Serby’s Subway Series Q&A with… Josh Thole

The Post’s Steve Serby caught up with Mets catcher Josh Thole on the eve of a Subway Series to talk knuckleballs, no-hitters and his biggest inspiration:

Q: Your first impressions of R.A. Dickey in spring training 2010.

A: (Chuckle) He’s a knuckleballer. There’s nobody’s personality that better fits being a knuckleball pitcher than this guy.

Q: Elaborate on that.

A: Quirky’s not the right word I’m looking for . … He’s into funny things that you wouldn’t expect Bobby Parnell or somebody that throws 97 to be into. His personality just really fits the repertoire he brings.

Q: What was it like for you the first time you caught him?

A: Well, I didn’t catch the first three balls (smile). It was funny, because I remember it like it was yesterday, we were in Port St. Lucie, and we were on what we call the Six Pack, the bullpen mounds right by the clubhouse there. And, R.A.’s getting ready to take the mound, and I said, “I want to do this. I want to catch this guy.” And so people were like, “No, no! If you have no experience, you don’t want to catch him. You’re gonna get hurt.” I said, “Stop. Let me do this one time.” So now I have everybody’s eyes on me, everybody’s watching. I knows Jeff Wilpon was there for sure. … It was Omar [Minaya as general manager] at the time, he was standing there. A lot of the brass was sitting there watching this guy throw bullpen. I get in a stance and I’m like, “Let’s just try this, see how this works.” First ball, off my chest protector. Next ball, miss on my shinguard. Next ball, it hit the glove and it dropped right down. So OK, I’m getting closer. The fourth one he threw, I feel like he made it a little bit easier for me. Nice and easy. I catch it. And then from that point on, like after the first three balls, I said, “I like doing this!” I knew that I was most likely ticketed for Buffalo at the time and himself as well. So I said, “Well, if he’s going to pitch every five days as a starter and I can’t catch him, that means I’m going to not play every fifth day.” So I said, “You know what? I’m going to follow this guy around until I get really good at catching the knuckleball.” I never played catch with a catcher that spring training.

Q: What is the key to catching his knuckleball?

A: Waiting till the last second, I think, as it is any knuckleball. That advice I got from Doug Mirabelli last year when we were in Colorado. He just said, “Catch the ball at the last possible second.” So, in my mind, I relax my glove, I don’t give him a target, I limp-wrist it, and I just track the ball with my eyes, and where I think it’s going to end up, I just go there.

Q: How is his knuckleball different now from when it was when you first caught him?

A: The command of his knuckleball. He’s now throwing this knuckleball pretty much where he wants. We talk before each inning, he says, “I want to have this knuckleball come down and in to this certain righty.” OK, so, when I call for the knuckleball, I typically don’t move on the plate, I stay right in the middle as much as I can. I give my sign and I just turn myself diagonal towards second as I always do, and then inside, like on the third of the plate inside to the righty. … He’s getting the feel where he can throw it wherever he wants.

Q: What percentage of knuckleballs do you call now?

A: When he has a good one? 95.

Q: How would you sum up what his story is all about?

A: I think it’s a story of work ethic, more than anything. … This guy prepares so off the charts. I mean, for a guy that throws a knuckleball, you don’t think that you need a scouting report. I mean, what can you possibly talk about? You hope you have a good knuckleball, you go out there and do it. This guy has stats like you wouldn’t believe — first-pitch swing percentage, where they put the balls in play — he writes his own defense, where he wants everybody to play.

Q: He’s the only guy that does that?

A: For the most part, yeah.

Q: He has a book?

A: No. He’ll speak with Dan Warthen and Tim Teufel, the pitching coach and the infield coach, and say, “This is what I want this guy to play, this is how I want to do it.” Not many guys do that anymore. Johan moves guys a little bit as he feels … but R.A. has the plan before the game of what he wants to do with guys.

Q: The funniest things you’ve heard hitters say at the plate.

A: (Chuckle) It’s not what they say, it’s the reactions. I get a lot of chuckles. The most commonly-used phrase is, “Holy s—.” That’s what I get from 90 percent of the hitters when he throws a good one. I did hear one guy say, “I’m going with the slow-pitch softball swing today.” I take it serious, but it’s like, if I miss four, five good knuckleballs, what am I supposed to do?

Q: Do umpires say anything?

A: I feel like sometimes they’re so high-stressed back there with him. There will be times I’ll say something, and they won’t answer me back. It’s hard for them. They’re doing it to do the best job they can, no question. But they also have a scoring system. How do you give a scoring system on a knuckleball? I don’t know. I mean, there’s balls that are going to bounce that you’re going to call strikes. It’s a high-stress day for everybody, I think.

Q: What was it like for you when Johan Santan struck out David Freese for his no-hitter?

A: I have to be honest, I don’t even know if he tipped the ball. When I turned around to the umpire to show him the ball just to make sure that, “Hey look, this is over, right?” I mean, it’s something that like you dream of as a catcher as you come up through the system, how awesome it would be for a no-hitter.

Q: What did the umpire say when you showed him the ball?

A: He said, “Out.” And then I just took off running for the mound. I embraced Johan with a big hug, I was like, “Wow, this is real, we just threw a no-hitter, first one ever (by a Met) on top of it.” Some of the best pitchers have come through here.

Q: As a catcher, you have to be a psychologist. Sum up how you deal with R.A.

A: Less is more. I can’t say anything to R.A. that’s going to help him.

Q: Johan.

A: Very similar. With Johan we have to talk about more specific stuff, hitter-to-hitter type of thing. That’s it. I don’t have to babysit him and then pat him on the back or anything.

Q: Jonathon Niese.

A: You have to pick your spots, to chew him out and to back off of him. He’s got some of the best stuff I’ve ever seen, but there’s some times you gotta kick him in the butt and say, “Let’s go,” and there’s some times you have to say, “Hey, everything’s gonna be fine, deep breath here.”

Q: Chris Young.

A: He does his own scouting report and gives it to me. So I just have to be sure we’re on the same page hitter to hitter to hitter, because I don’t like the inconsistency of shaking yes or no out on the mound. I want to be on the same page: Slider, yes. Fastball, yes.

Q: Dillon Gee.

A: Just like Jonny. Sometimes you have to be hard on him. I would say with Dillon, I’m more hard on, just because we have a little bit more long-lasting relationship.

Q: You’ve had three concussions — does that concern you?

A: I’m truly not concerned one little bit. We’re not taking blows to the head time and time and time again. I do have to say, I do feel much more protected with my new helmet and my new batting helmet. I was always Johnny Tough Guy, and had to wear the two-piece helmet. And now, if I were to give any advice to any young catcher, I would say, “Keep that hockey helmet on.” I get foul tips, and I don’t feel anything.

Q: You son Camden turns 1 on July 19. How has fatherhood changed your life?

A: I remember saying something last year when we had him, was our house kind of turned into a sulk-free zone. You realize when you have a child that there’s bigger things in life. This is my job and I have to do it correctly in a professional manner. But when I go home, I’m Dad. He’s to the point where he can read emotions. When I’m pouting and if I’m upset, he’s going to feed off of that. If I’m happy and playing with him, he’s feeding off that.

Q: Would you want him to be a ballplayer?

A: If he wants to be a ballplayer himself, he can be a ballplayer. I’ll let him make that decision on his own. I’m a firm believer in allowing your child to do what they want.

Q: Will you ever get back on Twitter?

A: Done with the Twitter. I’ve had enough of that, I’ll tell you that much. I did it to connect with the fans and stuff like that, and it didn’t pay off.

Q: Why is it not for you?

A: When I’m driving home and somebody says, “I can care less if you drive off the bridge tonight.” The good and the bad, they don’t balance out, I can say that for sure.

Q: Athletes in other sports you admire.

A: Peyton Manning as far as the leadership skills. If I’m fortunate to keep playing baseball for a long, long time, that’s what I want to be. I want to be — to use kind of a cliché term, I guess — the quarterback. Being able to move the infielders, really have command of what’s going on out there. I feel like as the year is going on this year, I’m getting better at it. But, it’s the conviction … everybody trusts him.

Q: Biggest obstacle or adversity you had to overcome growing up?

A: The hardest thing for me was that I was never the best player in my grade per se, and my father ran the Little League. I was dealing with the pressures of, “You’re playing because your dad is the coach, your dad is running the Little League,” that type of thing. And I dealt with that up until I was in high school, then my dad kind of stepped away and just let me go do my thing.

Q: Biggest influence growing up.

A: My father (Mike). He demanded a lot of me when I was younger, because he wanted to see me play baseball.

Q: Why did he want to see you play baseball?

A: Because he was a baseball player, but never had the opportunity to make it because he lost his father at a young age so he never really had a father figure. This is my personal outlook, he’s never told me this. He died, I think when my dad was like 10. He played ball, but he never had a dad to go to the batting cage to play catch with. So he wanted to be that dad, to say, “Let’s go to the batting cage, let’s go do this, let’s go do that, let’s go hit.” And he did that for me. And he was hard on me, because he wanted to see me succeed. I can tell you countless times of we left the batting cage because I didn’t have a good batting session? We would get about two miles down the road, turn around and go back and hit some more. It’s a crazy thought process almost. Had he not done that, who knows what I would be doing?

Q: Breese, Ill., 4,500 people.

A: It was a small-town mentality, everybody knew everybody’s business. I want to say it was easy, but it was hard. Because as I got older, like into high school, I could do nothing wrong, because everybody knew everybody’s business. It’s like something happens at an underage drinking party, everybody knows about it, so I had to stay away from that, as much as you can obviously.

Q: What was it like for a kid from Breese to be drafted by the New York Mets?

A: A bit of a reality check. I grew up, my mom did everything for me. She did my laundry, cooked my food, packed my bags, and now I’m 18 years old and I go to Port St. Lucie, Florida, in the Holiday Inn, and I have to figure out how to manage my money, do my laundry, iron my clothes, wash my clothes, find dinner, find breakfast, find lunch, and still, if you want to call it, doing your job at that point.