The Journey Home

by Jorge Posada

  I don’t know if Jorge’s troubles made it easier for me to focus or if having my mind elsewhere made it easier to perform. All I know is that it was really gratifying to be selected to my first All-Star team that year.

  I contributed in other ways too. We were scuffling along at the end of June, and we lost a game to Tampa Bay 6–4 when Jeff Nelson, who was usually so reliable coming out of the bullpen, lost his control. The next day El Duque came out and lost control in another way. A batter stepped out of the box in the middle of his delivery, and he got pissed and tossed the ball high in the air in disgust. The Tampa bench started to get on him pretty good, and El Duque stared at them. I went out to the mound, glad that he was getting fired up. I knew that he pitched better when he was upset. In fact, I used to do things like throw my returns to him down at his ankles to make him mad and get his fires going. El Duque didn’t like what was going on, and he backed the hitter off the plate with a fastball inside. That kind of set the tone for things, so in the seventh inning, when Bobby Smith struck out and I went to fire the ball to third, he pushed me. I pushed back. We got into it, and the benches cleared.

  After the game the guys gave me a hard time, including Rocket, who saw me walking out of the locker room in my street clothes and started to shadow-box with me. The laughter helped. At that point, we were 39-36 and fortunate to be in second place. Toronto was out front, and Boston was behind us playing exactly .500 ball. We needed something to fire us up, but nothing seemed to really work, though by the All-Star break we were 45-38 and in first place. For my part, hitting over .300 at that point, with 17 homers and 41 runs driven in, helped me stay positive. It was great to share those first All-Star moments with Bernie and Derek, to see past and future teammates like David Wells and Jason Giambi, and to play with other big stars of the game like Cal Ripken Jr., Manny Ramírez, and National Leaguers Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Chipper Jones, and the rest of the squads.

  I’m a fan too, so getting those guys and others to sign balls and other memorabilia was a fun part of the event. I went 0-for-2, but just being there in Atlanta was great in lots of ways. Laura and Jorge came down for the game, but when I saw all the other guys with their kids on the field before the game, holding their little ones during the anthem, I was thinking about Jorge and whether or not I’d ever have the chance to really share in that experience. My thoughts and emotions were constantly shifting underneath me. Do I go public about his diagnosis, do I show him to people and expose him to who knows what? Or do I just keep protecting him from all that? Or was it really shame that drove me to protect us all?

  When we resumed play, August was just around the corner and I began struggling a bit at the plate, but even more so mentally. I was showing up at the ballpark, but not all of me was there. I couldn’t help but think about how different the time I spent with my family at the All-Star Game was going to be from the next time we were all together. We’d gotten the confirmation from Dr. McCarthy’s office that we were good to go on August 2. I talked to Joe, and he said that I could take as much time as I needed, that he’d work with the higher-ups, and that if I still didn’t want to tell anyone the specifics of what I was doing, he’d manage that as well. That was a big relief, but for everyone’s sake, I didn’t want to cause too much of a disruption. We’d settled into a workable routine at home and with the club, and I felt that it would be best if I played up until the 2nd. So the night of August 1, I caught Doc Gooden, showered, and left the ballpark knowing that I wasn’t going to get any sleep that night and probably not the next night either.

  My dad had come in, and Laura’s mother and father and sister were all at the hospital with us. My mom wanted to come, but my dad told her no way—he didn’t want her to have that much stress put on her. Going into the pre-op area and seeing Jorge, still a tiny little guy, hooked up to various machines and with tubes and wires and beeps and displays as his lullaby before the anesthesiologist did his thing, was incredibly painful to see. As parents, our main goal is to protect our kids, to make their lives as easy as we possibly can and to keep them as free from harm as possible. Even when you know in your head that what you’re about to put your kid through is for his own well-being, your heart tells you another story—a kind of horror story.

  We were told that Jorge would be in the operating room for about six hours. Before he went in, I’d gotten a call from Joe, and he would check in again four times that day. Derek stopped by first thing in the morning to wish us well and then later, after the game was over, he called to check in. Incredibly, Jorge was in surgery for ten hours, not six. We got hourly updates from Dr. McCarthy through his colleague Pat Shapiro, who kept telling us that he was doing fine. But that was a long, long, long wait. Things went as well as they’d hoped, and seeing my son lying there with his head swathed in bandages, his face swollen, and his eyes shut was both tough to see and an incredible relief. He’d come through the surgery alive. Even though we’d gotten all kinds of assurances that his condition wasn’t life-threatening, having all those months—and then all those extra hours that day—to think about it makes a parade of worries travel past.

  We were grateful that the first surgery was over, but we knew that he was in for another in 2001, and then again in 2002. After that, there’d be more, but at that early stage we knew that roughly every year at this time, for the next three years, we’d be back at NYU Hospital.

  I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep the night after the operation, but exhaustion caught up with me. I woke up feeling pretty good, and when I got to the ballpark, Joe had me penciled in to bat second against the lefty Jamie Moyer. That was the first time in my big league career I would be hitting in that spot, and I was pumped by the opportunity. When I saw Joe before the game, I wanted to thank him for doing all he’d done, but he caught my eye and just nodded. We both understood what was going on, and neither of us could say too much.

  I had one of my best games ever, going 4-for-5 and driving in four runs against Seattle. That day, when I made my crosses in the batter’s box to honor the dead in my family, I also did it as a way to say thanks to God and to all the people who’d helped us through that tough period.

  The euphoria I felt that night didn’t last. I went back to the hospital after the game and spent the night there, and I ended up sitting in that hospital for a lot of hours before Jorge was finally able to open one of his eyes. To me that was the sign that things were going to be okay. Hitting two home runs that second night was another expression of my gratitude and relief. After that game, Derek, Bernie, Gerald, and Tino all stopped by the hospital to show their support.

  As the regular season wound to a close and Jorge’s recovery progressed, the team started going in the other direction. I’m the last guy to ask about those 15 out of 18 losses, a stretch that everyone later referred to as our “collapse.” I was trying so hard to not collapse from my own mental exhaustion that even though things were better in our world, that stretch was surreal.

  Nothing was going to come easy against the A’s in the ALDS. Even Game 5, when we jumped out to a six-run lead in the first, turned into a 6–5 victory. Our bullpen came up big for us that game, as they had done much of the year. You’d think we’d have felt more of a mixture of relief than joy once that series ended. The truth, though, is that we all still had a lot of faith in ourselves. We believed, especially as we moved into a longer seven-game series, that in the end our talent was better than that of anybody else in the league. We knew how to win, and we believed that we should and that we would, especially with Mariano in the bullpen.

  Playing against the Mets in the World Series was intense and fun. Normally, with travel days, you get away from the focus a bit. Spending every hour in the media capital of the world meant that there was no escape. That made it even more fun and, if possible, raised the stakes. Having my whole family there to share the experience was great, and they offered me a few moments to get away from the game, but not many. Like me, and the rest of the city, the Subw
ay Series overcame any inclination you had to think about something other than what was going on in the Bronx and Queens. Every newspaper, every television news program, every kiosk, bodega, and even the sidewalks, served as reminders of the rivalry. Seeing businessmen and -women in their suits wearing Yankee hats, and a few with Mets hats, was fun.

  It helped that the games were equally intense. With 44 years of buildup to the first pitch, that was going to be tough to do. I think that Mariano put it in perspective though, telling the media, “I don’t know nothing about history. I just want to win.” José Vizcaíno, who played for the Mets for a while, also helped keep things in perspective. This was his first World Series, and to him the Subway Series was what happened in July when we played the Mets. He understood that as much as the media in town thought of this as the battle for New York, it was for a World Series title.

  As usual, we capitalized on the other team’s mistakes in Game 1. Timo Pérez of the Mets failed to run hard on a Todd Zeile drive to left. He thought it was going out, but it didn’t. David Justice threw to Derek, who fired a rope to me and we just got Pérez. The rookie thought two runs were going to score but, instead, none did. We trailed 3–2 going into the ninth and I led off, just missing a pitch and flying out to deep right center. Fortunately, Luis Polonia and José Vizcaíno both singled and Chuck Knoblauch came through with a sacrifice fly to tie it. José, a Dominican who used his $4,500 signing bonus to buy a cow for his family, came up huge for us in the twelfth. Tino singled, I doubled, and then with two outs, José singled for the game winner. I don’t really care how we win, but it’s nice to see guys contribute up and down the lineup and off the bench.

  I went 2-for-3 with an RBI in Game 2, but whatever satisfaction I could have felt in that was nearly taken away in the ninth inning. We were up 6–0 and the Mets came back to score five times off Jeff Nelson and Mariano. Those two were awesome all year and sometimes these things happen.

  And, of course, there was the Rocket and Mike Piazza incident. Everything happened so fast that I really didn’t have a sense of what was going on at the beginning. I was watching the ball go down the line and hit off the barrier in front of the dugout. When I turned back to the field, I saw Mike stopped in the baseline. I did what your instincts tell you to do when a guy looks like he wants to challenge your pitcher. I went out to the mound to help protect my pitcher. The benches were clearing at that point, and I heard Roger saying, “I thought it was the ball.” I tried to get Mike to retreat and also repeated what Roger was saying.

  I’m glad that nothing else came of it. I wasn’t catching when Roger hit Mike in the helmet, but I know that Rocket wouldn’t go after somebody that high intentionally and that he wasn’t trying to hit Piazza at all. The ball got away from him, but I could, after seeing the replay, understand why Mike was upset about the bat coming near him. He wasn’t looking and all of a sudden a bat came through his field of vision. That doesn’t mean that Rocket was trying to hit him with it. It was just a case of everybody’s attention being focused on different things and no one seeing the big picture. Most important fact? We led the Series 2-0.

  El Duque battled his ass off in Game 3, leaving in the eighth after throwing 134 pitches. The game was tied 2–2, but he and Mike Stanton couldn’t hold the lead and we wound up losing 4–2. You always want to win at least one of the games on the road, in this case Interstates 87 and 278, and Derek set the tone in Game 4 with a lead-off home run. We never trailed in that game, but it was a tense one. Joe showed that you have to do what you have to do to get a win in the postseason. Mike Piazza had crushed a long foul ball off Denny Neagle in the first. Then, in the third, he hit a two-run shot deep into the bleachers. He came up in the fifth with no one on and two outs, and Joe pulled Denny. Normally, you do everything you can so that a starter qualifies for a win by going five innings. Neagle was one out away, but Joe was not going to let Piazza start anything. David Cone came in and got Piazza on a pop-up. We still led 3–2 and no one scored after that. Joe had Mariano come in to start the eighth, and he got the two-inning save. Pulling a pitcher with two outs and no one on, letting a guy throw 134 pitches, switching up the lineup to take advantage of guys’ tendencies: Joe was making the right moves, and we were one win away.

  Andy started Game 5 for us against Al Leiter. Two guys with a lot of postseason experience and a ton of heart meant that not a lot of runs were likely. Andy not handling a bunt that resulted in two runs scoring in the second put us behind 2–1. Bernie had homered earlier, and then Derek tied it in the sixth. Derek always knew when to pick his spots to muscle up, and when he got ahead 2-0 he did just that. In the ninth, we did what seemed to have developed into a habit. With two outs, I worked for a walk off Leiter after nine pitches. Scott Brosius singled and then so did Luis Sojo. Scoring what was eventually the winning run was a thrill, but we still had the bottom of the ninth to get through.

  We all had our hearts in our throats when Mike Piazza came up with two out, representing the tying run. His drive sounded good off the bat, and I remember Joe telling me afterward that he jumped up and had a sickening feeling in his stomach. But when I saw Bernie going after it, I knew that things were in good hands. Running out to Mariano and seeing the jubilation on his face was amazing, and all I could do was bow down to Derek for the great Series he had. I wish that Andy could have gotten the win—we didn’t give him the kind of defensive support we usually did—but it didn’t matter to him. Winning three World Series in a row—no matter how you get them, who gets them, and even if you lose one World Series game after winning 14 in a row—is pretty damn good. Sure, we would have liked it to be 16-0, but considering we’d had the lowest winning percentage of all the teams entering the playoffs, we knew we’d won when it mattered most.

  I also knew better that season that other things mattered more than the game. Of course, my mind was on Jorge and Laura, but I got another reminder of my dad in an unusual way. While riding in the victory parade, I was alongside El Duque for a bit. Like my dad, he had escaped Cuba, and he saw all the ticker tape coming down and then fans throwing rolls of toilet paper that unspooled as they floated above us.

  “This is crazy,” he said. “Back in Cuba people can’t even buy or find toilet paper. Here . . .” I watched his eyes follow another celebratory lob. I thought of my dad and everything he’d done for me, and how far I’d come as well. The bitter would always be there with the sweet, but victory was always welcome.

  There’s a lot to be said for having winning experiences to fall back on, for being familiar with how it feels. To be able to say, “I’ve been here before and I succeeded,” is a much better place to be at than to be saying, “I believe I can do this.” We didn’t just believe we could do it, we could say, “And here are examples X, Y, Z to prove it.”

  I think that was why Jorge’s health problems threw Laura and me off-balance so much. Yes, we could point to things we’d done in other parts of our lives to overcome career challenges and personal difficulties, but this was new territory to us, and even more important, it involved our child. He couldn’t help himself, and it was our responsibility to find him the best help we could. We did that, but I sensed that the surgeries weren’t going to get easier as time went on.

  After our initial shock, Laura and I viewed Jorge’s condition as a message to us. As we learned more about craniosynostosis, how many lives it altered, we decided that we needed to do something to help others. Because of my job, and the fact that we lived in New York City, we could afford the best care for our son. Not everyone could. To honor Jorge and the fight he was going to have to undertake, we created a foundation in his name, the Jorge Posada Foundation. Using her legal training to its fullest, Laura turned her fears and upset into a positive force. She wanted the foundation to serve different purposes—educating parents, medical professionals, and the general public about the condition as well as the various treatment options. We also wanted to raise funds to increase awareness and support families in a vari
ety of ways.

  Luis Espinel, a friend from Laura’s law school days and the guy who served as my agent, was also instrumental in helping us get the foundation up and running. After the conclusion of the season, we held a press conference to announce the launching of the program. Many people stepped up immediately with donations, and George Steinbrenner was one of the first and most generous among them. The Steinbrenner family continued to support our efforts throughout the years. The foundation made a difference in the lives of many people in many ways. Once the website was up and active, Laura talked to mothers of children affected by craniosynostosis, we helped fund a playroom at NYU, and we created a symposium where doctors from around the world could share information.

  Eventually, the success of our efforts meant we had to make a difficult choice. Laura had wanted to keep administration costs to a minimum so that the largest percentage of dollars donated went to help people and not to keep the organization operational. We eventually merged the foundation with a group called myFace. For all the things I’ve accomplished on the field, for all the success that Laura has had as an author, television personality, and lawyer, we’re both proudest of what the foundation was able to do. Second to raising our kids, it has been the most important work we’ve done. Both her parents and mine were responsible for making that happen. They taught us that when things seem to be at their worst, you can always do your best by reaching out and offering someone else a helping hand. We had no way of knowing it, but that lesson was going to be put to use in the most unimaginable way less than a year after the foundation was created.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Our City, Our Loss