The Journey Home

by Jorge Posada

  The next thing I knew my shoulder hurt. Laura had punched me, and then she nodded. I started to breathe again.

  We set a date for January 2000 and started to make arrangements for a big wedding, but things didn’t turn out exactly as we’d planned. Shortly after I reported to spring training in March 1999, we found out we were pregnant. I’m pretty old-fashioned, as are both of our families, so out of respect for them and their Catholic faith, and my own feeling that it wasn’t right to have a child born outside of marriage, we decided to make our union official as soon as possible and then have the big party later on as planned. Laura and I went to City Hall in Manhattan to get our marriage license. We waited in line, and then when we got to the clerk, he looked at my driver’s license and started to squint kind of funny.

  “Do you play for the Yankees?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well, what are you doing waiting in line there?”

  Confused, I told him I was getting a marriage license.

  “You should be in the VIP line,” he said, pointing down the hall. I didn’t think I was a VIP, and we’d already been waiting, so we just went with it.

  Two days later, Derek was with us to act as best man, and Laura’s sister was there. Besides not having wedding rings to exchange, things went well. After the game that afternoon, we had the wedding, followed by the traditional pizza. Of course, things couldn’t go off without there being some drama. The guy who officiated at the ceremony, someone recommended to us by my friend Roberto Clemente Jr., showed up at the apartment. He was wearing more jewelry than Laura and I owned combined and a suit that would have worked well if he was a Yankees rookie being hazed. Laura was in the bedroom, and I went to get her. I was trying not to laugh. She peeked around me and saw the guy and said, “I don’t know if I want to do this.”

  She did go through with it, and that was a good thing. I’d already been dealing with sympathetic morning sickness. What would have happened to me if I had been left at the pizza box? Laura still gives me some grief about those sympathy pains and all my prebirth anxiety, and she still gives me crap every time I tear up watching a sad movie, but I am what I am and my emotions sometimes get the best of me.

  Part of my anxiety at the beginning of the ’99 season had to do with Joe Torre not being with us. He had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and underwent surgery in mid-March. It was hard to believe what was going on. At that same camp, we learned about a minor leaguer having been diagnosed with testicular cancer. The team insisted that we all get a thorough checkup and we did. Everyone from George Steinbrenner on down rallied around Joe. He had gathered us all together to fill us in, gave us a timetable for his return, and let us all know that he planned on being back with us as soon as possible. Everyone said that his health was more important than the game. His doctors urged him to be patient, as did Mr. Steinbrenner.

  Selfishly, I wanted Joe to hurry back. I liked his calm presence, and how he communicated with me. Don Zimmer took over as interim manager to begin the year, and while I liked Zim, he was not like Joe, either temperamentally or as a communicator. I think that Zim was a perfect fit with a lot of the veteran guys who knew their roles, were set in the lineup, and had more of a “just let me go out there and do my job” attitude. You can’t be all things to all people, and you have to be true to who you are, and Zim was. It was just that what I needed and wanted from a manager wasn’t what he was best at or comfortable doing. I was still trying to think my way through the game too much. I didn’t yet have enough experiences and memories to draw on to go by feel or gut instinct—or at least I didn’t think that I did, especially when it came to defense. Sports require you to react, and I was still thinking-reacting and sometimes telling myself to just react.

  As a result, I didn’t really know how to handle the toughest thing of all. I was told that I was going to be the guy at my position. If being the guy meant the guy who didn’t get penciled into the lineup everyday, then that’s who I was. I was confused and wasn’t sure how to approach Zim, and when I did, the “you’re the guy” responses didn’t make my role any clearer or my inconsistent playing time any easier to accept.

  I was making a lot of adjustments—to being married, to becoming a father, to taking over full-time as our catcher, and to a new member of our pitching staff. Roger Clemens came over from Toronto in exchange for three players, including David Wells. I was sorry to see Boomer go, but when you have a chance to get a guy who was as dominant as Roger had been, it’s hard to walk away from that deal feeling any kind of regret. It also helped that Roger really fit in. The man worked his ass off. He was an amazing competitor. He was also a very gracious guy. Coming over to a team that had just won the World Series and, in a sense, replacing one of the more popular guys in the clubhouse wasn’t easy. Maybe it helped that he was so different from Boomer. The Rocket also went out of his way that spring training to get to know us. He’d invite large groups of us to the house he was renting and cook steak for us and we’d hang out.

  I can’t say that Roger and I were ever close friends, but we had a lot of respect for each other—for how we played the game and how hard we worked. I knew that I pushed myself hard, but I was still young and trying to prove myself. Roger was a veteran with a great career going, and he outworked everybody. He came to camp in great shape and with his arm in midseason condition. He’d have a pitch count during a spring game, reach it, then go down into the bullpen until he’d thrown a total of 100 pitches. He’d sneak in a workout in between innings when he was pitching spring games. He’d practice pickoff moves, do 40 sit-ups, and then do 40 sets of pick-ups, moving side to side to field balls rolled to him.

  After all that, he’d do weight work. At one point, I said that I had to see what this guy was doing. I tagged along to the weight room, and he said to me, “Pitchers have to have legs. You’re catching. You need legs too.” I saw him doing some intense lower-body work with heavy weights. I joined him for those twice-a-day workouts, and it made a big difference for my endurance and power. Roger encouraged me as well. He said that if I kept working as hard as he’d seen me all that camp, I’d get where I wanted to be and deserved to be.

  Of all the pitchers I ever handled, Roger was my favorite to catch. He had his own way of going about doing things, including the signs he used: the fingers you put down didn’t just say which pitch but also which side of the plate it would go to, and his “Hook ’em Horns” sign was for his amazing hard overhand curve. He always wanted us to put down three signs, even when no one was on base, and often he would change up what sign was live throughout the game, using his own system to signal which of the three was good. The system kept me on my toes, and I loved the challenge of that. If I didn’t get a sign right, I could get hurt. Roger’s pitches, particularly his fastball, had more movement to them than a lot of people gave him credit for, and a busted thumb was a possibility if I crossed myself up.

  Roger was intense, but in a way that I could relate to. He demanded so much from himself that it was kind of magnetic. He was on, and he was going to force me to be there with him just by how much he demanded of my powers of concentration. He also taught me a lot about setting up hitters. He went into every game knowing exactly how he wanted to attack guys. We’d get together before the game, and he’d consult this little recording device he had (this was way before tablets or smartphones), and he’d rattle off his game plan. Between innings, we’d review things as needed. He was definitely in charge—I’d make suggestions in putting down signs, but Roger wouldn’t hesitate to shake me off.

  I would eventually catch for other pitchers who were really looking for me to guide them through the game. A rare few didn’t want to take responsibility for pitch selection, especially when the game was on the line. That was definitely not Roger. What I learned from catching him—and “catching” is the appropriate word here because I was always catching up to his thinking—were things that I could apply in catching other guys on the staff. Wit
h his work ethic and his preparation, he set a standard for toughness that I then applied in dealing with the other guys. I knew they had different stuff, different ideas, but he was still someone they could emulate in some ways. Roger made me a better player, and he was a gamer in every sense of the word. If he had a bad day, he took responsibility for it. If he had a good day, he gave me and other catchers on the team credit.

  One guy who got off to a slow start that year was Hideki Irabu. In some ways, I felt bad for him. That spring training, George Steinbrenner had called him “a fat pussy toad” for not covering first base. Mr. Steinbrenner then wouldn’t let him travel with the team to open the season. Later, Mr. Steinbrenner apologized for what he said and for how he handled the situation. I’m sure our owner was frustrated that, after signing “the Nolan Ryan of Japan,” it didn’t work out. Irabu came up in ’97 but was back in the minors by the end of that year after giving up more than seven runs a game.

  I can’t help but think that if he had been around, Joe would have handled that spring training situation differently. I’m not saying that Joe could have told Mr. Steinbrenner what to say, but I think Joe would have been able to convince him that not having Irabu travel with us wasn’t going to produce the desired result. I figured out a way to communicate with Hideki despite our language differences, and I think my ability to do that had something to do with not only my own experience in learning a new language but also seeing how Joe handled us. I needed to be patient, I needed to spend the extra time making sure that communications were clear, and I needed to remember to put myself in Hideki’s place and see things from his perspective. Hideki had good stuff, and he rebounded that year to be a decent contributor in the regular season. I was really stunned and saddened when I found out about his death by suicide in 2011. I never saw signs of the troubles that plagued him, and your heart goes out to anyone who suffers to that degree.

  When Joe returned on May 18, I felt like I was in better hands. At that point, we were 21-15 and one game up on the Red Sox, who we were scheduled to face after a day off. We lost, but that was part of a trend against them that regular season: we lost eight out of 12 times to them. We beat them where it mattered most, though, in the standings and in the American League Championship Series.

  A lot has been made of the relationship I had with El Duque, and the fight we got into later, but one thing was clear when he first arrived—the man knew how to pitch. He was also a lot like me in that he was a bit of a hothead. So the two of us had our battles. We were like brothers in a lot of ways: when one of us thought we knew what was better for the other, we weren’t afraid to speak our minds. Brothers, even if they have different mothers, are sometimes going to get under one another’s skin.

  When Orlando Hernández arrived, I had to make another adjustment. He didn’t know the hitters or the teams. In some ways that didn’t matter, because El Duque was really good at picking out guys’ weaknesses, varying his approach each time through the lineup, and generally being as fearless as he was smart. Still, it showed me once again that every pitcher needs something different from his catcher.

  Some of what got us into trouble a few times was that we had different ideas about how to go after hitters. I knew that El Duque had his methods, but there were times when I wanted to stick with what I felt was the most effective approach—go after the guy with your best stuff and don’t fool around too much with making too many pitches and trying to outfox him. El Duque also didn’t mind walking hitters to get to somebody he knew he could get out. That was definitely not by the book, and I saw giving up walks as giving in, but he worked out of a lot of self-made jams that way. If you’ve got good stuff, then use it. Maybe it was his experience in Cuba and the influence of guys there that somehow gave him style points or a degree-of-difficulty bonus for taking the long way or the hard way to an out. That didn’t sit well with me or, at times, with the coaching staff. You don’t need to make a show of it—just go after the hitter.

  One way El Duque demonstrated this approach was in his ability to pitch inside. That was part of his fearlessness. He wasn’t a headhunter—he didn’t try to hit guys—but he believed that he owned the inside half of the strike zone and even a little more than the inside. I loved that about him, and we never had a problem with each other in that regard. He wasn’t going to be intimidated, and so his hardheadedness, his unwillingness to give in, was both a good thing and a bad thing. Depending on how I was feeling on any given day, he was either my favorite or a pain in the ass. Like his pitches, there was very little about him that was right down the middle.

  I will say this as well. He was a great competitor and a real workhorse—not at Roger’s level, but I’d see him running and running and running to keep in shape. To this day, I have no idea how old he really is. We see one another now and then on the golf course, and he still refuses to tell me. I guess that’s just another way of him trying to fool a hitter.

  What I remember most of that opening game of the ALCS against Boston was Derek Jeter and Nomar Garciaparra making stunning plays at short for most of the night. They also combined to make three errors, but they were getting to balls and trying to make plays on balls that most shortstops wouldn’t have reached. After the game, Derek told me that when Nomar was on second base, he said something to him about the two of them engaging in a kind of duel. They weren’t moving around like fencers, but I think I got the point. Derek had a lot of respect for Nomar, and I had to laugh when I watched the All-Star Game that year and saw Derek imitating Nomar’s stance. That was a little bit (or maybe a lot) of Derek giving Nomar a hard time for his less-than-classic approach to hitting. Derek was a proud guy, and having some people debating about which of them was the best at the position gave him a little extra gas.

  Maybe something like that happened in Game 3 when the Red Sox jumped all over Rocket. We lost 13–2, but we took the next two to advance to the World Series against the Braves. I got to do something in that Series that I’d always dreamed of as a kid: I was catching when Mariano got the final out on a fly-out to left.

  People always ask me which were my favorite World Series wins, or the most memorable, and I have to honestly say that they all were. They were all different, but they all had one thing in common: when you end the season winning the final game, there’s nothing better than that. And how can you better “nothing better”?

  Going 8-0 in two World Series was something we could all be proud of. We were the third Yankee team to accomplish back-to-back championship rounds with no losses, and now we were going to go for three in a row the next season. That was a challenge we all loved. After all, the point of the game is to win, and we went about our business trying to do that every day. So what if it was October? We were going to just keep doing what we’d been doing.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Eyes on the Prize

  People refer to them as distractions—events that take our focus away from what we are trying to accomplish or away from what we think is most important. As players, we’re supposed to block them out, not let them get in our way. We’re supposed to be professionals, and part of that expectation means that when we step onto the field, we leave our human concerns aside.

  What’s funny to me is that when those distractions take the form of a teammate or a manager dealing with a serious health issue, we all take a step back and say, in one way or another, the game isn’t what really matters. What matters is our health, our families, and our friends—those things outside the game. Yet, when it comes down to it, we’re paid to do our jobs despite the distractions, and if there are things going on in our lives that make it hard to do that, we can’t and don’t want to offer them up as excuses. We’re supposed to do our jobs no matter what.

  In looking back over the success we had in winning three world championships, I’m amazed when I think about some of those serious distractions, those challenges that we had to overcome. I can’t say that they were minor challenges because when they happen to you, as they di
d to all the Yankee players in one way or another, they can be tough to deal with and often don’t feel minor at all. I can only share with you what I experienced, but this applies to most of the guys I played with, just as it applies to anyone reading this. Life happens.

  During the ’98 season, my mother underwent triple bypass surgery, and I was grateful that I had Laura to help me. When I was so worried about my mom that I couldn’t think straight, Laura was there to listen to me and to remind me that my mom wouldn’t want her troubles to affect me. That was how my mom was. She was always my greatest defender and my biggest supporter. I didn’t want to cause her any more anxiety by worrying too much, but it felt impossible not to.

  As much as I’ve talked about my relationship with my father, my mom was just as responsible, in a totally different way, for helping me get to the big leagues. We all have to have balance in our lives. As a kid, when I didn’t understand what my dad was doing, when I saw him as a negative influence, my mom helped me. Later, when I understood him better, I still needed someone to balance out the messages about being tough, about focusing on my goals, about using hard work to get over any challenge. Again, my mom came in. She knew that there were two opposing emotions driving me—the anger and hotheadedness, on the one hand, and the sensitivity, my sometimes easily wounded pride, on the other—and she let me know that it was okay to be softhearted and empathetic. My dad knew me and helped shape me as a ballplayer. My mom knew me and helped shape me as a man.