I fell in love with baseball during the summer of '83 when I caught Tom Cheek and Jerry Howarth calling Blue Jay games while spending a couple of weeks at my uncle's cottage. I was hooked.
Around this time, I was playing tee-ball. In my tee-ball league, the catcher was called "back catcher". In primary school, I played for the school's softball team, and the position was still referred to as "back catcher".
Tom and Jerry never called it "back catcher", they just called it "catcher". I'm well aware it's just "catcher", but I still periodically call it "back catcher". It just slips out after being implanted in my cranium at such a young age.
Does anyone know why we called the position back catcher instead of catcher? Is it a Canadian thing?
