WORCESTER—The conversation is shorter if you ask Cam Booser what he has not done for a living—not what he has.
The WooSox’s lefty reliever, 31, has played rookie league baseball, Class A baseball, Double-A baseball, Triple-A baseball, and independent league baseball. He has been an interior painter, carpenter, welder, and worked as a golf course greenskeeper.
Booser’s favorite job is undeniable: a baseball pitcher. It is why he returned to the game at age 29 in 2021 after taking almost four years off.
“Quite simply, I tried to live a life without this game and I couldn’t,” said Booser. “Every fiber of my body pulled me back to this game. I thought about it every day.”
Booser grew up in Washington and played college baseball at Oregon State. He was in the Twins organization from 2013 into 2017, then departed the sport for what people sometimes call the “real world.”
Booser returned home and joined the carpenters’ union. A lot of people make good money as carpenters but…
“It was a very rewarding job,” he said, “and a very valuable skill to know, but baseball is what I believe I was born to do.”
So in 2021, Booser joined the Chicago Dogs of the independent American Association. The move wound up pointing him in a direction that led this way. He had a very good year for the Dogs and the roster had a Red Sox flavor to it.
Butch Hobson, who managed both Pawtucket and Boston, was their manager. Their best pitcher was Michael Bowden, who pitched for both Pawtucket and Boston. Two years after being a Dog, Booser was in Triple A with the WooSox.
It was a large jump and Booser took a while to adjust to it. In his first WooSox appearance he was charged with six earned runs in 2/3 of an inning. That figures out to an ERA of 81.00, an ugly number. Fast forward to last Sept. 19, though. Booser worked 1 2/3 scoreless innings in that game to reduce his ERA from 5.14 to 4.99, a much prettier number.
“It was tough,” Booser said of his WooSox debut, “but you have to know it’s a long season, there will be more opportunities and that number might not be a reflection of how you threw. I did happen to throw poorly in my first outing last year, but it was a learning opportunity. My whole first year in Triple-A was a learning opportunity.”
In mid-May, though, Booser’s earned run average was still in four figures at 10.29.
“In my heart, I think there was a specific mentality change,” manager Chad Tracy said of the lefty’s turnaround. “It wasn’t just the first outing. Boos had a rough first half. He also had an incredible second half. With the things we went through in the second half last year with our bullpen, you can make the argument that Boos was probably our best relief pitcher in terms of stuff, velocity, strike throwing, getting the ball consistently in the zone, quick innings.
“He went from probably hovering on the ‘release’ line to pitching him in the eighth when we’re winning…then he went into big league spring training and kind of picked up where he left off and I think he opened a lot of eyes.”
Booser’s work in Florida this season has him closer to the major leagues than he has ever been. Maybe even closer than when he was working with his hands in Seattle.
“When I was a carpenter,” he said, “we did a lot of jobs in the southern section of Seattle. I’d be on the 37th floor of a high rise installing ceiling tiles, look out the window and see T-Mobile Park and dream about someday playing in that stadium…dream about it every day.”
While Booser loves baseball more than anything, he has loved his other jobs, too. He found welding to be very satisfying; the concept of taking an abstract design and turning it into reality. Booser was happy on the golf course, also.
“I loved greenskeeping back in Washington,” he said “A lot of mornings I’d go out with the sun just coming up through the fog, be mowing tee boxes and greens, and see a family of elk on the fairways, a herd of elk in the forest. It was peaceful.”
Peaceful is good when it comes to relief pitching. Booser finished last season peacefully after a chaotic beginning.
“There were some defining moments in the middle of the season where we kind of hit him between the eyes with things and he matured a lot,” Tracy said, “as far as how do you handle things after a poor outing, bouncing back quicker, and he took things to heart and was awesome from us. I hope he keeps it up.”
These days, raw numbers are not as important as the process, Tracy added.
“Things can go sideways in one game and that affects you,” he said. “Teams look at strikeouts, how you’re throwing, are you attacking the zone. They grade your stuff. That’s much more important than ERA.”
Booser did not start from scratch last season, but he may as well have been just a second-year pro considering his two-part career. He turned out to be a quick study as his second-half numbers showed.
“I was very happy about the end of the season,” he said. “This year I’m going to try to do the same things.”
If Booser does, he might get to see a major league ballpark from the mound—not the 37th floor.
Bill Ballou covered the Red Sox for the Worcester Telegram from 1997 through 2018. He has covered pro hockey in Worcester since 1994 and currently does a weekly column for the Worcester Red Sox. Ballou can be reached at vetgoalie@aol.com
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