Jason Varitek's legacy isn't so easy to define

Some will remember the mitt in Alex Rodriguez's face. Some will remember the celebratory leap with Keith Foulke that made the cover of 'Time,' or the one in Colorado with Jonathan Papelbon.

Me? I'll remember Jason Varitek's impassable left leg.

A man so often described as almost superhuman, ascribed as part of the reason for every good thing the Red Sox have done in their golden age, it is perhaps his one quality that fits the bill. Sitting here, I can not understand how a steam rolling baserunner never once shattered Varitek's leg, never once mangled his knee.

If you've watched this team with any closeness this past decade, you can see it, can't you? The ball's bounding around the outfield. The crowd rises, in sound and in body. The runner slows slightly, takes aim. Varitek readies, eyeing the relay throw while placing that fragile collection of bones and tendons in front of the incoming train.

Eric Byrnes probably remembers. He hurt his knee in their 2003 ALDS crash, and Varitek retrieved the ball from the backstop and tagged Byrnes out before Blondie understood he'd been kept from touching the plate.

Travis Snider might remember. Varitek had barely even set himself on that rainy night in late summer 2009, with Toronto about to take a one-run lead seconds before the tarps came out at Fenway. Snider spun off Varitek like a top, with all the grace of a car hitting a bridge abutment. His helmet almost skidded to the Red Sox on-deck circle.

There was no argument, much like there was none from all but Tek's most ardent fans when the Sox built their 2012 team without him.

It has been, to make it plain, an ugly four years. Perhaps most difficult is that Varitek still looks the part; the defiant 39-year-old who showed his winter workout calluses on Thursday wasn't all that different from all the versions we've watched for years.

But the hits stopped coming. The arm was a joke. The personal stuff got uncomfortable and public; let's just leave it at something happened, same as something happened in that clubhouse the last couple years that The Captain didn't stop.

It's all history now. A footnote to a story that defines the very reason why anyone's a fan of anything. Eight playoff berths. Four no-hitters. Two World Series. But this is not about numbers. After all, isn't the entire Tao of Tek that his numbers were always secondary to everyone else's?

Even the most trite stereotype grew from a kernel of truth, and so it was with Varitek.

My mind jumps to 2001, when the team's late-season collapse came in the absence of Varitek, who'd broken his elbow in June. (Could Tek have saved that group? Unlikely, but no matter.) Then, those pitchers and coaches just kept talking about his preparation. He peaked offensively in 2003-04, then followed it with an even better 2005 after the team stitched a 'C' on his breast.

It was, in hindsight, just more sickly sweet pablum, the kind the Sox have saturated the market with. The scarlet letter took legitimate leadership and spun it into a marketing tool. It didn't change his stance in the clubhouse, but outside it, Varitek achieved transcendence. He became a player the team could not survive without. It's because of that, plus the youth of the fan base's Web savvy chunk, that Varitek leads Carlton Fisk in voting for the greatest catcher ever to wear the home whites at Fenway Park.

On his best day, Varitek isn't Fisk's equal. But that doesn't mean he's not a legend, an unforgettable pillar of what this era was, a part of our collective memory bank forever and the likes of which we will not see around these parts for quite a while.

This time last year, Jason Varitek was trying to learn how to catch Tim Wakefield, a backup and a No. 6 starter each trying to squeeze a couple last drops from their careers. Teammates for pieces of 15 seasons, the two really did run on remarkably disconnected tracks — of Wakefield's more than 3,000 innings with Boston, Varitek caught barely 500.

They will forever be connected, though, tied because of all this franchise did with them and by their timing in leaving the stage. Owner John Henry summed it up well.

"These are two extraordinary players who gave everything," he told reporters in Fort Myers. "When you have two players of their stature who have been such a part of this organization for so long, it's a new chapter when they leave."

That's fine, but Wakefield? Wakefield was a secondary character. Critical at points, but frequently relegated to the background.

Varitek? Even if it took its strength eroding to make you realize how strong it had been, he was the granite. The base on which you could build so much.

Just ask Alex Rodriguez.

Better yet, ask Travis Snider.


Reader Reaction
Not sure how to add your comment? Here's how
Top Jobs
Top Homes