by Jorge Posada
It took a while, but eventually I figured out that he was giving me “the talk.” Not the “birds and the bees” talk, but the “now that you are leaving home and being on your own, we expect you to conduct yourself like a man” talk. He kept going on and on, and I kind of turned away and rolled my eyes, thinking, This is painful. I can’t wait to get there and put an end to this lecture. I don’t need his advice. He doesn’t get it at all. I want to get away from home and be my own man. I want to be known as Jorge Posada and not Junior, not “the scout’s kid” and all the rest of that.
When we got to the campus, we drove over to the baseball field, where we’d arranged to meet Coach Frickie. We were a bit early, so we sat there in silence, my dad having finally exhausted his long list of “Escúchame” items. Then something odd happened. I sat there looking at the field. It wasn’t much more than the diamond, the dugouts, and a batting cage down each line. A few trees stood on the other side of the outfield fence, and beyond them stretched farm fields, rolling on and on into the distance.
And taking it all in, I started to cry, not because of the facilities, but because I realized how foreign this all looked to me. This was no Miami, no familiar palm trees and beaches. The city of Decatur sat along the banks of the Tennessee River, but as far as I could tell, there would be no beach Wiffle ball, football, or swimming going on there. I also realized how much I was going to miss my family and friends. A few seconds before, I couldn’t wait for my dad to leave so that I could start my new life, and now here I was hoping that time would slow way down and even stop.
It didn’t.
I wiped my eyes, and when I looked up, I saw Coach Frickie waving at us from a pickup truck with a refrigerator tied to the bed. I’ll admit that, even living in Puerto Rico, some of the stereotypes about the South had reached us. Coach Frickie’s thick accent added to that impression, but he could have said the same things about my accent and me.
We exchanged brief hellos; with me acting as translator to help my dad with his limited English. No more than four or five words were traded. My dad went to the car’s trunk, took my bags out, set them on the ground, kissed me and hugged me, and then, without another word, drove off. I stood there listening as the car’s tires crackled across the parking lot, wishing that I’d been able to say something to him, hoping that before he disappeared he’d have a few more words that would fill the hole that suddenly seemed to be swallowing me up.
Years later, my mom would tell me that right after dropping me off, my dad found a place where he could call her. She said that he was so upset about leaving me there that he could barely put together a sentence while talking to her because he was crying so hard. Hearing that story meant more to me than it would have if he had acted that way in front of me. I guess that’s the way it is with fathers and sons sometimes—it’s hard to really say what we mean to one another.
After my father and I parted ways, I had another set of poor communications to be concerned about. Coach Frickie told me that he was going to take me to the dormitories, a place he referred to as “the Cabanas.” Of course, I would have spelled it, and pronounced it, cabaña, but the word was flattened and Anglicized. I don’t know why the dorms were called the Cabanas. They looked nothing at all like a hut or something you’d find on a resort beach. At first I thought he was using the word to make me more comfortable. Eventually I found out that everyone called the dorms by that name, but no one could explain why.
The Cabanas were mobile homes that had been subdivided into separate rooms for each of the athletes who lived there. Because this was a community college, 95 percent or more of the students lived nearby and drove to school each day for classes and practices. The only reason anyone from outside the area would go to Calhoun Community College was to play a sport. The school was too small to have a football program, so the only teams that played were baseball and softball and men’s and women’s basketball. I was living with the baseball and basketball players; female athletes were housed in a second set of trailer homes on the other side of campus.
To be honest, it was probably a good thing that they didn’t have a football program. Big linemen probably would not have been able to live in the Cabanas. The rooms were tiny. I didn’t realize how small they were until Coach stopped in front of one. I got out and stood there staring. The trailer was maybe 50 feet long and 20 feet wide. I didn’t think I’d have the whole thing to myself, but who knew? I took a few steps toward the wooden stairs, when I heard Coach say something like, “Weryagoin?”
He pointed to a refrigerator sitting in the back of the truck. “That’s for you.”
I gave him a hand unloading it, thinking that the place must be all mine since this was a big refrigerator. We tilted it out of the bed of the truck and then carried it to the trailer home’s entrance.
“Let’s take a look,” Coach said. I wasn’t quite sure what he meant, but when he went inside, I followed. The trailer’s space was divided into eight rooms, four on each side of a central hallway. Coach opened the nearest door and waved me inside. Within that approximately 12-by-7 space, I had my own bed, a shower and sink in one corner, a toilet in another, a small rack on which I could hang my clothes, and a small desk. It was snug in there, but it was about to get snugger.
“I figured you could use a big one,” Coach said as we struggled to wedge the refrigerator into the room. “Those little guys don’t hold a whole lot, Hortek.”
I looked at him, trying to figure out what that last word was. He’d mispronounced my name from the beginning, but I thought that maybe it was the phone lines that were distorting things. Now, in person, I heard more clearly that he was pronouncing my name HOR-tek. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it or make him feel bad, so I just let it go.
We finally managed to get the fridge into a place where I could still walk around, but it partially blocked access to the toilet and shower.
We were both sweating at that point, and Coach turned on one of the taps. The whole sink shook for a moment, but then a rush of water came flying out.
“Good pressure here.”
I stood with my hands in my back pockets, nodding, thinking that I didn’t have even a glass. Where was I going to get all the things I needed to live here? The bed was bare, I hadn’t brought towels, I had a big refrigerator but no food to put in it, and how was I going to be able to cook if I ever learned how to?
All those questions were put on hold when I heard a tap at the door frame.
“Steve, attaboy,” Coach said. “Thanks for coming by.”
Coach introduced me to my “double-play” partner, Steve Gongwer. Steve and I shook hands. I expected to see a scrappy little second baseman type, but Steve was six-three and more than 200 pounds. He had a ready smile and gave off a high-frequency energy.
Coach said, “You need to get to know Steve. He’s going to help take care of you on and off the field.”
Steve was from the Atlanta area, so he lived on campus; in his second year, he knew his way around Decatur and with the team. I liked him immediately.
I said to him after Coach left, “I’m going to need your help. I don’t understand what he’s saying.”
“Don’t worry. None of us do. Just nod your head and keep on doing what you’re doing, HOR-tek.” He laughed and shook his head. “I know it’s not that hard to pronounce, but we’ll figure out something to help Coach out. He’s a good guy.”
As it turned out, Coach Frickie was a wonderful man, and someone I’ve kept in touch with since my playing days at Calhoun. He knew that I was in a tough spot, and he helped me out, as did Steve, in every way possible. Steve and a couple of other teammates even helped out with the name issue. We all tried various ways to help Coach pronounce my name correctly, but he never could master it. Eventually he called me by the Anglo version of my name, George. That eventually caught on, and most people at Calhoun called me that and thought of me as George. Mispronunciations have been a big part of my baseball career, including t
he big leagues, but that’s a story for another day.
Steve had a car, so he helped me get to the mall by driving me or letting me take his car to go get the things I needed. He wasn’t nearby, though, when I went into a store to ask for bedding and said to a clerk what I thought was “I need sheets.” She looked at me funny and said, “You need what? Shits? What do you mean?” That gives you some idea of how my transition went.
That first night, though, Steve showed me the rest of the facilities and the places where I’d be spending most of my time when I wasn’t in class or on the diamond. A large gym with a basketball court and seating for a couple thousand was the first stop. That was also where the weight rooms, a pool, and the coaches’ offices were, and I’d eventually spend a fair amount of time in that building. I was happy to see a kind of recreational room with Ping-Pong tables set up and all of them occupied. Steve introduced me to a few of the players. Their names and sports kind of went in one ear and out the other, but they invited me to play. I didn’t want to go back to the Cabanas and that bare room, so I stayed and played match after match. There was no language barrier to overcome, just the net and my opponents, who clearly spent a lot of time practicing.
Baseball practice wasn’t until 2:00 in the afternoon, so I stayed until everyone else left. Then I went back to my room and started writing letters because I was bored. And I was homesick. I wrote to my mom. “The place is small. There’s nothing here. I don’t know what I’m doing here.” I was honest with her, even though I knew that it would make her sad to read those words. That’s how it is with mothers and sons. We can be honest with each other about our feelings.
On the baseball field I felt comfortable. No one had to translate anything for me there. I was the only Latin player on the team, and that was unusual for me, but when the guys saw that I could play a good shortstop and third base, they were even more accepting. Nothing overcomes barriers on the field like doing your job well. In this case, though, there weren’t really any barriers. The guys on the team were all great, and they helped me out just like Steve did from day one. Still, I’m sure some of the guys had their doubts about me, and I felt like I had to prove myself. After all, I was the outsider, the one from Puerto Rico, and I was there on a scholarship. There was some pressure on me to perform well, especially because people knew that I’d been drafted. There was something almost mythical about being drafted by a professional sports team.
Unfortunately for me, being the outsider and a drafted player seemed to stir up some bad feelings among the basketball players, especially among the guys who lived in the Cabanas. Maybe it was partly a miscommunication or a cultural thing, but the guys on the basketball team talked a lot of trash to me. And some of that had nothing to do with the sport I played or the fact that I’d been drafted. It mostly had to do with the color of my skin and the language I spoke. I also had a few run-ins with some of the locals, the type of people some others would call rednecks, and that was tough to deal with. I know that people aren’t always as understanding and compassionate as they could be, but this was my first real encounter with prejudice of any kind. Looking back, I probably could have handled some of these encounters better, but I was still someone who wasn’t going to quietly back down when confronted.
I tried not to think too much about those relatively few times when there was trouble, because what made the experience difficult was my own naïveté and inexperience as much as anything else. That point got driven home about two weeks into my stay.
The Cabanas were located about a quarter-mile from the baseball field if you took the direct route, and almost a mile if you took the road and path that led to it. A cotton field and a small airport stood between my cabana and the field—that was the direct route. The airport was home to just a couple of small single-engine private planes. The runway was situated on an angle that went from the right-field corner out and away from center field and the flagpole. The long way took a winding road past the girls’ softball diamond and a couple of parking lots and outbuildings.
One afternoon I decided that it didn’t make sense for me to walk all that way when I could get there just by walking through the field. I hopped the fence and joined the guys warming up. A half hour later, I was taking ground balls at short when I saw a police car pull up to the field, its lights on but no siren sounding. After the officer got his attention, Coach told us to just keep working. The two men stood talking for a few minutes, gazing out toward the outfield and then, I thought, at me.
My thought was confirmed a few minutes later when I heard Coach yell, “George, c’mon over here.”
I trotted over, my heart pounding. What was going on? Could something have happened at home? I wasn’t usually a worrier, but this was weird. Coach introduced me to the policeman, an officer somebody whose name I couldn’t catch. I was still adjusting to Coach’s accent, and I did as Steve had said—I nodded like I understood. Then the officer started talking, and I had a hard time understanding him. I caught something he was asking about my number, and I nodded, but he shook his head and gestured for me to turn around.
“Six,” I heard him say to Coach. “They said they seen six.”
He ran all those words together, and it just sounded like a bunch of sticks snapping and catching on fire.
Then the officer said a bunch more to me, and the only word I really caught was “fence.” Something about a “federal fence.”
Desperate, I looked at Coach for help translating.
Eventually, with a lot of gesturing and talking slowly, I got the point. “Stay off,” Coach said, indicating the airport runway. “Illegal. Other way. Get back out there.”
I jogged to my vacated position, and I could hear the rest of the guys laughing and whistling and hooting at me. For a while a few of the guys called me “Runway,” which turned into “No Way” and then “Other Way.” I didn’t tell my mom or dad about that one, but I was glad to give the guys something to rally around, even if it was my own ignorance. There were only so many things they could help me with. I had to learn a few lessons the hard way.
As I became more comfortable, I learned quickly that there was a lot more than the language that I had to learn about life in the United States. I was fortunate to have my tuition, books, fees, and housing taken care of, but what we hear college athletes saying today about having so little money was true then as well. Because of the time commitments we had to make to our sports, we couldn’t hold down jobs to earn spending money. I wouldn’t have wanted to do that, and my parents didn’t want me to either, so my dad put $300 on a debit card for me every month for food and other expenses.
The first month I was out of cash by the end of the first two weeks. I’d spent a lot of it on supplies, but there were runs to the local Hardee’s and Taco Bell and frequent pizza orders. I called home and pleaded with him for more money, but he wouldn’t alter the arrangement, not by a single dollar. Fortunately, my mom was there to rescue me and my poor financial planning skills. She sent me boxes of packaged food and clothes. If she bought me a pair of jeans, she’d tuck a twenty or two in the pockets so that my dad wouldn’t know.
Fairly early on, I met a girl on the basketball team, and we started to hang out together. That meant a few more dinners out and a movie every now and then, and the cost of those things added up. I also wanted to pay guys for the gas they used taking me around town or put some gas in their tanks when they let me borrow their cars.
I also wanted to make some major purchases to make life in the Cabanas more convenient. I could not stomach much of the cafeteria food. I wasn’t much of a cook, so a microwave oven was the solution. Other people had them, and I’d ask to use them, but that got old after a while—though, surprisingly, it took longer for the taste of Hungry Man frozen dinners to grow old. When I think of how poorly I ate back then, it is amazing that I was able to survive, let alone play the games. I was also very fortunate that Steve went home every now and then and took me with him. His parents were great, and
I still miss his mom’s spaghetti. I later learned how to make noodles with tomato sauce, but I never could approach what she made for us.
Steve and I became like brothers and worked out together a lot. He was a good ballplayer and one of the harder workers on the team. I put him through some of what my dad had done to me. Steve was a natural right-handed hitter, but that fall I had him take just as many cuts from the left side as the right during our unofficial batting practice sessions so that he could strengthen his left side. We worked a lot on his ability to drive the ball to right-center. Like it is with a lot of guys, his dominant hand and the dominant side of his body were a lot stronger than his nondominant side. I could see that imbalance in his swing. So when we did weights or those sessions in the cage, I helped him fix that. I didn’t need to tell him about running the 60 in under 7.0 seconds, and didn’t need to. He was much faster than me, and I tried to beat him in every sprint. It was great to have him there, and we always pushed one another to get better, to do more, to run faster.
Steve ended up having a great sophomore year, hitting .419. He went on to play at Montavello College, where he became an NCAA Division II All-American. The guy worked hard, and I owe him so much for how he and his family welcomed me and supported me.
After a couple of weeks of practice, we started to play games during the fall season. We were a junior college, but the NCAA rules allowed four-year schools to compete against us, including in the fall, or off-season. The first time I walked around on the campus of the University of Alabama, I was sure that was where I wanted to play next. The campus was gorgeous, and the baseball field was even better.
Not that ours was too bad. I have to say, Coach Frickie was smart in this way. After every practice, we became the grounds crew. Because I was the shortstop and wanted to get the truest hops I could, I took great care of that infield. We spent hours manicuring that field, and even though we didn’t have a fancy stadium with large seating areas or a clubhouse or lights, the field itself was in great condition and was something we took pride in. Still, I don’t think the guys at Alabama had to worry about those kinds of tasks.