers in the chronicle of baseball. Roger Bresnahan, who teamed with Christy Mathewson on the old New York Giants, was probably the earliest, and Bill Dickey of the 1930s New York Yankees was possibly the greatest. Others in the pantheon are Gabby Hartnett, Detroit's Mickey Cochrane, and an earlier Redleg, Ernie Lombardi, whose style and skills closely parallel Bench's own. It may well be that Josh Gibson of the Homestead Grays in the old Negro League was better than any of them. Then add the Brooklyn Dodger Blockbuster Roy Campanella (TIME Cover, Aug. 8, 1955) and the Yankees' impish Yogi Berra and the list of supercatchers is completed. As for the mental-retardation image, four of the modern seven—Dickey, Hartnett, Cochrane and Berra—became big league managers. There are tragic reasons why the others did not. Gibson's color was—in his era—enough to keep him out of the big leagues. Lombardi, a gregarious but incomprehensible figure, slit his throat. And Campanella, who might well have become the first black manager in major-league baseball, was paralyzed from the waist down in a 1958 automobile accident (last week he was rushed to the hospital with a serious lung congestion stemming from his paralysis).
Bench matches any of the greats. His physical assets are spectacular. He is broad (making him a good target for the pitcher), strong and agile. He can hold seven baseballs in one simian paw. But, most impressive, he throws a single baseball harder than the limits of human ability would seem to allow. "I wish," says one wistful Redleg pitcher, "that I could throw the way he does." Bench once proudly announced: "I can throw out any base runner alive." His challenge was quickly met by the best alive, the Cardinals' Lou Brock, who at the time had 21 straight stolen bases to his credit. Brock did not make it 22. Against the Dodgers, Bench picked a runner off second base, cut down another at third, and then, after vacuuming a perfectly executed bunt, rocketed a throw to first to end the inning.
To augment the pure velocity of his arm, Bench has trained himself to do two things: catch the ball with one hand, and cock and fire from a crouch. Originally Bench was a traditionalist; he caught the ball with his left and covered it with his right. Taking the cue from the older Hundley, Bench switched to a hinged catcher's mitt that enabled him to snare a pitch with one hand and thus keep his right hand free —from harm, as well as to throw more quickly. Then he practiced for hour upon hour transferring the ball swiftly from glove to throwing hand while still in the crouch, always making sure that he grasped the ball exactly across the seams so that his pegs to second and third never curved or faded. "I don't even think about it now," he says. "No matter what way the ball comes in, I've got it across the seams by the time I get it back, ready to throw."