Imagine you have a personal catcher. He is the guy who catches you. Like sure, he catches the other guys too, but sometimes they might throw to the backup to give him a break. Not you. You will only throw to him.
You understand each other perfectly. He always knows exactly what you need, whether that's a slap in the face while you're too in your own head during a game or the answer to a crossword question (which you do together every day). Yeah, you have all these little daily rituals together. At minimum you talk to him every single day - gamedays, practice days, off days - even if it's just to exchange the day's Spelling Bee results.
This works so well that you pitch your way into a Cy Young Award-winning season. To thank him, and to commemorate your special pitcher-catcher bond, you commission two custom Rolex watches. You keep one for yourself and give the other one to him. He loves it so much that he wears it for his engagement photoshoot with his fiancée.
Then the team calls up a new catcher, because it turns out he can hit, at least a little. And here's the thing with your special guy: he's a good catcher, he understands you on this cosmic, all-consuming level, but he cannot fucking hit. He's one of those old school catchers who's maxed out on defensive skill and just doesn't have much left for offense. Teams used to accept that, for the right catcher. But it's harder now, when offensive production matters so much.
They try to keep you pitching to him for a little bit, but the other guy is just doing so much better so far as the rest of the team is concerned. Slowly, and then not so slowly, your guy becomes the backup. The new guy is catching the majority of the team's games, including yours. And of course you want to win above all, you care about the team's record much more than your own, so you swallow down whatever you might actually feel about that and you throw to the new guy and ignore all the little ways he doesn't handle you exactly right.
Every so often, though, even the new guy needs a break. Your guy gets back behind the plate on a day you're scheduled to start. And it's like a bunch of things that were slightly out of joint in the universe slot properly back into place again.
Anyway, that's the context for the tender hand touch in the photo above.
