Ignoring poor Charmion's pathetic intervention (s/he makes self sound incapable of really 'reading' any book!), perhaps I should restate the reason for the question that forms this thread.

I can see for myself that Holden says that he will stand in the grass at the bottom of a cliff and catch the falling children, so that he will thus be "the catcher in the rye". But surely this has no meaning or referent unless there is an already established phrase, "a catcher in the rye", to which this assertion relates, which the tone of Holden's use of the phrase shows that the author would expect his readers to know, and to relate to Holden's attitudes and situation. Otherwise the assertion seems meaningless in context. But it appears from responses that there is no such referential phrase, within baseball-jargon or elsewhere; which leaves me wondering what Salinger was trying to communicate with such an outré and apparently meaningless title to his œuvre.

That's all ~M~