Salem Red Sox catcher maps his life in ink

Blake Swihart’s left arm celebrates his life in ink. A complex mosaic of tattoos honors his father, mother, brother, sister and late grandfather. A yellow rose pays homage to his native Texas. A hot air balloon salutes New Mexico, where he was a three-sport star as a teen. A baseball scene depicts the view down the third base line from behind home plate.

On his right arm, though? No tattoos.

“That’s my baby,” he says.

His throwing arm, in other words. The rifle that first revealed to him his potential, the limb that can still wing a football 60 yards, the weapon that has made him the most feared defensive catcher in the Carolina League.

Swihart, Salem’s 21-year-old, switch-hitting backstop, closed the regular season Monday by throwing out a Lynchburg base stealer by at least 5 feet. That improved his caught-stealing percentage to a circuit-topping 42 percent. He also leads Carolina League catchers with 88 assists.

Not bad for a guy who didn’t start catching regularly until he turned pro in 2011.

“From start to finish, he would get strong consideration for team MVP,” Salem skipper Billy McMillon said. “How he handled the staff, how he virtually eliminated the running game from the opposition, and to hit .300 — I’m going to call it .300 — in this league is not an easy thing to do, particularly for a catcher.”

The lone midseason all-star still with the club, Swihart finished the regular season with a .298 average, good for fifth in the circuit. He came to the plate in the eighth inning Monday needing one hit to reach .300 and worked a 3-1 count against Lynchburg reliever John Cornely.

“I put in my head that I was going to swing,” said Swihart, who was well aware how close he was to the magic number. “If it’s way off the plate, just swing through it, get another pitch.”

Cornely, though, threw the 3-1 pitch about 3 feet outside. Defying his own mental instructions, Swihart took the pitch for ball four.

“I mean, what can you do?” Swihart said with a smile. “Instinct took over.”

Instincts have never been a problem for Swihart, no matter the sport. At 8, he was the top-ranked wrestler in the nation for his age group. He won more than 200 trophies on the mat before giving up that sport when he was 10.

In Little League, Swihart played above his age group — and still hit more home runs than anybody. He took all-metro honors as a three-guard in high school basketball. He was in line to become the starting quarterback as a varsity sophomore before his father forced him to give up football to concentrate on baseball.

Swihart knew he had a bright future on the diamond since the eighth grade. One day, while throwing in a bullpen at the Albuquerque Baseball Academy, he was clocked at 86 mph.

That night, he went to an Albuquerque Isotopes game and saw a reliever throwing 87.

“Dad, I can do that!” he said.

“Work hard at it,” replied Arlan Swihart, a 6-foot-7, 300-pound former basketball player at Southern Illinois. “And maybe you can.”

“After that, I just had that mindset: I’m doing it,” Swihart said. “I did something every day to get better. I remember teachers, they ask you what you want to be when you grow up. I’d always put ‘professional baseball player.’

“They’d say, ‘No, Blake, you need to put something realistic.’ Now I go back to those teachers when they ask me to talk to the classes, and I’m like, ‘She actually told me I needed to be realistic, and look now.’ ”

Yes, look now.

Swihart became the highest prep player drafted out of New Mexico in 21 years when Boston picked him 26th overall in 2011. He reaped a $2.5 million signing bonus. And he’s helped spearhead Salem’s run to the postseason with his production at the plate and his leadership behind it.

Watching him now, nobody would know that Swihart played shortstop in high school. He’s an agile catcher who pops out of his stance in a flash.

“Swihart’s a special kid to me,” Sox pitching coach Kevin Walker said. “I love the kid. What he does for the pitchers, the pitching staff, he’s an anchor. He’s kind of an extension of the pitching coach for me out there. He takes visits to slow guys down or to pat ’em on the butt or to get on ’em a little bit. He’s learned so much back there.”

He’s not the only one who’s learned. Myrtle Beach probably won’t try to steal much this series. Word’s gotten around about Swihart, who credits Salem’s pitchers for being quick to the plate for helping him nab thieves.

Swihart also enters the postseason as one of the league’s hottest hitters. He batted .376 in August as the Sox made their impressive run to win the division.

“We just wanted to go out and have fun,” Swihart said. “We didn’t want to worry about whether we were getting hits or not. All of a sudden, you look up on the board and you’re getting hits. We’re winning ballgames. It’s kind of crazy what we did, I think.”

Almost worthy of another tattoo.

Left arm only, of course.

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