The Journey Home

by Jorge Posada

  All this really hit home for me during that final game at the old Stadium when the whole team and many old friends, including Bernie, gathered to say good-bye to the House That Ruth Built. I don’t think that I could have put it as well as Derek did, but when he gave that amazing speech I felt what he was feeling and hoped what he was hoping. He talked about what an honor it was to put on that uniform, about our pride and our tradition, things that wouldn’t change even though we were moving across the street. He also said to fans, “We’re relying on you to take the memories from this stadium, add them to the memories of the new stadium, and continue to pass them on from generation to generation.” Looking around at my old friends, I was struck by how much Derek, Mariano, Andy, Bernie, and I had been through together. In spite of that, it wasn’t until Bernie had left us that I really started to think about how special it was to be part of a group of guys who’d been together for so long. I thought that Bernie still had a lot to offer the team and was valuable to us even on a part-time basis. It was kind of like how I felt about the world championship drought: when you’re at the start of it or in the middle of it, you don’t really see it, but when you’re forced to take a step back, it becomes obvious.

  Bernie’s departure from baseball brought into focus what had been so much a part of all our lives. Leave it to Bernie—he did the quiet thing that caught our attention. As much as I missed him, I knew that Bernie, like Joe, was going to be okay. The man had too many talents and interests to just fade away. We kept in touch, and still do. Just because he was gone, well, you know the rest of how that goes.

  All the attention we would eventually get, the coining of the term “the Core Four,” was really flattering for me, but there was another group of guys who had already been called “the Fab Five.” I’m not very good at rhyming, but I know that one of the biggest reasons we had the kind of success we did as the Core Four was the guy who covered the ground closest to Monument Park in the old Stadium.

  One of the great things about catching is that all of your teammates are out there in front of you and you can see them all doing their thing without having to turn around. I knew that crouching down behind the plate and looking out past Andy and Derek and not seeing Bernie out there didn’t feel right. Looking to my side and not seeing my “father on the field” was also taking some getting used to. Now, with the prospect of the Stadium coming down, it felt like things were really changing. Some things were ending, and some were starting. I was hopeful about the future, but I couldn’t help wishing that things could just remain the same.

  I was hurting. It didn’t take an MRI for me to figure out the source of that pain. Now that I think of it, with all of those changes going on, maybe I hurt my shoulder just struggling to turn so many pages.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  That Winning Feeling

  If I thought that things were changing for us in 2008, learning in November of that year that Mr. Steinbrenner’s son Hal was taking over control from his father was just a sign of more things to come.

  Mr. Steinbrenner hadn’t been around the Stadium as much as he once had, so there wasn’t going to be a hugely noticeable difference there, but that wasn’t true in the clubhouse in 2009. Mike Mussina had retired. Jason Giambi didn’t get re-signed, nor was Carl Pavano. We’d traded for Nick Swisher and signed C. C. Sabathia, A. J. Burnett, and then Mark Teixeira. And Andy had come back. I didn’t need a whole lot of motivation to keep up with my rehab and my desire to beat the doctor’s predictions and be on the opening-day roster. I really wanted to be a part of this ball club.

  Of course, being part of this ball club—and most others that year—also meant dealing with the lingering effects of the scandal over performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). Just as had happened during spring training that year with Andy, Alex came forward, when he was confronted with some revelations about his use of PEDs, and admitted that he took steroids during the 2001–2003 seasons. I admired him for his honesty, but like a lot of people, I was tired of hearing about performance-enhancing drugs and tired of being asked about them. Andy and Alex both wanted to avoid that happening—the pressure on the rest of us to answer questions—but it was unavoidable. I knew that PEDs were around, but I was never tempted to take them. I believed strongly that hard work, and hard work alone, was going to keep me where I was because it had gotten me there. Beyond the fact that taking them wasn’t fair, I’d heard about some of the side effects, the links to cancer, and I wasn’t going to risk my future health.

  And my health was very much on my mind since I’d had the shoulder surgery. My rehab was progressing well, but it really kicked into a higher gear in February. I met with Gene Monahan in New York on February 1 to go over our plan and then went to Tampa. He had set up a throwing program for me that gradually increased the length and duration of my throwing sessions. I started at 30 feet for 30 throws and moved on from there. I showed up at the complex in Tampa at 7:00 A.M. every morning to work with resistance bands, light weights, and something called a UBE machine—basically a device with bicycle-like pedals that I turned with my arms instead of my feet. It provided a tough resistance workout and also increased my range of motion.

  I was busy off the field as well. With C.C. and A.J. joining the staff, I had homework to do. I’d called our video coordinator shortly after they signed and had begun watching video of them. Studying pitchers is something you do as a hitter, but as a catcher you watch video with a slightly different set of concerns in mind. I’d faced both guys as a hitter, but knowing how they’d pitched to me wasn’t going to be enough to help me figure out how they worked and what their tendencies were. I knew that A.J. had nasty stuff with a plus fastball, a good split changeup, and a great curveball. C.C. threw hard, but didn’t have great command of the strike zone to that point in his career, though he wasn’t wild. Often missing just off the plate, he used that to his advantage, frequently getting hitters to chase his off-speed stuff. I call guys like that “cheat and chase” pitchers. They get you to cheat yourself out of a good at-bat by chasing balls outside the zone. I was eager to put C.C.’s skills to use against the opposition.

  I watched all that video in preparation to talk to them when they arrived for spring training. That was the time when you really got to know your pitchers’ strengths and weaknesses. I didn’t just watch those six or seven quality starts I had on video. I’d sit down with the guys and ask them what they used as their out pitch, their ground-ball pitch, and their “must have a strike” pitch, along with other things. As much as I believed it was important to go with a pitcher’s strengths, I also had to take the hitter’s strengths into consideration. Let’s use Albert Pujols as an example. He is a fastball hitter. C.C. was a fastball pitcher. So the question then becomes how to maximize C.C.’s strength while reducing Pujols’s strength. The hole in Albert’s swing or zone was breaking balls down and in at his back foot. C.C., being a left-hander, had that kind of breaking ball. It wasn’t his best pitch, but it was exactly what we needed to get Albert out.

  When we started working together, I was pleased to see that C.C. had better command than I’d originally estimated. That made him a pleasure to catch. The other thing that surprised me was how agile he was for such a big guy. Fielding bunts and covering the bag at first, he impressed a lot of us with his athleticism. Both he and A.J. were great competitors, though A.J. seemed to take a nastier temperament to the mound. C.C. was one of those quiet, “give me the ball and let me do my job” kind of guys.

  I was feeling really optimistic about our chances, and especially about my chances of being with the big league team for opening day. My shoulder was feeling strong, and I realized that I must have been dealing with some weakness in that area long before the major tear because it was feeling better than it ever had when I was hitting. Throwing was another matter. I was still having good days and less good days.

  As spring training drew to a close, it became clear that I was going to be ready. I just needed as many at-bats as I c
ould get. The last week before we headed north, I went over to the minor league camp to hit in games there. I’d lead off every inning to get as many at-bats as I could against live pitching. On one of those days, I got to face Roy Halladay, who was still with Toronto and was getting some final work of his own in. He looked at me funny when I stepped to the plate to lead off the game, and then again in the second inning: “You again?”

  I nodded and smiled. I didn’t tell him this, but yes, I really was feeling like me again.

  Homering on opening day in Baltimore was huge for my confidence. It felt so good to be back out there in a regular-season game. Then, with all the fanfare going on with opening day on April 16, I hit another one, the first ever at the new Stadium, off the tough left-hander Cliff Lee. I was just excited about hitting a homer and didn’t think about that until I got to the bench and started to strap on my gear. “Oh my God,” I said. A couple of guys looked over at me with puzzled looks. I went to the bat rack and pulled that one out and gave it to one of the equipment guys.

  “I’m saving this one,” I told him. That bat still sits in my office, along with other awards and mementos. I really wanted to take something from the old Stadium, like my locker, but everything was going to be auctioned off. At least I had that bat as a reminder of the good start at a great new facility.

  I was pleased by how far that ball traveled. It went out to straight away center field on a cold day. Maybe that layoff had done me some good, and I know the rehab and strengthening did. I was in my 13th season in the big leagues, I was 37 years old, and I still felt pretty damn strong, strong enough to catch all 14 innings of a game against Oakland, also in April.

  Yankee Stadium III was in its first year, and from the start it seemed to be doing well. I loved the new facilities, and the batter’s eye seemed to be working. With our input, the walls beyond the center-field fence had been painted a deep, deep blue, and that seemed to work. We were still going to have to wait until it got warmer to see how the ball carried there. Eventually we realized that the right-center alley was a sweet spot in a field whose dimensions were smaller than the old one. Everyone kept saying that was going to be a good thing, and it proved to be, but that was only because our pitching staff was up to that challenge.

  And even when, at the end of April, we were only 12-10 and in third place, I felt like we were going to be okay. More than okay, actually. I’m not trying to pass myself off as having a sixth sense about these things, but I did feel and believe that this club was different from previous ones—especially in recent years. Something about the way we carried ourselves, the atmosphere in the locker room, reminded me of those teams early in my career.

  Some of that might have had to do with Andy being back with us. He did what he’d done most of his career. On days I DH-ed, I sat with him while he intently watched each at-bat. Between innings, he’d go to whoever was catching and ask pitches and locations of outs. Andy had a habit of watching three innings live in the dugout, three innings inside watching the pitches in the clubhouse, and then coming out to watch the last three live. That was something he picked up from Jimmy Key when he was with us. Andy’s studious approach was something that other guys picked up on.

  It wasn’t just in 2009 that Andy served as a leader of the staff—from the start of that season, his Yankee Way seemed to be having more of an effect on guys newer to the organization and their careers. This is no knock on the veteran pitchers we had prior to that. Those guys were great, but as veterans, they were all set in their ways and didn’t need to learn from Andy. He was more of a pupil than a teacher back then. Even in early 2009, I felt a little bit more of that collective sense of purpose that was an important part of who we were when we were so successful. That wasn’t true only with the pitching staff. Everyone on the team seemed to be more willing to ask for insights and to help one another out than they had in the past. That was another important part of learning to win.

  That’s not to say that Andy was completely transformed into Professor Pettitte. It’s a good thing that he didn’t instruct the rest of the pitchers about his other skill—stirring things up. Andy was the best at instigating mini-disputes in the clubhouse. If I wore a suit that was a little too tight or a pair of pants that was a little too short, Andy would be there with his critiques, but in the slyest of ways. He never stated his opinion directly, but he always heard from so-and-so that you wore a pair of floods. Eventually, I caught on, and any time someone made a smartass comment about me, I always figured that I’d somehow be able to trace it back to the big left-hander. I also knew that he’d deny everything, but the delight in his eyes usually gave him away. He was kind of like a sniper, hiding out in the weeds with his Tommy Bahama clothes working like camouflage.

  Being a veteran changed my perspective as well. I don’t know if, or how much, my age contributed to my hamstring troubles. I was running down the first-base line and felt a grab in the back of my leg. It was a grade 2 hamstring strain—not the mildest and not the most severe, but enough to put me on the DL and keep me out of the lineup from May 5 to the 29th. I got sent down to Tampa for treatment but continued to play and to work on strengthening my shoulder. I knew that I was going to be down there, at minimum, 15 days. I was able to catch some, but mostly I DH-ed.

  I felt pretty good at first, and as each day went on I was feeling better and better. As the 15 days went by, I felt like I was getting close to 100 percent. Then I was 100 percent, and I was getting impatient. When I didn’t get the call after May 19, my impatience increased. I kept telling Pat Russell, one of our player development guys in Tampa, to let everybody know that I was ready. Still, the call didn’t come. Finally, on the 26th, I’d had enough. I bought a plane ticket and showed up at the stadium in Arlington in time for the game on the 27th.

  I walked into the ballpark and immediately went to the training room. I wish you could have seen Gene Monahan’s face.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Nobody told me you were coming back.”

  “That’s because nobody told me to come back.”

  A few minutes later, Joe Girardi came by. He did a double-take and then laughed. “So, you called yourself up?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m ready.”

  Brian Cashman got on the phone a few minutes later and said much the same thing. They all agreed that they had to see me run before I could play. We had a day off the next day. I came in and worked out and got the approval to play. Brian filed whatever paperwork he had to, and I started that night in Cleveland and caught Andy in a 3–1 win and went 2-for-3 to raise my average to .325. I’d missed 22 games and wasn’t happy about that, but I was glad that I was no longer scared to not do anything but follow orders to the letter, like the youngster I had once been.

  I wasn’t the only one who showed up unannounced early that year. You hear about the “June Swoon” in baseball. The excitement of the new season wears off a bit, and the long grind you’re facing becomes a reality. I don’t buy into that, but in 2009 people were looking at our struggles in the middle of that month during interleague play as a sign of that trouble. We’d lost four out of six games and were heading to Atlanta. Brian Cashman spoke up at a team meeting. He’d never done that before, and his message was pretty clear. He chewed our asses a bit. We were underachieving. I could understand his frustration. The club had gone out and made all those big changes, and they wanted better results. He also told us that we weren’t going to be getting any additional help. This was the lineup, and we had better produce. We were 38-31 at the time and four games behind the Red Sox.

  Things weren’t looking good the next day. We were being no-hit through six. Brett Gardner walked and then got picked off first on a close play. Joe ran out to protest and got booted. But we came back to win, 8–4.

  It’s easy to look back at a season and talk about turning points. A lot of media people said that game was one of the big ones in 2009. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. W
e had a really talented team, but to that point, not everyone was playing well. We knew it, but Brian’s reminder did have some effect on us, mostly because he’d never spoken out like that before. As far as Joe getting tossed, at the time I wasn’t sure if he was really that upset or if that was a calculated move on his part to try to fire us up.

  As a veteran, I felt like I’d seen it all in my career, so some of those kinds of tactics didn’t seem necessary. However, I also know that there’d been a shift in my relationship with Joe. In 2008, because of my shoulder, I went to him nearly every day to let him know how I was feeling. We talked face to face, and he decided where or if I was going to play. In 2009 those face-to-face encounters turned into text messages. I’d be on my way to the field and I’d get a text saying, “You’re playing first,” “Catching,” or some other quick note on my status. That seemed strange to me. I know the nature of texting is different from talking to someone, so it wasn’t so much about how brief those messages were. It was about the lack of face-to-face contact I had with him. And it wasn’t just about my position for the day and how that was communicated.

  I take some of the responsibility for what I see now was a miscommunication between us. Joe was maybe thinking that a text was a good and efficient way to let me know in advance what was going on, but I saw it as impersonal and distancing. I wouldn’t have felt that way if it wasn’t for the fact that he was so different from Joe Torre. I didn’t feel like I could go to him and talk to him about whatever I wanted to or needed to. I talked about Joe Torre’s empathy before, and how he set a high standard for me. He’d been there for me when I was dealing with some serious personal issues with my son. I’d thought of Joe Torre as my “father on the field.” Joe Girardi was my manager.