[pbspelly]

My grandfather (Billy Sullivan Jr.) was a pro catcher in the '30s and '40s. When I was a kid he taught me about pitch framing. I still remember him telling me that if the catcher simply moves the glove into the strike zone after catching the pitch, the umpires can usually tell, and they will sometimes get annoyed at the catcher for trying to dupe them. It can be too obvious. The better way, he said, was by positioning your body and holding the glove in such a way that a pitch might look more like it crossed the plate, even if it meant the catcher occasionally dropped the ball because it wasn't caught in the main webbing of the mitt. He probably learned this from his father, who was also an MLB catcher. The stuff I see catchers do on TV looks way too obvious to me, but I have to remind myself that I am seeing it in slow motion, so it is much more apparent that the catcher has moved his mitt at the last moment. It is a weird skill, but has been around for ages.