The Journey Home

by Jorge Posada

  Derek had done something similar in the regular season, and most of us thought that was a once-in-a-lifetime thing to see. I don’t know if Lidge was trying to figure out if he’d seen that before and lost his concentration, but he hit Teixeira with a pitch. I don’t know if Charlie Manuel, the Phillies’ manager, thought of walking Alex—that would have loaded the bases with two out—but they pitched to him, and Alex made them pay, doubling to bring in Damon. Teixeira was on third. They pitched to me. With a 2-2 count, I was looking slider, got slider, and drilled one into deep left-center. I didn’t expect Ibañez to be able to cut it off, but he did and threw me out at second. No matter—two runs scored and we were one win away.

  A.J. tried to step up for us in Game 5 by going out there with three days’ rest, but it just didn’t work out for him. By the top of the eighth, we were down 8–2. We fought back, with three in the eighth and one in the ninth, but couldn’t pull out the win. Still, having a chance in the ninth was a good way to end that game. We were still one win away, but only 93 miles from home.

  I was enjoying the hell out of that Series for a lot of reasons, and one of the main ones was that Jorge, Paulina, and Laura were at every game. My kids were now old enough to really appreciate and understand everything that was going on and how much it meant. I was super-excited to be back in New York and so looking forward to having them be a part of a New York victory celebration. Knowing that we needed to win one out of two, but still aware that we had once lost four in a row, I wasn’t taking anything for granted. None of us were. “The Girl Is Mine” was still playing in the clubhouse, and the Star of the Game belt was still being handed out, but one thing struck me as bad mojo.

  I was fine with Jay-Z and Alicia Keys performing before the start of Game 2, but something about “Empire State of Mind” and its “New York, New York” lyrics troubled me. That was getting a little too close to Sinatra territory, and we played that song only after a win. I was hoping that in Game 6 we wouldn’t have a repeat of “Empire State of Mind.” I loved the song, but there’s a time and a place for everything. Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves, I was thinking. Still, Derek had been using it as his walk-up music every now and then, so I didn’t want to have any kind of conflict with that. This may sound like something I should not have been concerned about prior to a potential World Series clincher, but I was trying to relax just as I’d been told to. Trying to take my mind off the game for a bit. Still worrying, of course, but at least I wasn’t completely focused on the lineup or facing Pedro Martínez again.

  What can I say about the game? Godzilla was a monster with six RBI. Andy, Joba, Dámaso, and Mo limited them to six hits and one run. Andy got the win, which gave him the victory in the deciding game of the ALDS, the ALCS, and the World Series. Mo got the last out of each of those series. I caught the last out of each deciding game, and Derek was at short. If it seemed like going back in time, it was only for an instant, and only looking at it later in hindsight. In the moment, when Shane Victorino’s ground ball headed toward the right side, I did what I’d done thousands of times. I put my head down for an instant and started churning up the first-base line to back up the throw. That’s my job.

  But this time, in defiance of all the rules about doing the right thing the right way all the time, when I saw that Robinson Cano was in front of it, I trusted that he would glove it and get it safely over to first. I had that much faith in him, and in that bunch of guys, and I didn’t want to miss a moment of the celebration. Of course, I wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t going to be careful and avoid doing something stupid that might get me hurt, so I skirted along the outside of the pile. That’s where I found Mike Harkey, our bullpen coach. I’d given him so much shit over the years. Hang around in a bullpen long enough before games and during games and you’ll get toughened up, that’s just how it is. But sometimes when you say things in jest, even if the other guy knows it’s a joke, you still have to let him know how much you care about him, how happy you are that he’s getting to share in the moment. I was so happy for Mike Harkey, and for all the other guys who were experiencing their first World Series win—Alex for one.

  Next, I tried to find Laura and the kids. Jorge was on the field trying to capture it all on video, and when I got to them, Paulina and Laura and I hugged and kissed. I don’t care that I didn’t say these words first: I felt like the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

  By the time I got to the locker room to check my phone for messages, it was too late to call my dad back. That could wait until morning. They needed their rest. First thing after I got up, I called them, just like I’d done every day for years and still do.

  My mom was in tears and told me all the things a mom does. She was proud of me. She couldn’t wait to see me. When were we going to come visit? She hoped I didn’t keep the kids out too late.

  “Te amo, Mamá.”

  “Te amo, mi hijo. Hable con su padre.”

  “Hola, Papí. Cómo está?”

  “Bien. Bien. Felicitaciones, Jorge.”

  I thanked him and waited. I was almost too tired to say anything more.

  Then he said, “You guys did it. You did your job.”

  I smiled and looked at myself in the mirror.

  “Sí, Papí. I know what you mean. I did. We all did.”

  “It will be good to see you.”

  “I’ll be home soon.”

  “I know you will. I know that you have things to do before then.” He paused again and said, “It would have been nice to be there.”

  “I know. But you were. This time and all the others. Just different ways.”

  I meant those words, and I knew that he understood what I was trying to say by his silence. Jorge poked his head into the room. I waved him in. He lay down on the bed with me and showed me his phone. He brought up the video he’d made, and while my dad and I chatted briefly about a friend of his from Cuba who’d recently been in touch, I watched the last outs of the game unfold from my son’s perspective. He had zoomed in on me, not as I ran or celebrated, but there in the crouch, wiping my fingers in the dirt before putting down another sign.

  I told my dad that I had to go. I had something that I had to do.

  “Rewind that, please. I want to see that again.”

  “Is it good?”

  Wrapping him in my arms, I said, “The best. You’ll have to show me how to do that.”

  I also thought, Jimmy Rollins must have forgotten he was playing the Yankees.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Home Again

  When I arrived at the intersection of the Grand Concourse and East 161st Street in the Bronx on January 24, 2012, I knew I’d made the right decision. First, I was in a car with Laura, Jorge, and Paulina, the most important people in my life. I was not alone, as I had been when I first came to Yankee Stadium to play. Obviously, they couldn’t have been with me back in September 1995. At that point in my life, marriage and children weren’t something I spent any time thinking about. All I thought about then, all I had thought about for years, was becoming a big league ballplayer, and that dream was about to come true.

  Now Laura and the kids were very much on my mind. They had been important reasons for why I was sitting at that traffic light, waiting for that turn.

  Mostly, though, I knew I’d made the right choice—to stop being a big league ballplayer—because I wasn’t feeling that same excitement and anticipation I did when I arrived at the old Stadium after being called up for the first time and every time I showed up at a ballpark to play. I shouldn’t have been feeling what I was. I was nervous, and that had never been a part of the mix of emotions that accompanied my visits to that place in the Bronx. In some ways, that January day, I didn’t want to be there and couldn’t wait for it all to be over. I dreaded doing what I was about to do. I was also happy and relieved, sad and angry, joyful and all the other emotions roiling around inside me. I’d had all those feelings at various times before, sometimes all in one moment, when I’d ar
rived at a ballpark or spent time in one. But not nervous. That part wasn’t right.

  A baseball field was my home, the place I went to where I felt most at ease and could let people know, this is who I am. I did that as a child and then as a man. So it was very strange for me to have to go to my home away from home in the Bronx to announce that I was leaving home, that I was ending my boyhood dream to focus on my role as a husband and father. It felt both right and wrong to do this at the Stadium. Baseball fields and stadiums are supposed to be places to have fun. This was not going to be fun. I never liked being the focus of attention, but this was going to be my event, my chance to say something that from my earliest days my father had told me not to say about anything to do with baseball: “This is it. I’m not going to do this anymore.”

  I may have thought or said that at various other times in my life—when moving that pile of dirt, for instance, or after another frustrating strikeout while learning to hit left-handed, or while lying in a clubhouse with a broken leg. But this was different. This was final.

  That makes it sound like the end came suddenly, but just like you look back on a season to try to figure out why things went wrong or why they turned out right, the same is true of a career and the decision to end one. In 2010, I was still very, very excited about playing the game. Yet something was different about that ball club and the approach we took. It was almost as if we expected to repeat, instead of knowing we had to work toward that goal with everything we had. I don’t know if that group understood just how hard it is to repeat as champions.

  To his credit, Joe Girardi sensed that things were not right. He called us on it and tried to get more from that club, but it was a case of being heard without being listened to. Derek and I both tried to talk with guys, but that’s hard to do when their headphones are on and their faces are looking down at their phones. At the risk of sounding like an old guy moaning about these kids and their damned new ways, it was tough for me to take when a rule was instituted that no one was allowed to go into the clubhouse between innings to check their phones for text messages. That seemed to be substantially different from how my dad, Trey Hillman, and some of my other early managers worked with me on maintaining focus.

  It also wasn’t just about the new technology getting in the way. The work ethic had changed with some guys—a very few guys, but enough to make the difference between winning and losing. It’s a shame that a guy like Robinson Cano who played the game the right way didn’t get to enjoy the run of success that the Core Four did. He should have won more than one MVP Award with the Yankees, considering he was the best hitter in baseball for at least my last two years in the league.

  In 2010 and again in 2011, I also noticed more and more often that after the game had ended, the clubhouse was empty just a few minutes past the time we were required to stay to make ourselves available for the media. I’d sit there. Derek would be there. A couple of other guys would linger for a while. But no one else. That was a lot different from before, when we all wanted to sit together as a team, have a beer, share a meal, and talk about baseball or whatever else was on our minds. That wasn’t happening, and it made me sad. I know that families grow apart over time, but that wasn’t how I wanted it to be.

  Winning is such a fragile thing. If you take away any element that supports it, it falls to the ground and shatters. That might sound overly dramatic considering we had some success in my last two years, but we didn’t have success in the one way we defined it, the only way that mattered. I don’t think I’ve ever been so angry in my life as I was after we lost in the 2001 World Series. Afterward, a guy who shall remain nameless, someone who was with us briefly, said, “At least I finally got to play in a World Series game.” He was gone the next year. I don’t know how much a part that statement played in his departure, but I was glad I didn’t have to see that face again. A decade later, it made me sad to see even some small fraction of that same attitude those last two seasons.

  The fact that I still remember that 2001 incident, and still get upset thinking about it, says a lot. I loved the game so much, loved being a Yankee so much, that it was never going to be easy to leave. Nothing ever came easy to me in this game, and I went out of it the same way I went in—with my heart and pride not just on my sleeve but bleeding all over everything for everybody to see, good and bad. That meant it was going to be messy, and at times it was. That’s how it sometimes is with family. You think the people who know you best will understand you best. You think you’ve made yourself clear. Misunderstandings happen, and you both try to make amends.

  I made some mistakes in 2011. In August of that year, I let my emotions get the better of me. I felt like I wasn’t being treated right, that people weren’t always being as straightforward with me as I wanted them to be or treating me as I deserved to be treated, and I exploded. I took myself out of the lineup. I spoke with all the people who mattered most to me and whose views I respected—my wife, my father, my agents. They all talked me down. They didn’t want me to do anything that tarnished my reputation. I felt like I already had, though, and I hated that feeling.

  I expressed my regrets, but those sentiments were never returned. Anybody who had been around me for very long knew that I was an emotional guy, a proud guy, and as events unfolded my last year with the club, I don’t think that was taken into consideration. No one thing had incited my decision to not play that day. I’m emotional, but not recklessly so. I’d just put up with enough.

  I knew that my role with the club was changing, but I don’t think that anyone making those decisions knew how much the things being done hurt me. So much of who I was as a player was tied up in being a catcher. I knew that I couldn’t play every day any more, that I hadn’t earned that role. But to be told that even catching someone in the bullpen was not allowed, to have even that taken away from me without an adequate explanation, hurt me and confused me. My pride was injured, not my body. I felt that I could still catch, I was willing to accept a diminished role, and I said that in case of an emergency I’d be willing and eager to help out. But I was told, no, that’s not what we want from you. If I wasn’t even considered third-string, then what was I? How did I fit in?

  I’ll admit that I struggled being a designated hitter. I didn’t know what to do with myself between at-bats. I’d been so central to every pitch in a game, and then I wasn’t. I had a lot of baseball experience and insights. I wasn’t sitting in on catchers’ meetings, even when I asked if I could. I felt as if all those years of experience, another way I could contribute, were being ignored.

  I’ll put this as plainly as I can: when you take me out from behind the plate, you’re taking away my heart and my passion.

  I continued to play, but it wasn’t the same. At various points during the year, starting early in the year, I would say to Derek, “I think this is it.” Derek didn’t say a whole lot, and I respected that. He knew that I had to do what was right for me.

  Laura and I talked and talked about it. We’d bought a home in Miami in 2010, and she was there with the kids until spring break and then summer, and I missed having them around all the time. Laura wanted to be sure that I was sure. Almost every day she’d check in with me about it. I can’t give you a percentage of “yes I’ll stay” days and “no I’m done” days, but as the season went on those numbers shifted, the average climbing and trending toward “I’m done.”

  I did get to catch one more time in an emergency situation in Anaheim and threw out a base runner. Derek put it best after the game when he said that having me back behind the plate was like coming home after a long time away and seeing all your furniture in the same place as it had been before you left. You knew you were back home, that things were going to be the same.

  I understood, of course, that things couldn’t be the same, and except for that brief lapse in judgment when I took myself out of the lineup for one game, I think I handled it well. Even after being benched for a week in the wake of that incident, I responded the w
ay that I wanted to. On August 13, 2011, I was 3-for-5 with a grand slam. Maybe those guys knew me well enough to know they had to piss me off to get me to play better. The ovation I got from that home run did a lot to soothe me and heal my wounded pride. The fans understood me, understood what was happening in my career and in my heart, and I can’t ever thank them enough for that. Knowing that you have nearly 50,000 people in that building on your side, and who knows how many others watching or listening, is something I wish everyone could experience once in their lives. I got to experience something like that again on September 21 when I came up as a pinch hitter in the bottom of the eighth inning in a tied game.

  As I completed my warm-up routine in the on-deck circle, I heard the first trumpet notes of Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe playing “El Día de Mi Suerte” coming over the speakers. That was the walkup music I’d been using for the last few years, and the lyrics “surely my luck will change” ran through my mind, especially when I heard the fans responding to what had become my signature song. I knew that in a lot of ways I didn’t need my luck to change at all. I’d been incredibly fortunate to play in front of such amazing fans all those years, and I really wanted to reward them for how they’d rewarded me. That single to put us ahead in a game that clinched the Eastern Division for us, for them, was just a small way to let them know how much they meant to me.

  By that time I was fairly certain that I was done. My dad told me that I should play another year, regardless of my contract situation with the Yankees. I think that he was even more aware than I was of how I stood in terms of career numbers. I had some goals, and I’d reached them. In 2010, I got to 1,000 runs batted in as well as 1,500 hits. Earlier my dad had told me that I was in reach of 300 home runs, and I told myself that when my contract with the Yankees was up in 2011, if I was within ten of that number, I’d re-sign and try to reach that mark as well as 400 doubles.