The Journey Home

by Jorge Posada

  “What’s good?” Derek asked.

  “Seafood,” I said, thinking that here we were after all, surrounded by water.

  Ricky shook his head and laughed. “Don’t listen to his recommendations,” he said. “Did Jorge ever tell you the Dennis Springer story?”

  “Don’t—” I started to say, not wanting to give Derek any more ammunition to use against me. It was too late.

  Ricky told Derek that in ’92, when I was catching for Ponce, he was on the team and lived nearby, so one day we decided to get lunch together before a game. We went to a spot right on the beach, and I ordered a version of asopao de mariscos. It was loaded with lobster, fish, shrimp, clams, and calamari. The waitress brought out this giant bowl that looked like a modern art sculpture with all these tentacles, claws, and tails and heads poking out of it. I dug in and started pouring on the hot sauce. Ricky sat staring at me as I went at it.

  After we got back to the field, I started feeling kind of sweaty and woozy as I was taking BP. I told Ricky, and he said, “I heard that’s what happens to sharks when they devour something.” The trainer was only a little more helpful. I swallowed an Alka-Seltzer cocktail and started the game. As Ricky said to Derek, I looked more like a hockey goalie that day. He couldn’t understand why I had a big glove on because pitches were bouncing off my chest and my shin guards, and I was humiliated. After the game, I said to Ricky, “I’m never going back there again.”

  That night, after hearing that story, Derek nodded and pursed his lips. “Sounds good. So where is this place?”

  Derek has that way about him. He’ll say something, and you have to be sure that you’re both hearing and listening carefully to get his meaning. He’s the master of the subtle comment, and it takes some getting used to, but there’s always a reward at the end.

  Eventually I packed up my stuff and headed to Tampa for spring training. Derek had bought a house there, so I moved in with him for the few weeks we’d be there. Despite the off-season drama, as soon as I got there I felt comfortable. I’d done everything I possibly could to prepare myself to make the team and go north with the Yankees.

  When we arrived at camp, I was pretty impressed with both Joes. Joe Girardi was a stand-up guy, kind of quiet and no-nonsense. It wasn’t like it was with Bob Melvin back in Columbus. Joe wasn’t there to help tutor me. He was there to catch and to learn the staff. I paid attention to him and how he went about his job the same way I paid attention to what all of the veterans were doing. Besides Girardi, we also had Jim Leyritz in camp.

  I felt like I was having a good spring, and as I packed up to leave for home each night I’d look at a quote I carried with me: All my expectations, efforts, and work won’t be in vain. It’s my journey to be a winner. I’d think about the day I’d just spent working, assessing whether or not I’d done as much as I could to make that journey north with the big league team.

  One day as the preseason games wound down to just a few remaining, Joe Torre called me into his office. When I arrived, he was there with Bob Watson, our general manager at the time, and I walked in fully expecting to come out smiling. That didn’t happen. Instead, Joe told me I was getting sent back down to Columbus.

  I don’t know if I have the words to adequately explain how Joe made me feel that day in March of ’96. Unhappy as I was to hear things I didn’t want to hear, in listening carefully to them I was getting another message: I know what you want, we want the same thing for you. You’re going to be here, but not just yet. We could have you come up here, but you wouldn’t benefit from sitting on the bench as much as you would from playing every day. I imagine that over the years hundreds, if not thousands, of guys have heard similar things from a manager or a general manager, but the way Joe said it left me disappointed but not devastated. Part of it was his voice and his tone. He was very calm, but authoritative at the same time—you knew he knew what he was talking about. He made his expectations clear from the very beginning, but his genuine warmth and decency always came through. While I was pissed at the outcome, I wasn’t going to allow that to change my mind about the Yankees. In fact, because of how Joe dealt with me, I was more convinced than ever that I wanted to play for him and for the organization.

  Coming out of that meeting, I felt like Joe had respect for me. He acknowledged all the hard work I’d done, how I’d performed in the games, how I’d carried myself. He saw all the things I was doing to do my job, to make an impression, and he appreciated them. It just wasn’t my time yet. He didn’t talk about Joe Girardi or what he brought to the team that I didn’t, but when I reflected on it, I realized that we had a pretty veteran pitching staff—at 24, Andy was the youngest starter, by seven years. They’d signed David Cone, they had Jimmy Key, and maybe those guys wouldn’t have needed much from a catcher, but as I was learning and would continue to learn throughout my career, the chemistry between a pitcher and catcher is as complicated a relationship as there is in all of sports. In football a quarterback might throw to a wide receiver ten times a game, tops. In basketball the point guard is having a great day if he’s in double figures in assists. For the guy on the mound and me to have a good day, we have to be on the same page and really clicking for 90 to 95 percent of the 100 or so pitches a starter typically delivers.

  When I looked at it that way, the argument that I’d be better off doing and not watching made more sense. Gaining more confidence and developing my approach to being behind the plate became my mission. I was going to tighten up every part of my defensive game to make sure that no one had any doubts about my ability to catch in the big leagues every day, with every pitcher, in any situation. I told myself repeatedly: Character is tested when you’re up against it. I couldn’t spend the time in AAA pouting. I remembered what I’d heard my dad say about making sure I did something to make coaches and scouts notice me. Though he didn’t say it, I knew what he meant: do something positive to make coaches notice you. You don’t want negative stuff to be the reason you get their attention.

  You know, the baseball gods can be cruel or kind. After reporting to the minor league camp and working out there for a few days, I got a call right as the big league team was leaving for opening day in Cleveland. Just before the team broke camp, Jim Leyritz had injured his thumb. Nobody knew how serious it was, so I got the call that I’d be traveling to Cleveland for opening day on April 1. Then, an April Fool’s Day present arrived in the form of a big snowstorm that dropped seven inches on Cleveland and pushed opening day back to April 2. Jim was okay by then, so I didn’t get to be on the roster after all. I also missed Derek’s first opening day and wasn’t able to witness his first big league home run and a great over-the-shoulder catch.

  Something similar to that April Fool’s Day joke on me occurred later in the month. I got the call to get on a plane for Minnesota on Wednesday the 17th. The following day was an off day, and I expected to be on the bench for the Friday game. When I showed up before game time, Joe and Bob Watson told me that there’d been a change in plans and I should head back to Columbus. I told Derek, and he promptly went out and had one of his worst days in baseball—striking out four times in four plate appearances. As someone I won’t name later said of Derek’s day, “Why’d you even bother to go up there with a bat?” I guess you can blame me. Actually, to be honest, I’d forgotten about that bad day Derek had. He’s the one who told me the story years later. And no, he wasn’t trying to blame me for that bad day. As much as I kid him, he never made excuses—just outs, lots of them that day.

  I was paying close attention to how Derek was doing for a lot of reasons, but one had to do with a rumor I heard. Apparently, Mr. Steinbrenner wasn’t convinced that Derek should be the everyday shortstop at age 21. Joe, Bob, and others thought he could handle it. All he had to do was hit .250 and play a good shortstop and he would be okay. Fortunately for Derek, he got off to a pretty good start, and at the time of the Golden Sombrero (the four strikeouts) he was still hitting .308. That was important to me because I
had a sense that Mr. Steinbrenner didn’t trust young players and I wondered how that might affect my present and my future. If Derek was being put on a short leash, then what did that mean for me? I knew a little bit about Mr. Steinbrenner’s spending habits and how he would go after free agents or make trades for veteran players—“proven” guys who had been through the wars, as the saying goes. I wasn’t one of those guys, and I wondered whether the Yankees would go after a veteran catcher if Joe Girardi or Jim Leyritz went down with an injury.

  I had seen Mr. Steinbrenner around camp but hadn’t had much contact with him. I didn’t think much at all really about upper management or ownership. I knew that I’d gotten that letter from him when I was first drafted, and that he had something of a reputation when it came to talent, but he also seemed like a good man who cared about his players. That off-season the Yankees had signed Darryl Strawberry, and Dwight Gooden was also on that ’96 club; both of those guys had had their troubles in the past, but Mr. Steinbrenner rightly believed in them—everything I saw and heard indicated that they were really good teammates. Until I had any real face-to-face interaction with Mr. Steinbrenner, I had no reason to judge him. I was just one of his many, many employees, and to be honest, few of the guys I hung around with in the Yankees organization had much to say about him. It seemed like those crazy “Bronx Zoo” days were part of another era that we had no real connection to.

  Despite the attention I focused on the big league club, I did have a season I needed to play and focus on too. Typical of a AAA club, Columbus had guys coming and going all the time—we had 30 different pitchers take the mound for us that season. Brian Boehringer, Dave Eiland (who later was the Yankees’ pitching coach from 2008 to 2010 and now does that for the Royals), and Ramiro Mendoza anchored the starting rotation. Ramiro is a great guy, a Panamanian who’s no bigger than a fungo bat, but he had great stuff. Catching him was always a good time because he could throw any pitch at any time and he was fearless. He had some great success down the line with the Yankees, and I don’t think he always gets as much credit as he should for the job he did during our amazing run to start the new century.

  Nineteen ninety-six was the last year the AAA team would be in Columbus, and we went out in style, eventually winning the International League title, but I wasn’t there because I got a September call-up. The 11-game lead we’d had in late July was down to four games.

  If I hadn’t known the situation, Joe’s demeanor wouldn’t have revealed anything about the fact that the team had lost seven games on its lead, or that we’d gone 13-15 for the month of August. He acted the same way he had back in Tampa in the spring. It wasn’t that he was loose or joking around or doing something else to ease the tension. He was his same calm and collected self, even when the lead over the Orioles shrank to just two and a half games in the middle of September. I didn’t realize just how important that was until we reached the playoffs. Winning two out of three at home against Baltimore got the lead back up to four games, but even when we lost the last game of the series, letting the Orioles back in it after we took a 6–1 lead, Joe was the same.

  I didn’t get into a game until September 25. In the first game of a doubleheader, we jumped all over the Brewers, eventually beating them 19–2. I pinch-hit for Darryl Strawberry in the sixth. I struck out and then later in the game grounded into a double play. (It’s never good when the number of outs you accounted for is greater than your number of at-bats.) I started game 2 of the doubleheader, batting seventh in a lineup in which Joe rested most of the regulars. Kenny Rogers started for us. He had great stuff, but in that first time catching him, I noticed that he went away from his strengths a lot, trying too hard to fool hitters. That was different from what Bob Melvin had stressed to me about getting guys out when you’re ahead. Being too fine can be a problem.

  Things weren’t going too fine for me at the plate, though, so what did I know about pitching and hitting? The scouting report on me would have said, “Let him hit it.” Bottom of the first with two outs and runners on first and second, I grounded out to second base. Batting right-handed against the lefty Scott Karl, who was having a decent season, I got overanxious and got out on my front foot too far, then tried to correct. Finally, leading off the bottom of the sixth, ahead in the count 1-0, I drove a fastball into left field between short and third for my first hit. Still have that ball.

  I started again the next night, this time at Fenway against the Red Sox. Everything you’ve read about Fenway is true. The fans are on top of you, the Green Monster seems like a mirage because it’s right on top of you too, and your teammates are right on top of you in a clubhouse that seems like the kind of clubhouse you’d make for your kids out of appliance boxes. Still, it was incredible to play there. Not as cool as Yankee Stadium, not even a close second, but something I can’t forget no matter how hard I try.

  An 0-for-4 at Fenway was bad enough, but then we also went on to lose, 5–3. I pinch-hit in the last two games of the year, striking out and walking, and that was the end of it for me.

  Derek finished the year hitting .314. I don’t think he ever approached the black magic number of .250 that might have made him disappear. I was thrilled for him, but not surprised. Sometimes a rookie plays like a rookie, and sometimes a rookie plays like the game comes easy to him. I don’t think people understand just how much effort Derek put into refining his game. He was given some remarkable gifts, but I’d seen other guys who were so-called five-tool players, and they couldn’t fix themselves when things fell apart the way Derek did.

  Though that was the end of it for me on the Yankee roster, the year wasn’t over. I was going to travel with the club throughout the playoffs. Classes were still in session, though the classroom was going to be a pretty rowdy place from that point on. In contrast to the Stadium rocking, the clubhouse was a relatively quiet place. Guys still listened to their music and all that, but everyone had his game face on.

  After a relatively smooth series against the Rangers in the American League Division Series, the AL Championship Series against Baltimore was anything but. Most people remember the name of the guy who caught Derek Jeter’s fly ball in Game 1 and not the name of the guy who probably would have caught it if 12-year-old fan Jeffrey Maier hadn’t gotten his glove on it. From where I was in the dugout, it was hard to tell what happened, but the replays told the truth: it was fan interference, not a home run. I remember Derek telling me that a year later he met Maier at a card-signing event in New Jersey. He thanked the kid for helping him out. I would have loved it if Derek had brought a Tony Tarasco card for the kid to sign. Imagine what that would be worth today.

  It’s too bad that a lot of people forget how great Bernie Williams played in that series, earning the MVP of the ALCS. It wasn’t just his walk-off homer in Game 1 and hitting .474 for the series; it was also his defense and just his cool confidence that made him so important. I’m not saying anything new, but Bernie was like everyone has said—quiet and reserved, but an amazing talent and competitor. He may not have expressed his passion for the game like other guys did, but it was there. That ability to keep his emotions in check really helped him be clutch.

  If Joe’s steadiness paid off for us during that stretch run, it did so even more in the World Series. Even though I knew I couldn’t play in the games, I still had butterflies. Seeing the Stadium decked out in bunting and all the pregame attention from the media, even just getting to the game and dealing with New York City traffic—everything seemed at a different level of intensity. Seeing Andy, our starting pitcher, get knocked around and out early in Game 1 kind of mystified me. That was so uncharacteristic of him, but as some of the guys pointed out, you’re facing a team in the World Series for a good reason—they’ve got some players. Watching John Smoltz go through our lineup was something. He could deal, and though he walked five guys in just six innings, he demonstrated one of those baseball clichés that has a lot of truth in it. He walked four of those guys in the first two innings. We
didn’t take advantage, they got a lead, he got more aggressive because he was pitching with a lead, and as the game went on he became tougher to face.

  I sat there thinking about what I’d do if I was behind the plate and my guy was struggling early. I know that most baseball people hate giving up walks most of the time. But if you look at Andy’s line in that game versus Smoltz’s, Andy only gave up one walk. So how do you handle that? One guy who’s around the plate, maybe too much over the plate a few times, gives up seven runs, and another guy who’s wild gives up just one. I don’t know what there is to learn from that except to do what Joe told the guys to do. Forget about that one. Move on. Trouble was, we faced Greg Maddux next. Talk about a guy who was always around the plate. Smoltz could overpower you, and Maddux kind of seduced you. He got you to do things you knew you probably shouldn’t be doing and were hoping no one would see you doing because you knew better and you were embarrassing yourself a bit.

  Down 2-0 after losing both games at the Stadium, I remember talking with Derek that night on the flight to Atlanta. I asked him if he’d ever been in that kind of situation before and what he thought he was going to do.

  “No, I haven’t. Just going to do what Joe says. Play the next game.”

  Our offense had scored only one run in those two games, so up and down the lineup we weren’t getting any kind of production. That’s when Joe went to work. He stayed the same, kept his calm and confident demeanor, but the lineup changed big time for Game 3 in Atlanta against Tom Glavine. In some ways it looked like Joe was playing the percentages, putting in a more right-handed hitting lineup. But that didn’t explain having Darryl Strawberry in there for Paul O’Neill, both of them left-handed hitters. And it took guts to replace Wade Boggs with Charlie Hayes and to put a less capable defensive player like Cecil Fielder in at first for Tino Martinez. I eventually played for Joe for a long time, and I came to see that he used numbers and matchups a bit, but mostly he went with his gut. As I look back on it, that Game 3 lineup was a gut move. He also moved Derek up from ninth in the order to second. It seemed as if every move Joe made worked out for him, including pinch-hitting with Luis Sojo, who drove in a couple of runs to help seal the win.