Jeff Reed (baseball)


Jeffrey Scott Reed is a former Major League Baseball catcher who played for the Minnesota Twins, Montreal Expos, Cincinnati Reds, San Francisco Giants, Colorado Rockies and Chicago Cubs. He batted left-handed and threw right-handed. He is currently a coach with the Elizabethton Twins.

Career

Reed was the Twins' first-round pick in the 1980 amateur draft.
Despite playing for 17 seasons in the majors, he was usually relegated to a backup role. Reed rarely appeared in more than 100 games per year. He was widely regarded as a solid defensive catcher.
On February 3, 1987, Reed was traded from the Twins along with Neal Heaton, Yorkis Perez and Al Cardwood to the Expos for Jeff Reardon and Tom Nieto.
On September 16, 1988, Reed, filling in for an injured Bo Díaz, caught Tom Browning's perfect game in the Cincinnati Reds' 1-0 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers at Riverfront Stadium. In his autobiography, Browning credited Reed as an integral part of the performance: "He did a phenomenal job, especially considering what was at stake in the later innings."
During the late innings of Browning's perfect game, Reed had to continually slow down his pitcher. According to Browning's book, Reds manager Pete Rose was worried that his pitcher was working too quickly, which could lead to an errant pitch. At one point in the game, Reed stood up and raised his arms, palms facing out, to signal Browning to slow down.
Despite his relative anonymity, Reed enjoyed a cult following in the city of Scranton, Pennsylvania throughout his career. A group of young baseball fans chose Reed as their alternative hero to more popular choices such as Don Mattingly or Ken Griffey Jr. The motto of the fan club: "We support the role playing Jeff Reed because in life, who among us is truly a superstar, and how many of us are the role players?" Reed remains hugely popular in Scranton to this day, almost twenty years after his professional career ended.