Jason Varitek

Seven years Jason Varitek has worn the ‘C’ on his Red Sox uniform. During that span his team has made the playoffs all but two seasons, won one World Series, and dealt with countless waves of drama and bumps in the road.

Well, Varitek and his teammates have found himself in another doozy.

With 13 games to play and the Sox holding a four-game lead over the team they’re about to play four games against, the Rays, the captain is … being a captain. In other words, nothing changes.

“They didn’t put a ‘C’ on my jersey to make me all of a sudden someone I’m not,” he explained.

Varitek has never been a ‘rah, rah’ type of teammate, leading most of the time by example, whether that’s through work ethic, diligence or performance. With his catching equipment not too far from his side, he is constantly keeping the motor running – in both regards to both his own lot in life and his team.

Now he finds himself once again at the helm of a club who is trying to find its way.

“We have to keep working on the things we’ve been working on all year. Just because we’ve run into a little rough spot, does it change? No,” he said. “We just have to focus on what we can control. If we changed I wouldn’t be doing my job.

“You don’t all of a sudden change. We’ve been taking steps and working on things all year. If I had the ability to go 20-for-20 and drive in 40 in this time period, so be it. But we just have to continue to focus and push ourselves to allow good things to happen.”

But while the team’s approach demands the same consistency of the past seven seasons, don’t think that Varitek, the captain and teammate, hasn’t changed.

The 38-year-old is adamant that the moment the Red Sox made him the organization’s first captain since Jim Rice carried the title in the late 1980’s, his existence wasn’t altered. Yet, as time kept moving forward, so has Varitek’s view of things.

“It didn’t’ change anything I did,” he said regarding being awarded the captaincy. “If anything, as a person and as a human being, as I’ve evolved in my position, I’ve learned to maybe talk more, maybe communicate more. I don’t know if that’s because of [being a captain] or just because of change. I still need to do all the little things and understand I have to lead vocally, sometimes not, and sometimes just listen.

“It was kind of what I had already done. As I’ve matured more and grown more I’ve learned to communicate more. I’ve played less and I can see more. It adapts every year according to what’s going on. I continue to try and read what the heartbeat is and what is going on. Today, tomorrow, you just continue to do that.”

As he explains, part the alteration in the process has come with a role change. As he said, “My responsibilities have changed.”

Varitek has played in 64 games this season, but carries a higher OPS (.738) than he did in his last year as a full-time player, 2009 (.703), in which he totaled 131 games. The rest and role has presumably been beneficial for the catcher, who now heads into this latest challenge with a little different perspective than some of the crisis he has endured.

“When you play every single day it’s everything you can do to just play that day. So now I’m sitting there on other days watching,” Varitek said. “You’re paying attention to what’s going on. You see different pieces. I don’t know if that means as much to being a captain as it does to being a teammate.”