The Journey Home

by Jorge Posada

  He must have eased the tension some, because the last two innings David was as good as he could possibly be. By the top of the ninth, his arms were shaking with tension and I was on edge, but when he got ahead of the last two guys and retired them easily, I knew we were that close. Through the bars of my mask, I watched Pat Meares’s medium fly ball arc all the way into Paul O’Neill’s glove, and by the time it landed I was steps away from the mound.

  “This is great, Jorge! This is great!” Boomer kept saying over and over. I was too giddy to correct him—no, big guy, it was perfect. Later, the groundskeepers presented me with the home plate used that night. One side had a painting of David and me, and above us the scoreboard with all those zeroes. I still have that plate in my office, and no Florida humidity is going to damage it or my memory of that incredible night.

  I don’t want to make too big of a deal about the whole David Wells being out of shape incident, but I think that how he handled it and how he responded in those very next starts says something about the makeup of the guy. It was also typical of the Yankee teams I played on.

  Every now and then, when we felt like things were sliding a bit, someone would mention ’97 and we’d get back on track. We went out every day with the idea that we were going to win that game. And 114 times out of 162, we did just that. The season is so long, though, that for much of the summer I didn’t really have a sense of just how extraordinary that record was. Our longest winning streak was ten games, a good number but not extraordinary, so it was more the regularity with which we won that made the season so noteworthy. For the 27 days a month we played on average during that six-month span, we had bad days eight times. When you think of it that way, in chunks the size of a month, that number, 114 total, doesn’t seem so great. Breaking that down into a smaller chunk, we lost approximately twice a week in the roughly 23 weeks of the regular season.

  As baseball players, we think in terms of series. So even if we stick with that number of two losses per workweek, that’s like you saying that you had two bad days at work and three good ones. Put in those terms, I think you can better understand why no one was talking about how great our year was going. We weren’t patting ourselves on the back. Only if someone in the media pointed out that we were on a record-setting pace did it even occur to me that what we were doing was extraordinary. We were doing our jobs, doing them well, and winning series with an efficiency and at a rate that was keeping management happy. We left the adding up and the comparing and all of that to other people.

  That was the approach I took all season, and when I got to start my first postseason game—against the Rangers in the opener of the ALDS—I felt going in that how we’d all handled that year was going to see me through the playoffs. That was true to an extent—no one had to provide me with a map to find my way to the catcher’s box—but there was clearly something different about the atmosphere in the Stadium. Standing along that third-base line hearing your name being spoken by the legendary Bob Sheppard was spine-chilling, in the best way possible. As a side note, Mr. Sheppard was known as “the Voice of God,” and it was true. The first time he spoke my name, he pronounced it Po-sah-DOH. The guys with the club that year knew that if God said it, it must be so. As a result, I was christened with the nickname Sado.

  It also meant a lot to all of us that Darryl Strawberry’s name was announced before that game. Joe Torre had called us together just before we stretched in the outfield to bow our heads and send good thoughts Darryl’s way. Diagnosed with colon cancer, he’d just undergone surgery. He couldn’t be there, but his wife, Cherisse, was, and his two kids joined her. Escorted to the mound by David Cone, she threw out the first pitch, wearing a jersey with Darryl’s 39 on it.

  Even if Darryl hadn’t been through all the other difficulties he’d had, that would have been tough news. I’d lost grandparents to cancer, as well as uncles, and it was so tough to hear that a guy Darryl’s age—he had turned 36 that season—was dealing with it. It was tough to hear and really made me think. Darryl had been a big contributor that year—his 24 home runs always seemed to come at exactly the right time. His left-handed bat in the lineup was huge for us, and his power made him a real game-changer. Knowing that he could come off the bench made opposing managers’ decisions about pitching changes even tougher. Always upbeat and smiling, Darryl was also valuable around the clubhouse and a positive presence on the bench—never clowning, just enjoying having his career and his life back in his control. He was especially good to Derek and me, sharing his insights about hitting with us, and on days when I wasn’t catching and he was in the dugout, he’d go over his at-bats with me, telling me what he’d guessed was coming.

  Like Darryl, I was also a guess hitter, though that term bothers me. It was more than a guess that we went on—past history and tendencies really dictated our approach. Some guys try to simplify hitting into “see the ball, hit the ball,” but that never worked for me. I also never wanted to know what was coming if we managed to pick up an opposing team’s signs. I never trusted that we were 100 percent certain that we had them, and I trusted myself more than anyone else.

  We took that first series against the Rangers 3-0, all of them tight, low-scoring games. We ran into a tougher time against the Indians in the ALCS. I know that fans want to think that we had a special motivation to beat them that year because they’d knocked us out the previous year, but we’d have wanted really bad to beat anybody we were up against, since a trip to the World Series was on the line. I was glad that I could contribute at the plate in Game 1, when I worked with David Wells. I was 2-for-3, drove in my first postseason run, and jumped all over a Chad Ogea first-pitch fastball to hit a line-drive home run deep into right field. I didn’t need third-base coach Willie Randolph to tell me to slow down, that I’d hit it out and could jog home.

  My parents were staying at my apartment for the postseason, and immediately after the game my dad told me that stroke was one of the best he’d seen from me. Having family at the ballpark, having my dad see me do that live rather than watch it on television or hear me tell him about it the next day—that was better than I ever could have expected, and I could hear the pleasure in his voice.

  I enjoyed the hell out of that win and gave myself some time to just live with those feelings. Still, by the time I talked to my dad the next morning I was ready for his reminder—not that I needed it—to turn the page, just like I’d turned my hips on that pitch.

  Game 2 was one that, if you believed the headlines the next day, was destined to become another Bill Buckner–like moment of shame for one player. It was a tight game that went into extra innings, and in the twelfth, Travis Fryman came up with a runner on first, no out. We knew he was going to bunt, and he did. It was a good one, to the right side. Tino fielded it, and his throw hit Fryman in the back. Chuck Knoblauch had to pull his arm back or risk getting knocked down, and in all the confusion Chuck argued about Fryman being out of the baseline and didn’t pick up the ball, despite me and everyone else yelling at him to get it. The crowd was so loud and Chuck was so caught up in the heat of the moment that he let the ball sit there in the dirt while the runners kept moving.

  I couldn’t leave home plate, and by the time the throw finally did come home, even the slow-footed Jim Thome had been able to score from first on a bunt and Fryman had gotten all the way to third. Joe was sure that Fryman should have been called out for running outside the base path, but the umpires said that since he was hit when he was in contact with the first-base bag, which is fair territory, he wasn’t out of the baseline.

  It was one of the most surreal plays I’ve ever been involved in, but fortunately, it ended up not mattering a whole lot, since we beat the Indians in the series 4-2. After that bunt-play game, we lost again, to trail 2-1 in the series, but took the next three in a row to clinch it. We were on our way to the World Series, where we swept the Padres in four games to get back on top.

  That wasn’t as easy as it sounds. In Game 1, we trailed t
he Padres 5–2 going into the seventh. After Chuck Knoblauch hit a three-run homer, the inning continued. With the bases loaded, Tino came up against Mark Langston, a tough left-hander facing another tough left-hander. On a three-and-two count, Tino homered and that really fired us up. In Game 2 of the series, I hit a two-run home run off Brian Boehringer, a deep drive to right-center field. It’s always a thrill to hit a home run, but a World Series homer was especially satisfying. You know that all of baseball and its fans have their focus on those two teams only; you want to win, of course, but that added element of media attention and everything else that goes along with a World Series makes everything feel more important. Coming back from three runs down late in Game 3 was another example of how resilient that team was. We always seemed to find a way to win.

  Significant as that was, it was only later, when we got our World Series rings with “125” engraved on them—to commemorate the achievement of 125 wins during the whole season—that I was able to appreciate what we’d accomplished as a group. Just as we had done in 1996, we’d won the World Series, but this time we’d made a bit more history.

  Along with all the winning that happened in 1998, another element of my life came into focus that had me celebrating in lots of different ways. The roots of that celebration actually ran all the way back to my senior year in high school, when one of my various jobs was umpiring baseball and softball games.

  The thing about umpiring softball is that you call the pitches from behind the pitcher, so I got a very nice close-up view of the young woman who was pitching. I recognized her from school, but she wasn’t someone I knew very well. Her name was Laura something. She was a good pitcher, but she was also gorgeous. During warm-ups before the game, I noticed that she wasn’t wearing a glove, so I did a very not impartial thing for an umpire—I went to my car and got a glove for her.

  She smiled and said thanks, and I felt like somebody had set my cheeks and ears on fire. If that had really happened to my ears, you would have been able to see the smoke all the way at my mom and dad’s house. As the game went on she didn’t say a whole lot, but I swear every pitch she threw was a strike.

  After the game, she handed me the glove and said, her voice so silky and smooth that I had a hard time paying attention to her words, “Thank you. That’s a very nice glove.”

  I tried to figure out what I could say that was silky and smooth. (I’ve told you about my education in baseball, but it should be obvious that I also needed an education about women.) All I could think of to say, though, was, “Yeah.” Then, realizing that wasn’t the best way to accept a compliment, I quickly added, “I’m glad you like it.”

  In my mind, that was another error. I’d made it seem like I was taking responsibility for having made the damn thing. If this exchange had been an inning, it had started off with a hit by pitch, then a balk advancing the runner. Now I was desperate to get an out—I mean, go out with her—so I said, “I can get you one just like it.”

  She started to walk toward the bench and the rest of the girls on her team. I trailed after her like a puppy, saying that she should give me her phone number, so that I could let her know when I had the glove.

  She slid home safely, and I didn’t get her number. My bad for not executing properly.

  In the offseason after ’97, I was back home and living with my buddy Benjamin. One night I was standing at a place called Dunbar’s with my friends, when this gorgeous woman walked by. I got this jolt of energy in the pit of my stomach. She was with some friends, and one of them said something that made her smile and then laugh. I wanted to be that person, the one who was making her happy like that. I don’t know why it is that we are attracted to the people that we are, but something told me immediately that I needed to get to know this woman, that there was something about her that was different and better for me than anyone else I’d ever met. Okay, that’s one way to put it. But I told myself that night, and one of my buddies, “If I ever get to meet this girl, I’ll marry her.” I meant it. It was like thinking that I wanted to make the big leagues someday. And it took almost as long, and as much effort, to make the dream come true.

  You’ve probably figured out that the woman in the bar was Laura the softball player, but I didn’t. All I knew was that I wanted to meet this woman, talk to her, and then keep on talking to her and spending time with her before I had to go back to the States at the start of the ’98 season. I didn’t do anything to make that happen that night. I’m pretty shy, but I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I guess that I always have to do things the hard way, so I came up with a plan. Just like I had developed all kinds of routines to play the game, I figured this woman had to be the same way. The first night I saw her at Dunbar’s was a Thursday, so I went back the next Thursday, hoping to see her there. She wasn’t. I happened to see her on a Saturday night at a hotel bar. Instead of just going up to her, I hung out there the next Saturday. Call it stalking, call it scouting, call it what you want, but I didn’t really think I was being weird or anything until Derek came to visit.

  We were out, and I saw her again. I pointed her out to him and said, “That’s the girl I’ve been telling you about.”

  “You’re not going to say anything to her?”

  “No, man. I’m too scared.”

  “You gotta man up. What’s the worst thing she could say?”

  Maybe when you’re Derek and have his confidence about so many things, you don’t think about all the bad things that could happen or be said, but I didn’t want this girl to shoot me down. Finally, though, the clock was ticking. It was December, and I knew that in a month or so I’d have to leave for spring training. When I saw her again, I said that I’d like to see her sometime and asked for her number. She hesitated a bit, and then said she wasn’t sure that was a good idea. I didn’t speak woman code, but eventually I learned that the “not good idea” was a boyfriend.

  Didn’t matter. I learned that fact from a girl I knew named Anita, who came up to me one night. She had been seated at a table with Laura. Still not quite understanding the ways of women, I asked Anita if she could introduce me to her friend. Anita told me how rude I was, but she did help me out. I ignored the “she had a boyfriend” part and made arrangements with Anita to have a bowling outing with her, Laura, and my friends. I made sure that the passenger seat was unoccupied when I stopped by Laura’s place to pick her up.

  Maybe it was because we weren’t wearing our own shoes, or whatever it is that happens at a bowling alley, but I spent a lot of time talking to Laura and displaying my awesome bowling skills. At the end of the night, I asked her if she would like to play racquetball the next day. I was thrilled when, after hesitating a little less than the time before, she said yes. Not “Sure!” Not “That would be great!” Just “Yes.” You know how announcers say that a bloop single will look like a line drive the next day in the box score? I didn’t really care what words she used, just that she had agreed to spend time with me.

  The following day at the court, we were having a good time when I drilled her in the butt with the ball. It’s true what they say—you hit it where your eyes are focused.

  We laugh about all this now, but at the time I was really struggling with all the rejection. (Laura says I was psycho but I prefer persistent.) In a lot of ways, those early days with Laura tested my skills of observation and strategizing more than any hitter or pitcher I had to deal with. I tried several things: hosting a Super Bowl party just to get to see her (she arrived late and left early), inviting her to spring training (no thanks), and finally telling her that as long as she was coming to New York to visit her sister, she should come to see me play.

  I still don’t know how much of it was her sister or how much of it was me wearing her down, but Laura did show up in New York. Even then, the obstacles keeping us apart just kept coming. When a 500-pound chunk of Yankee Stadium fell down, the city said that we wouldn’t be able to play there, so we had this weird situation where we played on a Sunday and the
n didn’t play again until Wednesday, against the Angels, at Shea. We dressed in the clubhouse at the Stadium and took a bus to Queens, then traveled to Detroit. None of this was good, particularly because I was looking forward to the opportunity to spend time with Laura. She got to see the one game, but that was it.

  Then I made a very romantic gesture by asking her to visit Detroit in mid-April to sit in a mostly empty Tigers stadium with a game-time high of 55 degrees. Lots of things seemed empty and cold at that point, but eventually, as the weather warmed up, so did things between Laura and me. It’s weird how you know that you’ve finally gotten close to your goal. For me that was the first time Laura and I said good-bye after she stayed with me for a week in New York and I then got a call from her saying that the flight was booked and the airline was looking for people who could stay longer and take a later flight or accept a voucher and Laura chose the voucher. I was a happy, happy man.

  In November 1998, I decided that it was time to make good on that promise I’d made when I saw her at the bar. I went out and bought an engagement ring and planned to ask her to marry me. We hadn’t talked about getting married, but we’d discussed the big things, like having kids. So I can’t say that I was 100 percent sure that I was going to get the answer I wanted. My plan was to do it at dinner one night. Beforehand, I worked it out with the staff at the restaurant, a Ruth’s Chris in San Juan, to have our waiter, whose name was Dort, bring it out on top of whatever dessert she ordered. I wasn’t thinking things through too good, because I didn’t really have a backup plan if she didn’t order dessert, or if she ordered something that wouldn’t support the weight of the ring. Unfortunately, she didn’t want dessert, but I kept asking her to have one. Finally, just to get me to shut up about the damned dessert, she asked for cheesecake. Dort gave me a wink to let me know that I could count on him.

  I sat there all sweaty-palmed and short of breath until the waiter came by. Laura was talking and didn’t look down at her dessert plate. I didn’t want to have to point at it and ruin the moment, so I just sat there, listening and trying to not act like one of the most important moments of my life was about to happen. Finally, I said to her, “You’re not going to have any dessert?” With perfectly executed timing, as her eyes made their first move down to the plate, I took off. I went down on one knee and said, “Will you marry me?”