This is part one of a two-part column.
Josh Thole is currently laboring in minor league baseball, as a catcher with the Tulsa Drillers, but his experiences in baseball reach a lot further than the Texas League. I spoke with Thole recently and asked him about his career thus far.
Thole was drafted by the New York Mets in the 13th round of the 2005 Major League Baseball June Amateur Draft from Mater Dei High School in Breese, IL. He made his major league debut on Sept. 3, 2009, and played 17 games with the Mets that month. It was during Spring Training the following year that Thole decided to become a specialist and learn to catch a knuckleball.
“It came about when I was with the Mets and they signed R.A. Dickey in 2010,” Thole explained. “I was going to Triple-A that year to catch everyday and he was going to be one of our stating pitchers, so I just learned how to catch him. I ended up catching him the rest of his career and we got traded together from the Mets to the Blue Jays, and spent four years there, so it’s worked out,”
Thole admitted the decision to become a knuckleball catcher came when he realized it may be his best route to the major leagues, but it wasn’t going to be easy.
“It wasn’t by choice, but if I wanted to catch on R.A.’s start days, I had to learn how to catch him, so I just did it,” Thole said. “It took a lot of work and by no means was I even close to mastering it in the beginning.”
I asked Thole why none of the other Mets catchers stepped up to the task of catching Dickey.
“A lot of them were older guys and they didn’t want to do it and didn’t want any part of it,” he said. “I was the young buck and that’s just how it went down.”
Thole and Dickey, a former Tulsa Drillers pitcher, played for the Mets three seasons before being traded together to Toronto in 2013. The 2012 season was the best for Dickey as his knuckleball was nearly unhittable.
“I was lucky enough to see his knuckleball get better from year to year,” Thole said. “The 2012 season speaks for itself with him winning the Cy Young Award.”
That in itself is quite an honor for Thole, to be able to say he was the primary catcher for a Cy Young Award winner.
“It’s something you can never take away from a guy,” he said. “I caught the bulk of his starts and it’s an honor to be put into that category.”
Playing in New York City can be quite daunting for any young baseball player, some enjoy the experience while others struggle.
“I loved it,” he said. “It was the only thing I knew up to that point. The Mets did a very good preparing us for the media coming through the development phases of not just being a player but how to handle the media, how to handle situations, taking it when you mess up something on the field, be accountable, stand in front of your locker, and I’ve always done that and it never haunted me, thank goodness.”
Thole said as much as he loved New York, Toronto wasn’t much different for him, plus being the only team in Canada helped win fans from across the country.
“It was like New York City, but maybe a little smaller in scope because we were the baseball team and not a hockey team, and hockey took top tier there,” he said. “But you have 30 million people behind you every single day when you step on the field. The runs in 2015 and 16, when we went to the playoffs, it was every night 60,000 people jammed into the Rogers Center with millions of people watching it on TV, so that was a fun time in my career.”
Next week we’ll continue our conversation with Josh Thole and look at where his career is today playing in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization.