The Journey Home

by Jorge Posada

  The tunnel from the clubhouse to the dugout was dim, and a rectangle of light beyond that seemed brighter than any light I’d ever seen before. It was the first day of a new month. The Yankees were struggling, at 58-59, and trailed the Red Sox by 14 games. It looked a lot like there wasn’t going to be any postseason to be eligible for. I showed up at 2:00 for a night game, well before anyone else was around. Before going onto the field, I sat in the dugout. The grounds crew was busy watering the field. Tears came to my eyes. I’d told my mom all those years ago that I was going to play here someday, and now I was about to do just that.

  I wasn’t thinking about the injury and what I’d done to overcome it. I wasn’t really thinking about switching positions, becoming a catcher, and how hard I’d worked to do that. This also wasn’t about my education as a catcher, about learning to receive a ball, track a pop-up, or set up a pitcher. This was just about soaking in the feeling. Yankee Stadium. The big leagues. The pinstripes. Monument Park. I told myself to remember this moment, to remember those feelings of pride and gratitude. My dad had a plan for me and it was about to pay off.

  I’d called my mom and dad from Columbus before I got on the plane. But I wanted to speak with them again. I got up and went back into the clubhouse to use the phone. I talked to my mom, and she sounded so excited for me. Then my dad got on the line, and we talked a bit about the game and the Mariners as if I was going to be starting and needed to go over their lineup. That felt good and a little bit funny, and at the end of the call I told my dad thanks. I started to choke up and couldn’t figure out how to list all the things I was thankful to him for. He let the silence last, and then he said, “Go get ’em.”

  Later that evening I trotted to the outfield to stretch and loosen up. Derek Jeter was there, his hat still not quite right on his head, but looking good. He patted the ground next to him, and I settled alongside him to stretch. Andy Pettitte jogged by and held out his hand. Mariano was next. I stood up, and he gave me a bro-hug, thumping me on the back as he did so, telling me how glad he was to see me. Paul O’Neill strode by and congratulated me, wishing me well.

  I stayed in left field during BP to shag balls. As I was standing there, I saw Don Mattingly coming out there. He’d been taking ground balls at first, and now he was making his way to left field. I figured he was going to do some running or something; instead, he came up to me, held out his hand, and said, “Congratulations, kid, I’m happy that you’re here.” I mumbled something, but felt great. Then Mike Stanley came up to me. He was a veteran, a great guy, but he knew his days were coming to an end, and he said something I’ll never forget: “I’ll hold the position until you’re ready. Next year you might need a little time off, just call me and I’ll back you up. You should wear my number when I’m out of here.” He turned, and I saw the number 20.

  I had this strange sense of being both a part of that team and separate from it. That was heightened when I sat on the bench and the game began. I turned into a fan at that point.

  Before I knew it, Rickey Henderson of the A’s was leading off the game and Wade Boggs and Don Mattingly were out there on the field. Both of them contributed to a three-run rally in the bottom half of the inning, but in the second Mark McGwire hit a towering blast. Derek and I were sitting next to one another, and we jumped and watched the ball fly out of there, both of us saying something like, “Holy shit,” under our breath. The rest of the guys on the bench just sat in place.

  A few days later, on September 4, I got the word that I was going in. It was the top of the ninth in a blowout win over Seattle. We were up 13–3, and Andy Pettitte was coming out after eight strong innings. Joe Ausanio was going to mop up. We’d been on a bit of a roll and had finally gotten to .500 with that victory, though we still trailed the Red Sox by 14 games. The announced attendance was over 24,000, and most of them were still there, waiting to sing and celebrate a Yankees victory. I was excited but not nervous—I’d caught Joe at Columbus several times, so it was good to have someone familiar on the mound.

  The inning was uneventful, with Joe getting the first two outs before allowing a single. We got the third out, and I joined the congratulations line. Derek had come into the game as well that inning, along with Rubén Rivera. It was nice to share that moment with guys I knew and liked and who were experiencing some of these things on the big league level while still early in their careers. I hadn’t contributed much to the victory, but still, it felt great to be out there listening to the guys congratulating one another while the fans sang.

  Shortly after that, we played the Orioles in Camden Yard. Derek and I were on the bench again, and we watched as Roberto Alomar went deep into right field to snare a ground ball. He dove, got up, and fired to first to just get the runner. Derek and I jumped up shouting, not because we disagreed with the call, but because we’d just witnessed a great play. Buck Showalter turned and glared at us. We knew we weren’t there as fans, but hey, that was a great play, and as the expression goes, we were just happy to be there.

  I went back to Columbus after that brief call-up, but when the season ended, just as they’d told me, I was on the roster for the playoffs. The Yankees had an amazing run at the end of ’95, going from that 58-59 record when I’d arrived to finish 79-64. That hot streak didn’t last in the playoffs, though it was a classic series in which we lost 3-2.

  What I remember is how seriously everyone took those games. I’d been impressed in spring training by the guys’ level of preparation, the professionalism of it all, but that didn’t prepare me fully for the before-game preparation I saw. Mike Stanley was nice enough to include me in the catchers’ and pitchers’ meeting where they went over every hitter with a level of detail that I’d never heard before. They dissected every guy, and it was clear that Ken Griffey Jr. was a guy they didn’t want to have beat them. I sat there flipping through ten pages detailing every pitch that the staff had thrown to him for the last four or five seasons, breaking it down by how each pitcher, like David Cone, had approached him. It was a lot to absorb, and I wondered who put all that information together.

  Something else that has stuck with me all these years is how the guys on that club really wanted to win it all for themselves, but also for Don Mattingly. I didn’t count the number of times I heard guys say some equivalent of, “Win one for Cap,” but it was a refrain I’ll never forget. You know, even now after all these years I get a chill when I think about that. We’re adults playing a game, and it’s a business and we’re all supposed to be professionals, but we care more about winning than fans can ever realize. We’re also fans, like Derek and I were during some of those games. We understand the history of the game. We know where certain guys are in their careers, and we know what they’ve contributed—in Don’s case, we knew how much he suffered from injuries and how hard he worked. Because he cared so much, because he was so competitive, he raised that team’s level of desire.

  As someone who had grown up emulating Mattingly’s stance, I’d long known about what he brought to the field, but to see firsthand the effect that he had on his teammates raised my admiration to a whole new level. His presence made everyone in the locker room better. I saw that, and I wanted to be like him, I wanted to be a leader. That’s what it meant to be a Yankee. You can look at the Yankees history as a blessing or a burden—those expectations can either crush you or elevate you. I loved being a part of it in ’95, and it just fed the hunger that I had to contribute. It was no longer just about being in the big leagues. It was about winning in the big leagues.

  The sportsmanship I experienced during that series wasn’t just limited to our side. Out on the field before the game, Edgar Martínez came up to me and, in Spanish, congratulated me and wished me luck, as did Alex Diaz, a guy I played with in winter ball. These were small gestures, but they had a big impact on me. Ever since I’d come to the United States to play for Calhoun, I hadn’t heard Spanish around me very often. Hearing their words offered a small reminder that, however far I’d
come, and even though everything looked different, I could still find connections to my home.

  As loud as I thought Yankee Stadium could get when we came from behind with four runs in the bottom of the seventh to put away the Mariners in Game 1, the Kingdome was even louder. Though when Jim Leyritz hit that home run to win Game 2, I couldn’t hear the crowd in Yankee Stadium at all because of how much noise we were making in the dugout. I’d been in some great games, but a 15-inning thriller that ended like that was something I doubted I’d ever get to witness again but sure hoped I would. The highs and lows of the 11th inning of Game 5 stayed with me for a very long time. Going up a run and then seeing it disappear so quickly with only three batters coming to the plate was a quick but definitely not painless way to go out.

  Yes, guys were professional and all that, but I could see and feel the disappointment. I hadn’t been with the team the whole year, but going through that series and that intense complex of emotions bonded me to them. I really felt like a Yankee as I sat there, watching those games from the dugout and the bullpen. That was a long walk back to the dugout and into the silence of a losing locker room. It was like the first bittersweet taste of something addictive, the feeling that these games mattered so much, that you put so much of yourself on the line. As Buck addressed the team and told us that we had a lot to be proud of, that we shouldn’t hang our heads, and that we had a lot to look forward to in ’96, I really felt like he was talking to me as well as everybody else in the room. I knew how to come back from a physical injury. Another test waited for me and the rest of the Yankees. How do you come back when you feel like you’ve been gutted? What do you do to get even better than being on the brink of doing something really, really special?

  We—and that’s how I thought of it then, as “we”—had a long and silent six-hour flight back to New York to contemplate those and other questions. Hopefully, before the following October we would find the answers.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Settling In

  Like a lot of students, I was often told that, while I might have heard what was being said, I wasn’t really listening. Before our disappointing finish in 1995, I had heard a number of my teammates say that they wanted to win in part for the Cap, but also because they weren’t all going to be together again. While I heard those words, I wasn’t really listening to what they meant. I was too busy being caught up in the thrill of the big leagues to fully understand what they were talking about. Going into that off-season, I thought I understood some of the realities of the professional life of a baseball player, but I quickly learned a lot about how this business worked.

  Take Mike Stanley for example. When I first joined the team in September, I heard him saying to me that he was basically conceding his role with the Yankees to me the next season. I guess I should have listened and thought about it more. He was coming off a series of productive years with the Yankees, not to mention an All-Star season in ’95. His skills weren’t eroding and he wasn’t passing the torch. Instead, he got a better offer to go play someplace else—in his case, Boston. I’m not saying that Mike already knew that he was leaving the Yankees when I first arrived, but he was a free agent and probably knew that he was going to test the waters. What was going on in the minds of the Yankees front office is something I don’t know. But as happens nearly every year with every club, changes were coming.

  The changes in the Yankees organization that year affected me and my perceptions of where I fit in the big picture. In November 1995, to fill Mike’s spot on the roster, the Yankees traded for Joe Girardi, who came over from the Colorado Rockies. When I heard the news, I was back in Puerto Rico, and while at first I was happy about the Stanley signing (and happy for him that he got a nice deal), I wasn’t so happy about having new competition in Joe. I had nothing against Joe—I didn’t know him at all—but he was somebody I was going to have to compete with for a spot on that roster. The baseball equivalent of Mother Teresa could have been brought in as a catcher, and I still wouldn’t have been pleased.

  I wanted that job. I believed that I was ready and that I had done all that was asked of me to transform myself into a big league catcher. Did that mean that I was ready to start every day?

  Yes.

  If I didn’t have that kind of faith in myself, then I wouldn’t have achieved what I had to that point. Show me a guy who doesn’t think he can or should be an everyday player, and I’ll show you a guy who sits on the bench and deserves to because he doesn’t have enough faith in himself. I was never going to be that guy. That doesn’t mean that in ’96 I felt like I knew everything or had refined every skill it took to be an everyday catcher. That means that I knew I was capable of being one and all I needed was the opportunity to prove myself. Throughout 1995, I had said as much to the people around me. I told my agent, Willie Sanchez—who began representing me in place of my dad my second year of pro ball—that I was ready. Willie, and later Hardy Jackson who took over for Willie, told me to be patient and not to worry about it. They had sensed that Mike Stanley was going to leave and that the Yankees didn’t have any other options. It was clear the organization liked me and was grooming me to be their guy, but now the Yankees had another option in the form of Joe Girardi.

  I spoke with my dad, and he set me straight. He liked that I was getting angry and impatient. I had to turn that anger into something more productive. So what if the Yankees brought in another guy? There was always going to be another guy, either in the organization or on another team, they’d have interest in. That was the nature of the game. Teams wanted to get better, so I had to get better. If I went out there and busted my ass in the off-season and had a great spring, then I’d give them no choice but to start me. He stressed that no one was ever going to give me anything—I had to take it.

  Unfortunately, the way things played out in the off-season undermined what everyone had been saying about my future role on the team. I started hearing rumors that I was being offered up, or at least that my name had come up, in trade discussions. That’s always tough for a player. While my top priority was playing professionally, the truth was, I really wanted to stay in the Bronx. The Yankees had drafted me, and they were the only home I’d known. The club had treated me well, the team was in a good position to win, and especially after coming up through the farm system, I wanted to be a part of that Yankees tradition. Even though I’d only been in New York City a little bit, I really enjoyed it and was energized by the big Puerto Rican population there. This desire to stay in pinstripes might have been a little naive of me, maybe a case of slightly premature loyalty, but in the end there wasn’t a whole lot that I could do about it, so I tried to stay optimistic about my chances in New York.

  To confuse things even more, though, the Yankees then let Buck Showalter go. Because my time with the club had been brief, I didn’t have a great relationship with him, but at least he knew who I was. It was very possible that the new guy, Joe Torre, wouldn’t. He was a National League guy. Maybe that was why they traded for Joe Girardi, another National League guy. My mind was working overtime, and I was starting to get headaches from worrying about things I couldn’t control. I hated the feeling that my career was being determined by outside forces—I was in a hurry and I was being blocked.

  So I did what I always did: I went to work. I had started to collect sayings to help me stay focused and inspired, and one the earliest ones I kept with me was this: Work ethic eliminates fear. I know that some people say that fear of failure is a powerful motivation for them, but I was wired differently. Fear made me anxious, and being anxious made me put too much pressure on myself. My motto that off-season became: less thinking and more working.

  For the first time, I hired a personal trainer. Félix Hernández opened a gym near my parents’ house in Río Piedras, so I went to his place and told him who I was and what I did for a living. I was honest with him—I didn’t have a whole lot of money to pay him. I’d gotten a small—and I mean small—bonus for the playoffs that ye
ar, but money was still really tight. Félix was great about it, telling me not to worry. We’d work something out down the line, he said, when I was making more.

  Félix was a body builder himself, and so were most of his clients. I wasn’t interested in bulk for bulk’s sake, but I’d seen some of the guys in the Yankees locker room, and I felt a bit like I was still a kid in terms of my physical development. I weighed 205 at that point, but it was kind of a soft 205. Félix did some initial testing on me that showed I had a body fat count of 19—not bad, but still not as good as it could be. He also knew that as a catcher it was important for me to work on my quickness and agility, so he put together a two-phase program for me. Early in the day, we’d go to a nearby track, where I’d run and do agility drills. We’d work with medicine balls as well to build up my core strength. Then it was into the gym to lift.

  That off-season I also saw Iván Rodríguez, Rubén Sierra, and Juan González working out at the gym. I could see how much weight those guys were throwing around and how cut they were, and they were all in the big leagues, so I figured I should go at it as hard and heavy as they were. Félix, though, kept my expectations in check—I was going to have to work up gradually to that level. His primary concern was for me to have functional strength, so we tried to simulate the movements that I did as a catcher and as a hitter and target the muscle groups specific to those actions. In a lot of ways that was what the Yankees were also emphasizing with their program, but Félix brought in the heavier lifting element to complement what I had already been doing.

  I also played a bit of winter league ball, and during the winter Derek came to visit. We worked out, threw, hit, and got ready for spring training. I liked showing him around, going out to eat. One evening we were joined by Ricky Ledée, a teammate and friend who lived near me. We weren’t sure where to go, so we asked Derek what he wanted.