The Journey Home

by Jorge Posada

  That made the transition to playing second easier, and eventually Roger Burnett, a shortstop from Stanford, and I helped out our very good pitching staff by setting a record for most double plays in a season. I played second base exclusively that first year, but I was given a set of catcher’s gear just in case I was needed there. I’d caught a couple of games at Calhoun, and because I had good hands and a strong arm, I was willing to help the team out in whatever way I could. Still, I always thought of myself as an infielder, and when I checked the rosters of the various teams above me in the Yankees organization, I was looking at middle infielders as the guys I was going to have get past on the ladder.

  That’s one of the interesting things about playing minor league ball and, to an extent, in the big leagues as well: you have an opponent in the other dugout, but you also have competition in your own dugout, as well as in dugouts scattered all around the country. I was able to focus on the game I was playing, but I also knew that I was competing for one of only a few spots in the organization at my position. My dad told me, and I always believed, that you have to do something to make your coaches take notice of you. So the temptation was always there to try to do too much, or to do something selfish.

  The Yankees preached a team concept, though, and that included tracking things like the number of times you successfully hit behind a runner, dropped down a bunt, or hit a sacrifice fly. The Yankees weren’t just about the major statistical categories. They understood that sometimes those numbers are deceiving. In fact, we kept track of something called “hard-hit balls” to acknowledge the reality that there were times when you absolutely squared up and hit a rope but didn’t get an actual hit. So there you were being told that you had to execute and you sometimes wondered if by executing you were going to end up being executed—released because your numbers weren’t that good.

  Even though I’d been around various major league spring trainings, until I had to do it myself, I didn’t appreciate how hard it was for all those guys I saw and admired in those camps to keep a professional approach and compete with each other at the same time. My dad told me that things would take care of themselves if I kept doing what the organization wanted me to do and what I’d been doing my whole career. That was easy to say, and I tried to believe it—part of me always did—but when I didn’t get off to a particularly strong start, I put more pressure on myself to succeed. The game was fun to play, but it was serious business trying to get to the top of that ladder.

  Do your job, I kept telling myself, and that stayed with me my entire career. The game was fun, but the rest was a job—though I did enjoy having people, especially kids, asking for autographs. If I wanted to have the fun, I had to take the job seriously. To be honest, that was fairly easy to do in Oneonta. I wasn’t making a whole lot of money. During the week he was on the team, Sandi Santiago and I rented the top floor of a house, unfurnished, and all we could afford to rent was beds—mattresses to be precise, no box springs and no frames. We bought some sheets and pillows and blankets and a few towels and set up a basic kitchen with a table and a couple of chairs, but that was it.

  Though we were roommates, I wasn’t upset when Sandi left. We didn’t know one another at all, and I liked living by myself, just like I had back in Decatur. I didn’t have to worry about anyone else’s schedule or habits except my own. I wasn’t going home after games and flipping on the big-screen TV to watch SportsCenter. I had no idea what was going on in the world except for what was happening between the lines and in our dugout and clubhouse. I’d hear some guys talking about what had gone on in MLB and about movies and TV shows, but they might as well have been talking about what was happening in Azerbaijan or Zambia.

  My contacts from the outside world were my mother and father—I spoke to them just about every day. My mom wanted to be sure that I was eating well and taking good care of myself. My dad wanted to hear how I was doing in the games. I reported to him on every at-bat, and he kept my statistics—the numbers that most fans are familiar with. At one point when it was becoming clear to me that the opposition had several guys who would have been the number-one starter at the University of Alabama, I knew that I wasn’t overmatched, but I was definitely in the competition of my life. Those guys threw as hard as anybody I’d faced, but they also had good late movement and decent control. Several of them had really good breaking balls, but few had good command of them. I needed to be disciplined, and it took all the discipline I had to not scream when my father said to me after my latest hitless night, “That puts you at .210.”

  “I know,” I said patiently, then added, with a bit of venom, “I can see the scoreboard.”

  I have to give my dad some credit. If someone had said that to me the way I said it to him, I would have come back with, “Too bad you don’t see the ball that good.” In some ways, I wish that somebody had said something like that to me. That’s how teammates and friends get on you, let you know that you’re taking yourself too seriously. Take the game seriously but not yourself—that was a lesson I was going to have to wait another season to experience up close and personal.

  Toward the end of our season, I had an experience similar to one my buddy Steve from Calhoun had. A big left-hander was called up from our Gulf Coast League team in Florida. His name was Andy Pettitte, and there was something about him that said, I’m going to be a big leaguer someday. First, he got promoted from rookie ball, and second, he had impressive stuff. He was a big guy too, at six feet five inches tall. He wasn’t as big as he would get later with the Yankees, but you could tell he was strong, and he used his lower body to drive home about as well as any pitcher I’d seen. He didn’t have great results with us, going 2-2 in six starts, but he struck out almost exactly one batter per inning. Andy and I didn’t get to be great friends during that brief period. Both of us were pretty quiet guys, but when we both got promoted to Greensboro in the Carolina League for the ’92 season, we got to know one another better. I did catch one of his bullpen sessions and he was throwing a hard knuckleball back then. One of them hit me in the knee and another got me in the chest protector. That ball could really dart. Eventually, the organization told him that he should give up on that pitch. He did, but he’d still break it out during practice while playing catch, and I’m amazed that he never hurt anybody with it since it danced around so much and was so fast. It wasn’t because of that knuckleball, but I do remember telling my dad that this guy was going to be something special and he was. Andy was so much more mature physically and mentally than the rest of us on that Greensboro team, and the only time I ever saw him flustered was when he got shelled in a game in which his wife had sung the national anthem. She was great. He was terrible. When a teammate asked him, a day or so later, if he wanted to have her sing again before one of his starts, Andy turned all red and looked like he wanted to run out of the room rather than answer. Finally, he just shook his head a tiny bit.

  Before Greensboro, I got some good news when I was asked—well, told—to report to our Florida Instructional League for six weeks of intensive training and competition. About eight of the guys from Oneonta were also at that camp, including Lyle Mouton and Steve Phillips and my double-play buddy, Roger Burnett. They all had had good years, and Lyle and Steve were our top RBI and HR guys, so I felt like I was in good company. Being there with them meant that the Yankees saw me as someone worth working with. The camp also had guys from other levels there, some of the studs of the organization. Despite feeling bad about hitting just .235 with four homers and 33 RBI, I was feeling pretty good about how the team was feeling about me. That’s the thing about the minors, though—a feeling is all you really have to go on. No one comes to you and says, “Hey, we think you’ve got some skills. You didn’t hit for as high of an average or with as much pop as we hoped, but we think you’re worth keeping around.”

  I took the small signs of encouragement wherever I could find them. One member of the organization, Mark Newman, a director of player development, made me fee
l pretty good. To help out the Latin players, he had taught himself Spanish and started speaking to me in my native language—that meant a lot to me. Mark was the first guy who took part in what I later would laughingly call my “brainwashing.” He told me I would be really valuable to the organization if I could be there for them as a switch-hitting catcher. I was resistant, but given that I was doing my best to follow instructions and do what I was told, hearing those words about my value to the organization planted a seed that was going to grow. It was just a question of when.

  I was also pleased that I got to work on my hitting one-on-one with Jim Lefebvre, a former Rookie of the Year and All-Star and a great trivia answer—what former major league ballplayer appeared on Gilligan’s Island and Batman? Even better than that, he was one of the coaches who worked with players one-on-one.

  This was also the first time I was given formal instruction in the art and science of catching. I did a few drills and worked with catching instructors, though the primary focus was on opening my stance when I hit left-handed. I tried it and tried it, but I just didn’t feel comfortable. I did as I was told, but after the six weeks were over, I went back to Puerto Rico, worked with my uncle Leo, and concentrated on shortening my stroke. That would effectively help me do what the Yankees wanted—be more consistent and make solid contact with greater power.

  I’d led our team in Oneonta in one Yankee Way category—with seven, I had the most sacrifice bunts. I was showing that I could sacrifice myself for the good of the team, but they were sending me another signal. A light-hitting, switch-hitting middle infielder (or catcher) wasn’t really what they had in mind for me. My body was filling out even more, and that was a good thing.

  Working with Uncle Leo became a yearly part of my preparation. My dad’s cousin was signed by the Milwaukee Braves in 1954 and got his chance in the big leagues with the Kansas City Royals, playing with them for three seasons, from 1960 to 1962. He then worked in various jobs with different organizations; when I started working with him, he was a hitting instructor for 23 years with the Dodgers. Either he’d come to Puerto Rico or I’d travel to his home in Miami, but we’d find the time to work together, and he helped me enormously throughout my career.

  If I had any disappointments at all in 1991, it was not being drafted by a team in the Caribbean League. I’d grown up watching both MLB and Caribbean League games. My dad’s scouting jobs depended on him finding the best Latin players primarily from Puerto Rico. Growing up, when the Caribbean World Series came around in February, I’d gotten to see the best players from teams in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. The only winter ball games that I ever saw televised were part of the Caribbean World Series. I always wanted to play in one, and I hoped that once I signed a big league contract, I’d at least get the opportunity to play.

  I grew up a fan of our local team, the Cangrejeros (Crabbers) de Santurce. In fact, the first organized baseball game in Puerto Rico was played in Santurce, all the way back in 1898. When the Spanish-American War ended and Puerto Rico briefly came under the military control of the United States, US soldiers helped spread the game, and it became much more popular. It took until 1938, though, for the first semipro league to be formed. It helped produce Hiram Bithorn, the first Puerto Rican to play in the big leagues in the United States; he pitched for the Chicago Cubs in 1942. I knew of him because the stadium in San Juan was named after him, and that’s where both the San Juan team and Santurce played their home games. Santurce’s team, the Crabbers, didn’t join the league until the second year.

  Some great names from the Negro Leagues in the United States played in Puerto Rico, including Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson. In fact, the two faced off against one another. Paige pitched for the Brujos de Guayama (Guayama Witch Doctors), and Gibson was a player-manager for Santurce. Paige’s team must have cast some kind of spell on my team in 1940. They beat them 23–0. Paige was the league’s MVP that year, going 19-3, with a 1.93 ERA and 208 strikeouts in 205 innings. His win and strikeout totals set single-season league records that have never been broken. One of the great stories I heard is that the whole witch doctor thing got to him at one game that year and he ran off the field and out of the park because he said he saw a ghost.

  Even though I wasn’t drafted in 1991, I ended up signing with the team based in the city of Bayamón. My dad knew the manager and the GM, and after they let me practice, I made the team. The older guys who were playing, the core of the lineup, was pretty young and pretty talented. Among them were Eduardo Pérez, Felipe Crespo, and Oreste Marrero. The older guys played every day, but we had a pretty good team on the bench too, all young guys. As a backup catcher, I caught in the bullpen every day—for a few Seattle Mariner pitchers, including the Mariners’ closer at the time, Jeff Nelson, who I would later work with on the Yankees. On the field, I only got to play in a few blowouts as an outfielder, but being in the outfield was a good experience. I could demonstrate that I was a super-utility guy, so much the better, for them, for me, and for the Yankees.

  Besides, what could be better than playing ball year-round anyway? I know that some young players think that going from college to the pros makes for a long stretch of playing, but I was used to that; in fact, junior college, semipro, A ball, instructional league, and Caribbean League wasn’t enough for me. I just wanted to keep playing and getting better.

  One of the ways I could get better was to sit on that bench and pay attention to what was going on out on the field as well as keep my ears open to what was being said in the dugout and the bullpen. The older players had a lot of knowledge, and I especially wanted to hear more from the guys who played in the minor leagues or the big leagues. I also can say this: if you need to learn how to hit the breaking ball or the changeup, go play winter ball. Those veteran pitchers were smart guys, and they knew they couldn’t throw fastballs by anyone anymore, so they had to finesse their way through a game. Even when you were down in the count 2-0, you couldn’t look for a fastball. Patience. Patience. Patience.

  Later on the Yankee teams I played for were known for working the count and never giving away at-bats. That was part of my game from the very beginning, and winter ball in the Caribbean really helped me with that part of the hitting game. In a very real way, I was getting to enjoy the best of both baseball worlds. It was great to get away and get back home and still be able to play the game I loved while learning a lot.

  When I’d get to the park in Bayamón, I’d keep up with a habit I’d developed about halfway through my first season in Oneonta. I’d woken up one morning, and while sitting on the floor to eat breakfast, I took out a piece of paper and wrote at the top: “Where I want to be and when.” For 1992, I wrote down: “Greensboro (A),” and then the rest of the list looked like this:

  1993—Double A

  1994—Triple A

  1995—New York Yankees

  I folded up that piece of paper and put it in my wallet. I carried that slip of paper around with me for quite a while. I’d take it out to look at it and remind myself of my goals and my desires. I knew my plan was ambitious, but when did anybody ever make their dreams come true by sitting back and waiting for things to happen?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Education of

  a Catcher

  There’s nothing natural about being a catcher. Some people can claim that they were born to catch, but I think they’re ignoring that our body’s natural response to things being thrown at us and swung near us is to get out of the way. Sure, you’ve got to be tough to be a catcher. More than that, though, you’ve got to love the game to no longer fight your body’s natural instinct to flinch or shut your eyes when someone is swinging a 36-inch, 34-ounce piece of hardwood by your head. They’re doing that in order to strike a 5- to 5¼-ounce baseball that is traveling at 90 to 100 miles per hour. Keeping your eye on the ball is one of the fundamentals of hitting and catching a baseball. That’s easier to do when you’re fielding a grounder or a fly ball than it
is when catching a thrown ball.

  In my major league career, I caught 1,574 games for the Yankees. As it stands right now, I’m ranked 25th in baseball history for most games played at what I, and many other people, think is the most crucial position in the game. Baseball people always talk about the wear and tear on a catcher’s body. I had my share of injuries and bumps and bruises, and it’s true that the position takes its toll. I’m proud of a lot of things I accomplished on the field, but catching full-time from 1998 to 2008 without going on the disabled list a single time still makes me feel good and fortunate. After all, just getting into position to play catcher is harder than it is anywhere else on the field and takes its toll.

  I can’t tell you for certain how many times I got up out of the crouch and then back down into it while playing those 1,574 games. Figuring that in the average game about 140 pitches are thrown per team, a conservative estimate is about 220,000 squats. That’s just for live-ball pitches, not between-inning warm-ups, pitching changes, spring training, and all the rest. The exact number doesn’t matter, and to be honest, I hadn’t thought about it that much until recently. You just do what you have to do. Maybe that was one of the things my dad was trying to teach me as a kid when he made me haul that dirt, though ironically, I didn’t start to catch with any regularity until I was very far down the line in my baseball career.