Core Four: The Heart and Soul of the Yankees Dynasty

by Phil Pepe

  As far back as he could remember, baseball was a part of Jorge Posada’s life. He deified the late idol of Puerto Rico, Roberto Clemente, put him on a pedestal, but Clemente died in a plane crash in 1972, when Posada was a year old. Posada’s first baseball hero was Thurman Munson, whose position behind home plate at Yankee Stadium Jorge would one day occupy.

  A natural right-hander, Posada at a young age was taught by his father to bat left-handed. When Jorge was 13, his father decided it was time for his son to turn around and bat right-handed. It had been his plan all along to make Jorge a switch-hitter, just as Mickey Mantle’s father had done with him a half-century earlier.

  By the time he turned 17, Posada, who patterned his game after Tony Fernandez and Barry Larkin, had gained a reputation as an all-star shortstop at San Juan’s Colegio Alejandrino High School, where he also lettered in basketball, volleyball, and track. He was on the radar of some Southeastern Conference schools and also of the New York Yankees, who chose Posada in the 43rd round of Major League Baseball’s 1989 June amateur draft. (In that same draft they selected Andy Fox in the second round, J.T. Snow in the fifth round, and Sterling Hitchcock in the ninth round.)

  His dad didn’t think Jorge was ready for pro ball. He wanted him to get more experience—and no less important, to further his education—by going to college. Unfortunately, because his English was limited, Posada failed to score high enough on his college entrance exams to qualify for a four-year school. Enter Fred Frickie and Calhoun Community College. Sight unseen, and acting on Ellis Dungan’s recommendation, Frickie made bringing Posada to Calhoun his top priority. He began a series of phone calls to Posada in which he laid out what Calhoun was able to provide.

  “I could only give him books, tuition, and fees,” Frickie said. “We also had some rooms for athletes on campus called ‘the Cabanas’ and they were available for $30 per quarter semester. All he would have to pay for was his room and his meals. Everything else would be taken care of. There was a girl in school named Mitzi Taylor whose mother was from Peru. Mitzi was bilingual, so I called her into my office and told her I was going to call Posada and asked her to speak to him in Spanish and make sure he understood everything I had to offer him. I made the call and Mitzi talked to him and Posada said he understood. A week later he called me and said, ‘I’m coming to Alabama.’”

  The Posadas, Jorge Senior and Junior, made the trip by automobile from Atlanta to Decatur, Senior driving, Junior, who had never been away from home, shedding tears much of the way.

  “His daddy brought him in September and enrolled him,” said coach Frickie, who climbed in his truck and drove to the gymnasium to serve as a welcoming committee of one to greet the Posadas.

  “I remember standing with George and his daddy outside the gym and they were both crying because his daddy was going to have to leave him. George’s daddy is a really great guy. He wasn’t a stern father but he didn’t put up with anything. He raised his son right. He wanted George to go to school someplace where he’d be forced to speak English. He might have been able to go to Miami Dade Junior College or the University of Miami. I don’t know. But his daddy was wise enough to realize that if he went somewhere that had a Latino community, he’d be speaking Spanish and he’d never improve his English. I think another reason he came to Calhoun Community College was because all he had to pay for was his food and his transportation getting here. So we were very fortunate that all those factors worked out for us and we got a great player and a great person.”

  When his father left, Jorge climbed into the passenger seat of the truck and Coach Frickie drove him to the Cabanas which would be Posada’s home for the next two years. In the back of the truck was a small refrigerator. Jorge got out of the truck and was walking away when Frickie said, “Hey, where are you going? Help me with this refrigerator. It’s for you.”

  Frickie had picked up the refrigerator so that Posada would have more than just a bed, a desk, a sink, and a shower in his room and he’d be able to keep food in the room.

  Lonely and homesick in a strange town, Posada felt disconnected and isolated. He knew nobody else on campus who spoke Spanish, was uncomfortable with English and unfamiliar with the culture. He had no friends and no peers, but he had Coach Frickie, who would act as his surrogate father. The coach drove his new recruit to practice and to church, occasionally took him home to dinner, and picked out his first year’s classes. One of his choices was Spanish.

  “I think coach wanted to give me at least one easy A,” Posada said. “I spoke better Spanish than the teacher.”

  One time Posada was involved in an incident on campus that got him in trouble.

  “It was nothing major,” said Frickie. “No alcohol or drugs or anything like that.”

  The incident was not something that got the police involved, just some typical college student mischievous prank, but it was a violation of school rules and enough to force the athletic director to have Posada tossed out of the Cabanas. With nowhere to go and no money for an off-campus apartment, Posada was fortunate he had Coach Frickie looking out for him.

  “Come on, George, load your stuff up in my truck,” said Frickie.

  Frickie took Posada home with him and put him up in a spare room with a bath and a bed he had furnished over the garage.

  “I never called his daddy [about the incident] because it really was no big deal,” said Frickie. “But I told Posada, ‘When you go home for Thanksgiving or for Christmas I want you to tell your daddy what happened.’ So he went home and he came back and I said, ‘Did you tell your daddy?’

  “He said, ‘No, but I told my momma.’

  “I love George Posada,” said Frickie. “He’s a great guy. And my wife loves him, too.”

  “We adored him,” said Martha Frickie. “He was almost like family. He was so far away from home that he was unable to get home for holidays, so he spent a lot of time with us, especially in his first year when he was the only Puerto Rican student here. We’d sort of take care of him. We’d take him out to dinner on the weekends and he’d come to our house to watch TV.

  “He was insecure with his English in the beginning, but by the time he left here, he was dreaming in English. I asked him one time, ‘When did you start changing from Spanish to English?’ And he said, ‘About Christmastime, when I start dreaming in English, then I know I’ve made the transition.’”

  That first year at Calhoun, Posada was befriended by a teammate named Steve Gongwer, an infielder from Jonesboro, Georgia.

  “They became real good friends,” said Frickie. “Steve was smart, a good leader, a good ballplayer, a really good guy and he probably was the reason George stayed at Calhoun Community College.”

  Gongwer unselfishly made Posada’s comfort and getting his new teammate to adapt to campus life his personal responsibility. They lived next-door to one another at the Cabanas, played table tennis and pick-up basketball games with other Calhoun players and worked out together.

  “I always felt like I was a good player who worked hard,” said Gongwer. “Others might have more talent, but nobody would outwork me and then along came this guy with all this God-given talent and he worked three times as hard as I did.”

  So impressed with Posada was Gongwer that he called home and told his father that he decided to no longer focus as much on baseball and to concentrate harder on his degree. When his father asked why he came to such a decision, Gongwer replied, “Because I have met a major league player and now I know what one looks like.”

  Today Gongwer, who recognized that getting to the major leagues was a long shot, is a successful Birmingham businessman.

  According to coach Frickie, “George hit great his first year with us, about .350, .360 with nine home runs. I had a sports information director tell me that of his first 36 hits, 21 of them were doubles (still the Calhoun record for most doubles in a season). I started out playing him at sho
rtstop, but he made a few too many errors and I moved him to third and he did fine there.

  “Posada’s daddy had told me George could play shortstop, third base, or catch. I already had two catchers, a left-handed hitting catcher and a right-handed hitting catcher and both of them threw good. Just to see how George could throw, I put him back there one day and put a watch on him to see how he threw to second. He threw great.

  “Two seconds flat from the moment the pitch hits the catcher’s mitt until it gets into the hands of the second baseman or shortstop is considered a major league arm for a catcher. If you’re over two seconds, no major league team is going to sign you as a catcher unless they believe they can improve you. When I put the watch on George I got him in 1.8 and 1.9. But I kept him at third because I didn’t need him anywhere else. I have no doubt when the Yankees saw him throw that’s when they decided to make him a catcher.”

  Posada didn’t hit as well in his second year at Calhoun as he did in his first, but he still was good enough to make all-conference and get a scholarship offer from the University of Alabama while earning his associates degree from Calhoun.

  One day, coach Frickie walked into the office of Calhoun athletic director Nancy Keenum and saw Posada sitting there.

  “Keenum,” said Frickie, “you need to get that boy’s autograph before he leaves here. You’re going to see him on TV someday.”

  In 2007, almost two decades after he graduated and had been on TV thousands of times, Posada returned to Calhoun for ceremonies honoring both Jorge and Coach Frickie. They were inducted into the Alabama Community College Conference Hall of Fame and the school retired Frickie’s No. 33 and Posada’s No. 6.

  Posada was drafted twice by the Yankees. In 1989, they took him in the 43rd round, 1,116th in the nation, but the signing bonus they offered was low (about $22,000). Posada refused to sign. “I’m going back to Calhoun,” he told the Yankees.

  In the June 1990 free agent draft, the Yankees drafted Posada again. Fortunate that he was available so late, they selected him in the 24th round, No. 646 in the nation, between Mike Mimbs of Mercer University, Macon, Georgia, and Marc Tsitouris of Wingate University, Wingate, North Carolina. Knowing Posada had a scholarship from the University of Alabama in his hip pocket, the Yankees upped their offer to $30,000, and Posada accepted.

  Jorge broke in as a second baseman with the Oneonta Yankees of the Class A New York–Penn League in 1991, batting .235 with four home runs and 33 RBI in 71 games. He led the league’s second basemen in double plays with 42, but he also made 20 errors. It was deemed by the Yankees that Posada’s future as a second baseman was limited, but he demonstrated a quick and lethal bat, was a switch-hitter, and was strong and tough and possessed of the perfect build and demeanor for a catcher.

  When the Yankees proposed the switch to catcher to him, Posada called his old college coach, Fred Frickie, who urged George to give it a try, that his road to the major leagues would be much quicker as a catcher than as an infielder.

  Soon the transformation was afoot. Posada got into 11 games as a catcher for Oneonta in 1991 behind the No. 1 catcher, Tom Wilson, who was drafted in the round before Posada and who would play 214 major league games with the Blue Jays, Mets, Athletics, and Dodgers.

  The Yankees sent Posada to the Instructional League in an attempt to further his development as a catcher. There he came under the charge of Glenn Sherlock, a former minor league catcher who had managed briefly in the Yankees’ farm system, but in the fall of 1991 was one of the Yankees’ minor league catching instructors.

  “It was in the Instructional League that we started really working on a day-to-day basis with his catching,” said Sherlock, currently the bullpen coach for the Arizona Diamondbacks. “I don’t know who made the decision to convert Posada to a catcher, but the Yankees always had the best scouting and the best player development system in baseball and I think when they saw a player that had the skills that Jorge Posada had, they were always looking to find a position that somebody with his talent could fit and be successful at. To have that type of hitter behind the plate is such a bonus.”

  In 1992, playing for Greensboro, Posada was ready to complete the transition to a full-time catcher, playing just five games at third base. He caught 41 games behind Wilson, who got the bulk of the Hornets’ work behind the plate, 89 games. (It was while he was at Greensboro that Posada became acquainted with Derek Jeter, who joined the Hornets for the final two weeks of that season. Posada and Jeter would become the closest of friends. In 1999, when Posada married Laura Mendez, an attorney from Puerto Rico, Jeter was the best man at the wedding.)

  By 1993, his third year as a pro, Posada had shot past Wilson, who remained in Greensboro while Posada leaped to Prince William. His learning curve as a catcher continued, and despite leading the Carolina League with 38 passed balls the Yankees were impressed with his ability to call a game, his rapport with pitchers, and his bat. With the Prince William Cannons of the Carolina League he batted .259 with 27 doubles, 17 homers, and 61 runs batted in, which earned him a late-season call-up to Albany-Colonie of the Class AA Eastern League for 25 at-bats (seven hits, a .280 average), and the following year to Columbus, the Yankees’ top farm team in the Class AAA International League.

  He was still a few years away from Yankee Stadium, but Posada was on the fast track to New York, where ahead of him were 30-something Mike Stanley and backup Matt Nokes, who was never regarded as a good defensive catcher and whose offensive numbers were in rapid decline. High on the Yankees’ list of priorities for the immediate future was the search for a younger, more productive catcher.

  4. Kalamazoo Kid

  Born in Detroit, raised in Detroit, a Detroit resident all his life, Hal Newhouser was the poster child for a hometown boy making good. He signed as an 18-year-old with the Tigers out of Detroit’s Wilbur Wright High School in 1939 and a few months later, after appearing in 34 minor league games, made his major league debut with the Tigers on September 29, still some eight months short of his 19th birthday. He started against the Cleveland Indians in the second game of a doubleheader, allowed three runs and three hits, struck out four, was tagged with the loss, and never pitched another game in the minor leagues.

  Five years later, Newhouser would begin a three-year run in the major leagues the likes of which has rarely been matched. From 1944 through 1946 he would win 80 games and lose only 27, pitch 20 shutouts, and strike out 674 batters in 918¹⁄³ innings. Although this period dovetailed with World War II, when most of the best major league players had gone off to serve their country (Newhouser was classified 4-F and rejected for service because of a leaky heart valve; he attempted to enlist anyway, but was turned down several times), Newhouser was nonetheless acclaimed as the most dominant pitcher in the big leagues. In 1944 he was voted American League Most Valuable Player (at the time there was not yet a Cy Young Award). He won the award again in 1945 when he captured the pitcher’s triple crown of wins (25), earned-run average (1.81), and strikeouts (212). The following year he finished second to Ted Williams in the American League Most Valuable Player voting and remains to this day the only pitcher to win the MVP in consecutive seasons.

  When he retired as an active player in 1955 with a record of 207–150, 33 shutouts, and 1,796 strikeouts (he was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1992), Newhouser stayed in the game as a talent scout, remaining home and covering the Detroit area with which he was familiar and where he was accorded legendary status. Now, in 1992, he was the enemy, covering the territory for the Houston Astros, who had the first pick in the draft and were paying particular attention to a skinny 17-year-old shortstop from Kalamazoo Central High School.

  Derek Sanderson Jeter (he was not named for the National Hockey League star Derek Sanderson as has been frequently reported, rather he was named after his fraternal grandfather, Sanderson Charles Jeter) was born in Pequannock, New Jersey, on June 26, 1974, which links him with Abner Doub
leday, who also was born on June 26, only 155 years earlier. Two baseball personalities: one, Doubleday, who is said to have invented baseball (apocryphal), the other, Jeter, who is renowned for perfecting it.

  When Derek was four, his father, Charles, an alcohol and drug abuse counselor who had played baseball at Fisk University (like his son, he was a shortstop), moved his family to Kalamazoo in order to complete his masters degree from Western Michigan University. However, Derek and his sister, Sharlee, would return to New Jersey for a few weeks each summer to stay with their maternal grandparents, Dot and Bill Connors.

  Derek’s grandmother was a rabid Yankees fan and she and her young grandson watched Yankees games together on television and made occasional trips to Yankee Stadium, where Jeter relished in watching his favorite team, the Yankees of Willie Randolph, Don Mattingly, and Derek’s baseball idol, Dave Winfield.

  “When I grow up,” young Derek told his nana, “I’m going to play shortstop for the New York Yankees.”

  Hal Newhouser had other ideas. He had been tracking Jeter since his junior year at Kalamazoo Central when Jeter batted .557 and hit seven home runs for coach Don Zomer. As a senior, a sprained ankle hampered him, but he still batted .508, averaged an RBI a game, and was a perfect 12-for-12 in steals, for which he was named 1992 High School Player of the Year by the American Baseball Coaches Association. Jeter also was a three-year letterman and an All-State honorable mention in basketball. A point guard on the Kalamazoo Central team, Jeter earned local hero status when, as a sophomore, he hit a three-point shot at the buzzer to beat rival Portage Central.