In the brilliant sit-down interview Kyle McClellan did last Spring with Yadier Molina and Adam Wainwright there were a whole bunch of really insightful, interesting stories. One of those was brought up by Molina when talking about people who had an influence on his career and that's the story of long-time Cardinals catching instructor Dave Ricketts.
Ricketts, who passed away in 2008 at the age of 73, has a storied history in the Cardinals' organization. Here are three things to know about the man Molina has referred to as a father-like figure and says "changed my life":
1) Ricketts spent parts of 6 years in the Majors between 1963-1970 including serving as Tim McCarver's backup (and as a pinch hitter) on the 1967 World Series Championship team and on the 1968 team that lost to Detroit in the World Series.. He was a backup catcher and pinch hitter for those late 60's Cardinals teams and after a short time with the Pirates in the early 70's, serving as a player in 1970 and as a coach afterward, he returned to the Cardinals in the mid 70's to be their bullpen coach. Ricketts was on the staff, still serving as bullpen coach, for the 1982 World Series Championship team as well as for the 1985 and 1987 World Series teams.
Eventually he moved into the role of minor league catching coordinator...
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2) He was known as an extremely tough, dedicated coach who paid strict attention to details. In 2013 there was a story written by Ken Rosenthal that described the time, while Molina was still a prospect, that Ricketts pulled Molina from an extended spring game because Molina failed to block a ball with a runner on third base. According to the story, Ricketts immediately took Molina to the batting cage to work on the young catcher's blocking skills by using a bat to hit baseballs at him. For anyone wondering, coaches using fungo bats to hit balls in the dirt to catchers is a commonly used drill. It's a way that a coach can simulate game speed and it's less predictable, and therefore more game-like, than using a pitching machine to speed practice work up.
I had a chance to see first-hand how Ricketts taught catching, even though it was only for a day. About a year before he passed away I was working a baseball camp and I was assigned to be Ricketts' assistant instructor for a group of kids that were probably 10- to 14-years-old. I got to be the "crash test dummy" for the drills he was teaching the kids and he didn't pull any punches if he thought I wasn't doing the drill exactly the way he wanted it done! The kids were scared of him because he was intense but I'll tell you without hesitation that those kids and I learned a lot of great things that day, things that I still use in the catching instruction I do even now, 13 years later.
3) There is no arguing with the Cardinals success in developing/improving young catchers under Ricketts ... all you have to do is look at the number of Gold Glove Award winners he coached.
Over the last 30 seasons (1991-2020) Dave Ricketts' catchers have won 16 Gold Gloves. Tom Pagnozzi won three in the early 90's, Mike Matheny won four in the early 2000's (3 with the Cardinals, 1 with the Giants) and Yadier Molina has 9 Gold Gloves in his career, ranking 3rd all-time in Gold Gloves by a catcher behind only Ivan Rodriguez (13) and Johnny Bench (10).
In addition to those Hall of Famers Ricketts also had an impact on earlier Cardinals catchers as well, including Ted Simmons and Darrell Porter.
That's one heck of a group of catchers...