As iconic baseball announcer, Red Barber, would have said - “The batter’s in the catbird seat” meaning that he is in an enviable position to control what happens next. In my formative years as a baseball fan (and never much of a player) and long before moving to Red Sox Nation, I was an ardent Brooklyn Dodgers fan and strident foe of the New York Yankees (as I am today). This was odd in Peoria, Illinois, where you had to be for the Cubs, White Sox, or Cardinals. In those days in the 1950s, the World Series often meant the Dodgers versus the Yankees, and I routinely developed a severe sore throat and cough at that time of year in order to stay home from school and listen to the games - with Red Barber doing the play-by-play, first for the Dodgers and later for the Yankees. Red is credited by some with coining “the catbird seat” expression along with other folksy descriptors like “rhubarb” for heated on-field altercations and “tearin’ up the pea patch” for a team on a winning streak. He is even credited as the “catbird seat” source by James Thurber in his 1942 short story titled “The Catbird Seat.” However, Red’s daughter later claimed that her father did not begin using this phrase until after he had read Thurber’s short story. Red himself remembered that he first heard the phrase in a poker game in Cincinnati. My last fond recollections of Red Barber were his weekly NPR radio conversations about sports, gardening, and other topics with Bob Edwards in the 1990’s.
Last week I blogged about the northern mockingbird, probably the most notorious mimic among North American birds. As I mentioned then, I have only seen two northern mockingbirds near our home all year. But, the grey catbird, another member of the mimic thrush family, has been in abundance including in the thick shrubs next to our screened porch. So much so that my morning coffee seems always accompanied by a large pack of mewling cats. The catbirds turned up in early May to compete with the Baltimore Orioles for the grape jelly that I put out and have been with us ever since. Soon our catbirds will be moving south to Florida or the Caribbean, but research suggests that the same birds will return to our yard next spring.
The catbird seat expression seems to relate to the image of the catbird perching at the top of a tree and singing his mimicking, mocking song to proclaim his control over his own fate. But maybe the expression should have been the “song sparrow seat” or the “cardinal seat” or even the “titmouse seat,” all of whom are more likely to sing from the tops of trees. Catbirds tend to skulk about in dense underbrush like that around our porch. In fact, their scientific name, Dumetella, means “small thicket.” Their most common song, which can go on for as long as 10 minutes, is truly catlike, but it can be accompanied by a large repertoire of other songs and sounds. When I said that I wanted to learn to recognize more bird songs and calls, someone advised me to start with the catbird because surely I knew how a cat sounds.
At times I have found my new familiarity with the catbird’s song annoying. However, reflecting on the string of associations from catbirds to Red Barber to the Brooklyn Dodgers to PeeWee Reese and Duke Snider to my first baseball bat, a Jackie Robinson Louisville Slugger, I find my heart warmed drinking my morning coffee surrounded by cats in the bushes. That’s being in the catbird seat for me!