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Tag: Jorge Posada

Blogs • Yankees

Oct 15, 2013

Goodbye, Andy Pettitte

I knew I would eventually have to write about Andy Pettitte’s retirement and say goodbye, so here is my farewell to “Number 46 … Andy Pettitte … Number 46.”

“I will not pitch this season. I can assure you of that. And I do not plan on pitching again.”

That’s what Andy Pettitte said on Feb. 4, 2011. And here’s what I said on Feb. 4, 2011:

When Andy Pettitte left his May 5, 2010 start against the Orioles in the sixth inning after throwing just 77 pitches and allowing one earned run on six hits, I knew something was wrong, I just didn’t know how wrong.

I was sitting in Section 203 in the right-field bleachers checking my phone for updates on Pettitte, but no one had any. When the game ended, it sounded like I might have watched Pettitte walk off a major league mound for the last time. But those reports were premature and 10 days later he shut out the Twins at Yankee Stadium over 6 1/3 innings to improve to 5-0.

Now Andy Pettitte is really done. All offseason there was certainly a chance that he would retire after a year in which he was an All-Star and pitched to a 3.28 ERA in 21 regular season starts and a 2.57 ERA in two postseason starts, but I didn’t think he would really walk away. At least I didn’t want to believe he would really walk away.

OK, so now Pettitte is really, really done (we think), but this isn’t as sad and heartbreaking and devastating as the goodbye for Number 42 is or the someday goodbye for Number 2 that I hope never happens. I got used to life without Andy Pettitte after the 2010 season when he left me wondering whether the 2011 season would even be one worth watching.

The last time Pettitte left the Yankees, which was the second time, I was devastated. The Yankees had lost out on Cliff Lee in December and would have to turn to either an unproven Ivan Nova, AAAA starter Sergio Mitre, Freddy Garcia 2.0 or the ultimate unknown in Bartolo Colon. I had gone into that offseason thinking the Yankees rotation could be CC Sabathia, Cliff Lee, Andy Pettitte, A.J. Burnett and Phil Hughes, but instead it ended up being CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett, Phil Hughes, Freddy Garcia and Bartolo Colon at the start of the year. It worked out as the Yankees won 97 games, but the loss of Pettitte became even more devastating in October when the Yankees let Freddy Garcia start and lose Game 2 of the ALDS. The Game 2 Andy Pettitte always started.

Back in February 2011, I didn’t know why Pettitte waited so long to make his decision to retire and if he was willing to leave the game with so much in the tank, why was he leaving then? Why didn’t he leave after the 2009 season (aside from money, which shouldn’t have been an issue) when he pitched the clinching game for the AL East, the clinching game of the ALDS, the clinching game of the ALCS and the clinching game of the World Series? It didn’t make sense that Pettitte would retire since he could still pitch and the timing couldn’t have been worse after Lee had left the Yankees at the altar. I was upset at Pettitte for selfish reasons for leaving, the way I had been after the 2003 season when he went to Houston with Roger Clemens and left the Yankees with Mike Mussina, Jon Lieber, an even older El Duque, Kevin Brown and Javier Vazquez to try to beat the Red Sox. I mean hypothetically speaking when it comes to the 2004 season since there wasn’t a season in 2004 because of the strike, which means there wasn’t a postseason either. What, you don’t remember the strike of 2004? Yes, Pettitte had his reasons to retire after the 2010 season the way he had his reasons to leave the Yankees for the Astros after the 2003 season, but that didn’t mean I had to accept them and I didn’t.

Sure, I was immature about his “retirement” almost three years ago and sure I said the following:

I never wrote a Goodbye piece for Andy Pettitte when he “retired” after the 2010 season, and thankfully I didn’t (mainly because it would have been a waste of time and words given his comeback) since I’m not good at saying goodbye, especially to members of the Core Four. Now I’m just happy Pettitte isn’t good at saying goodbye either.

I’m not any better at goodbyes now than I was when I said it to Jorge Posada or when Pettitte first retired two years, eight months and 11 days ago. But it’s been 16 days since Pettitte last pitched for the last time and I’m ready to say goodbye now.

I was eight years old when Andy Pettitte made his first appearance as a Yankee, 19 Aprils ago. I will be 27 for the start of the 2014 season, the fifth season without Andy Pettitte on the roster since I was in fourth grade and the first season without him leaving a chance to return.

“I feel like he was the greatest left-handed pitcher I ever saw pitch at Yankee Stadium. I never had the chance to see Whitey (Ford) pitch, so the first person I think of is Andy.” – Ron Guidry

Imagine Ron Guidry thinking you’re a better left-hander than Ron Guidry?!?! I’m pretty sure that’s the best compliment any left-hander could ever receive, no? I mean it’s coming from the guy who had the 25-3, 1.74 season in 1978. The guy who had a 1.69 ERA in four World Series starts. The guy who won the one-game playoff in Boston on three days rest in 1978. It’s Ron Guidry! The Effing Gator! Louisiana Effing Lightning!

Pettitte went 95-42 with a 3.70 ERA at on the original side of River Ave. and 21-13 with a 3.98 ERA on this side of River Ave, so Guidry does have a case.

“I think the impact he had on the teams we had in the mid-to-late 1990′s was enormous even though he was never the guy in the spotlight. He liked the fact that he wasn’t the No. 1 guy even though I trusted him like a No. 1 guy. – Joe Torre

Pettitte became known as the No. 2 starter in the postseason and became a staple of Game 2 of the ALDS (the same Game 2 that Freddy Garcia started that Ivan Nova was originally going to start in 2011). Pettitte pitched for the Yankees for 15 seasons. Out of those 15 seasons, the Yankees went to the postseason 13 times. Out of those 13 postseasons, Pettitte started Game 2 of the ALDS 12 times. (The only time he didn’t was in 2009 when he started, and won, Game 3 of the ALDS in the sweep of the Twins.) The Yankees won nine of the 12 ALDS.

There was a point in my life where I just figured Andy Pettitte would start Game 2 of the ALDS forever and Jorge Posada would catch him and Derek Jeter would be at shortstop and Mariano Rivera would come in to close the game as if they would were ageless and their lives were timeless. Eventually I realized this wasn’t possible and by eventually I mean in 2012 when Jorge Posada said goodbye before the 2012 season.

“A person and player the caliber of Andy Pettitte does not come around often.” – Hal Steinbrenner

After the hype and the near no-hitter in 2007 and the setup season in 2009 and the 18 wins in 2010, we thought Phil Hughes would be the most recent starter the Yankees drafted and developed and kept around like Pettitte, but that didn’t work out. Before Hughes there were pitchers like Tyler Clippard and Brad Halsey and Ted Lilly and Brandon Claussen as Yankees fans waited for one non-Andy Pettitte home-grown talent to either stay with the organization or pan out and neither has happened. Pettitte became the example of what Brian Cashman and his team look to draft every year and they have yet to even come close to doing so.

“Since I’ve been retired, I’m always asked, ‘Who would you have pitch a World Series Game 7?’ And I always say, ‘Andy Pettitte.’” – Tino Martinez

Pettitte didn’t have the left-handed arsenal of CC Sabathia or the combination of velocity, a devastating slider and intimidation of Randy Johnson. He wasn’t going to go out there and pitch a perfect game or always have clean innings. But he was going to battle and grind through a start even without his best stuff. Andy Pettitte knew how to “pitch,” he knew how to win and he knew how to win when it was for everything.

“He was a fighter and all about winning, and he was respected by every person in the clubhouse.” – Mariano Rivera

The last Sunday at the Stadium in 2013 was supposed to be all about Number 42, but of course he wanted to share it with Pettitte the way they shared 72 games that Pettitte started and Rivera saved.

“Andy has been a wonderful pitcher, one of the tops the Yankees ever had. He’s always a guy you always depend on and we’re gonna miss him.” – Yogi Berra

When the guy with one World Series ring for each finger calls you “tops” and says he’ll miss you, there’s not much else to add.

“I wanted to play for the New York Yankees. That was the bottom line.” – Andy Pettitte

I will remember Andy Pettitte for shutting out the Braves for 8 1/3 innings in Game 5 of the 1996 World Series (8.1 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 3 BB, 4 K).

I will remember Andy Pettitte for leaving Grady Sizemore at third following a leadoff triple with the heart of the Indians’ order coming up and the and the Yankees holding a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the sixth in Game 2 of the 2007 ALDS.

I will remember Andy Pettitte for winning Games 1 and 5 in the 2001 ALCS (14.1 IP, 11 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 2 BB, 8 K) and winning the 2001 ALCS MVP.

I will remember Andy Pettitte for the 447 games, the 438 starts, the two 21-win seasons, the 219 wins and 2,020 strikeouts.

I will remember Andy Pettitte for the 44 postseason starts, the 19 postseason wins, the six ALDS wins, the seven ALCS wins and the five World Series wins.

I will remember Andy Pettitte for the stare that became an October staple for the last two decades.

I will remember Andy Pettitte for doing everything he could down the stretch in 2013 to try to extend the Yankees’ season past Game 162 by pitching to a 1.94 ERA over his last 10 starts despite being out of gas.

I will remember Andy Pettitte for being part of five championships, for building the team into what it is today and for being a major reason why I enjoy baseball and like the Yankees as much as I do today.

I’m going to miss, “Number 46 … Andy Pettitte … Number 46.”

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Blogs

Jun 21, 2012

How Did I Get Here?

Jerome Preisler doesn’t watch the Yankees with the same emotional attachment he once did, but that hasn’t changed his desire the game or for his team to win.

Well, whaddya know, I’m back.

To those who read my sports writing for any portion of the eight years it appeared on YESNetwork.com, it’s good to be here, and I hope you’ll bear with this introduction.

My first running column for YES, Deep in the Red, kicked off in the winter of 2004 coming off the Yankees’ ALCS playoff loss to the Boston Red Sox, and Boston’s subsequent World Series victory. It was a fan’s column. Back then I was spending half my time in Maine surrounded by gleefully ecstatic members of so-called Rex Sox Nation, and it seemed as if the whole town was waiting to jump me when I drove back up from New York after the Yanks’ ALCS defeat. It was aggravating, funny and, I thought, good fodder for an interesting series of columns. A Yankees fan stuck in Red Sox country suffering the consequences of the team’s historic collapse. Nice angle, I thought, always ready to turn my pain into a buck.

So I pitched the column to YESNetwork.com. It was a fun catharsis to take vengeful jabs at the neighbors – and eventually broadcasters and other personalities associated with baseball. But after four years the thing got stale. I was also increasingly uncomfortable writing about myself. Most importantly stuff had happened in my life. Serious stuff. It changed me.

What I mean is this: In 2005, I was at the Maine place when the Yanks were eliminated from the playoffs in their ugly ALDS Game 5 loss to the Angels marked by the infamous collision between Bubba Crosby and Gary Sheffield. After the game, I recall breaking a few Yankees figurines in my office and then sitting out in a New England downpour awhile with a headless McFarlane Derek Jeter in my fist.

I would not react that way to the team’s subsequent postseason eliminations. Sometime after ’05, I had my own brush with a kind of elimination, and the Yanks hadn’t cared about me. It’s like that bit of dialogue from the movie A Bronx Tale. In a scene set after the Yanks fell to the Pirates in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series, Sonny (a gangster played by Chazz Palminteri) tells “C” (the young son of a hardworking bus driver played by Francis Capra) the gritty realities of life as he sees it.

Sonny: “So you must be pretty upset after the Yankees lost.”

“C”: “Bill Mazeroski … I hate him. He made Mickey Mantle cry. The paper said that The Mick was crying.”

Sonny: “Mickey Mantle, is that what you’re upset about? Mickey Mantle makes a hundred thousand dollars a year. How much does your father make?”

“C”: “I don’t know.”

Sonny: “You don’t know? We’ll see if your father can’t pay the rent, go ask Mickey Mantle and see what he tells you. Mickey Mantle don’t care about you, so why should you care about him?”

I didn’t have anything close to Sonny’s sneering, dead-eyed cynicism toward the game (or life in general) Hopefully, I never will. But my attitude wasn’t much like the kid’s anymore, either. There was a streetwise wisdom in Sonny’s words. I still loved baseball, loved everything about it with a passion – the records, the skill and guts it demanded of players, its open, unclocked pacing, and the odd, contradictory perfection to be found in its essential imperfectness, which for me starts with the varying dimensions and quirky configurations of its parks. I still liked when the Yanks won much better than when they lost, but you wouldn’t catch me getting soaked in the rain over a game or series loss anymore.

The key word for me became game, however. What happened on the field could parallel and illuminate our lives in certain respects, but that didn’t make it the same thing. If a team goes down at the end of a season, it’s pretty much guaranteed another shot come the next one. Not so for people in the real world. We’re playing for mortal stakes.

Thus by the end of 2009 Deep in the Red had run its course. It would have been fraudulent to continue writing a column with a personal and often hyperemotional Yankees fan’s-eye view, given how that view had gone through a major ground-shift. Moreover, I’d been writing in a more objective journalistic fashion throughout that season. The column as originally conceived no longer existed. All that remained was to make it official with a name change.

With YES’s support, Yankees Ink debuted in 2010. It primarily featured opinion, analysis, and human-interest stories about players and people around the ballpark. The stories were my strong suit, the thing that kept me from being a redundancy with a laptop. Most of the people in stadium press boxes, including the beat crews, aren’t narrative writers. They’re news reporters. Being a writer of narrative nonfiction – or what the great Gay Talese has coined “literary journalism” – requires a different mindset and skill set.

While narrative nonfiction must be as well-researched and factually accurate as any news article, it uses many of the same techniques as fiction. It’s about finding and illuminating truth through storytelling, and as a novelist, that’s one of my strong suits.

Yankees Ink allowed me to do what I do best for multiple reasons. First, it was a freelance gig. I filed whenever I wanted and wrote about whatever struck my interest. Unless it was something I’d promised my editorial producer by a particular time, I didn’t have to submit my pieces on the night of a game or even after the conclusion of a series. If I felt I had nothing unique to say about a series, I’d often take a pass on writing about it, or possibly write about something off-topic. One of my favorite columns, for example, was a profile of the 35-year veteran beer vender Rick Goldfarb, known to Yankee fans as Cousin Brewski. How, I wondered, are historic moments at the ballpark viewed by a guy who sells beer there? Has he gotten to know the fans he’s served, watch their kids grow up, get married, maybe have kids of their own? Goldfarb answered that question in poignant, colorful fashion.

In 2010, I became the first person in the Yankee Stadium press box to live-tweet Joe Girardi’s postgame Q&A sessions and clubhouse player quotes. I didn’t consider the idea a mental lightning bolt. News editors demand quotes, but the stories I wrote didn’t always require them, and when they did, I knew I could always crib off a friend or two. Consequently, I didn’t have to record or jot them down. I had been looking for ways to make my use of social media from the Stadium more responsive to fans’ needs, and it seemed that I could best utilize Twitter by sharing the postgame comments in real time. The service would fill an obvious void, since many of my Twitter followers lived out of market and didn’t receive Yankees postgame shows. For me the only question was whether the mobile Twitter app on my cell would hang on me from the clubhouse in the Stadium’s basement. When it worked, I knew I was in business. Live-tweeting from the clubhouse has since become a staple of media coverage. I’ve mostly stopped doing it. As I said, I don’t want to be redundant.

My 2011 work was probably my best. I’d gotten a firm handle on how I wanted to write about sports. I’d taken a lead role in YES’ written coverage of HOPE Week – something that became a real passion, and would lead to my current book project about Daniel Trush, one of the 2011 honorees. My live tweeting of the Jorge Posada-removing-himself-from-the-lineup incident provided an exciting day that even prompted an interview request from one Neil Keefe for his Keefe To The City Podcast on WFAN’s site. By the season’s end, I felt I’d really hit my stride and was planning ways to break new ground with the column in 2012.

When YESNetwork.com dropped Yankees Ink as an ongoing feature after almost a decade, it admittedly caught me by surprise. The site had gone to a new operating model that left me only an occasional contributor, leaving me to figure out what to do next as far as writing about baseball. I felt my voice and perspective worthy of sharing with readers, and, although my professional relationship with YES remained solid, I still wanted to do a regular column that was synched to the rhythms of a baseball season. At the same time, my particular brand of writing was not an easy fit for most outlets. It took a while to find a landing spot, or figure out if one even existed. But since you’re reading these words it tells you I have. Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mr. Keefe.

What you’ll get here at Preisler Ink is essentially what you got from me before. My focus will still be Yankees-centric, but, as the tweaked column title indicates, I expect to digress into other teams, and maybe on occasion other sports. In all the years my columns appeared in their blog roll, YES never put constraints on my work and that remains the case to the present. But in concept, I feel I can be a little freer and broader of scope here outside a corporate umbrella. What that means in execution, admittedly, is something I can’t wait to find out – and I hope you’ll stop by and visit often and find out along with me. We’re in this together.

As Cardinal Timothy Dolan once told an overzealous Yankees security guard who tried to stop me from accompanying some team members into St. Patrick’s Cathedral: “All are welcome.”

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Blogs • Yankees

Jan 18, 2012

Goodbye, Jorge Posada

The closest I have ever come to meeting Jorge Posada was on Oct. 17, 2004. How do I remember the date? Because it was the night the Yankees lost Game 4 of the ALCS. I

The closest I have ever come to meeting Jorge Posada was on Oct. 17, 2004. How do I remember the date? Because it was the night the Yankees lost Game 4 of the ALCS.

I was a freshman in college in Boston and my friend Scanlon and I were walking down the street from our Beacon Hill dorm recapping what had just unfolded in the ninth inning and then the 12th inning. The Yankees were staying at a hotel in Downtown Crossing right down the street from our dorm and we were standing on a corner recapping the events of the loss, knowing that it hurt, but that a 3-1 lead was insurmountable for the Red Sox.

The Red Sox tied Game 4 on a stolen base by Dave Roberts, but that night it was just another stolen base among the many other stolen bases in postseason history. It hadn’t become a play that haunts my life or a scene that’s enshrined as you walk down the hall to the Fenway Park press box. Dave Roberts was still just some 32-year-old veteran the Red Sox acquired at the deadline. Sure, he stole second and scored the tying run in an elimination game, but who cared? The Red Sox’ win in Game 4 was just prolonging the inevitable.

Scanlon and I stood on a street corner in Downtown Crossing while he smoked a cigarette realizing that the Red Sox had Pedro Martinez and Curt Schilling lined up for Games 5 and 6 and possibly Derek Lowe on short rest in Game 7 if the series had to go that far. But I reassured a nervous Scanlon that the Yankees just had to win one game before the Red Sox won three.

As we stood on the corner and talked, I remember Scanlon’s face growing with shock as he looked over my shoulder and then at me before giving me one nod to let me know someone was behind me on the sidewalk we were partially blocking. I turned around and standing in front of us was Jorge Posada, who had just gotten out of a cab and was trying to walk down the middle of the sidewalk we were occupying. We moved aside and Posada walked past us without saying a word. He didn’t look mad, but he didn’t look happy. He looked serious and determined, but also worried. Or maybe I only remember him as looking worried since I now know what happened over the next three nights. At the time no one could have known what would happen in Games 5, 6 and 7, but that night after Game 4 with Jorge standing dead quiet right in front of us and waiting for us to move, it was almost like he knew the Yankees were on the ropes, the same way Joe Torre described the feeling of nowhere to turn in The Yankee Years.

I knew I would eventually have to write this. And I know I will eventually have to write about the end of Derek Jeter’s career and the end of Mariano Rivera’s career. (I’m holding out hope that they both find a way to play until they’re at least 65. It’s not that unrealistic for Rivera at this point.)

There aren’t any other franchises or fan bases that have ever had the chance to experience what the trio of Jeter, Rivera and Posada meant to Yankees fans for the last 20 years. The three of them first played together in the minors in 1992, and now two decades and five championships later, the first of the three says goodbye to Yankees fans. So, this is my chance to say goodbye to Jorge Posada.

I was eight years old when Jorge Posada played his first game as a Yankee, 17 Septembers ago. I will be 25 for the start of the 2012 season, the first season without Jorge Posada on the roster since I was in fourth grade.

“The only thing that matters is when the team wins.”

Jorge Posada was the pulse of the Yankees during the 15 of 17 years he played a significant amount of games. He wore the team’s recent result on his sleeve and in his postgame remarks. You didn’t need to see the game to know if the Yankees were riding a seven-game winning streak or if they had just dropped a series at home by watching Posada during the postgame or reading his quotes the following day. He wouldn’t give the vanilla and automated answers that Derek Jeter gives or sugarcoat things like Joe Torre did or Joe Girardi does. Posada was in many ways the voice of the fan, and if things were going bad, he let everyone know almost as if he were the most prominent sports radio caller.

That’s what I loved about Posada. He would tell it like is. A win was satisfying, but that feeling would only last until the next game. A loss was devastating and that feeling would last until the next win. Posada always carried the personality of the fans, or at least the fans that give the Yankees 162 days and nights of their attention and then October, and those that live and die with each win and each loss throughout the season.

“Growing up, I kind of liked the way he (Thurman Munson) played. I didn’t see much of him, but I remember him being a leader. I remember him really standing up for his teammates, and that really caught my eye.”

“If I see a problem (in the clubhouse), I say something right away. I don’t wait two or three days.”

Even though he was part of the Core Four, it always seemed like he took a backseat to No. 2 and No. 42 and Andy Pettitte.

Jeter’s the “Captain” and the face of the franchise, the homegrown wonder and the universal symbol of a winner.

Rivera is the greatest closer of all time, as close of a lock and guarantee that there is in baseball and the king of cool with no emotions and no signs of fading even in his 40s.

Pettitte was the homegrown lefty that won more postseason games than anyone else in the history of baseball, along with Rivera produced the most wins-saves combination for any starter-closer duo in history and was always there for Game 2 of any postseason series.

Posada was the starting catcher for all this time, loved by the fans, showered with “Hip, Hip” chants and the visual leader on the field and in the clubhouse. But outside of the tri-state area it always seemed like he didn’t receive the credit and attention that the other three garnered.

You could make the case that Posada was the most important Yankee of the dynasty since reaching the majors. Think about this: The Yankees have made the postseason every season since 1995 except 2008 when Posada’s season was cut short in July for shoulder surgery.

“I’m a lot older. I’m wiser. I know what to do now, and hopefully, I don’t get in (anybody’s) way.”

“Some of the guys don’t like to come out of the lineup. I’m one of them.”

Eventually people won’t talk or care about Posada’s 2011. Yes, it happened and there were some low points, but it did nothing to impact his legacy with the Yankees or change what he accomplished in his career with the team. His 2011 started great, got bad, got worse, got better, got worse, got better and finished great.

We watched Posada start the year with six home runs in his first 16 games. We watched him go 9-for-72 (.125) in April and 14-for-64 (.219) in May. On June 7 he was hitting .195 before going 22-for-63 (.349) from June 9 to July 5 to raise his average to .241. In August he lost his full-time designated hitter job and became part of a platoon before being benched indefinitely. He returned to the lineup on Aug. 13 against Tampa Bay after a week off and went 3-for-5 with a grand slam and six RBIs in the Yankees’ 9-2 win at the Stadium. He finished the year by clinching a postseason berth for the Yankees on Sept. 21 in the eighth inning of one of the most emotional moments in the early three-year history of the new Stadium (where he also hit the first home run in the new place in 2009.) He finished his last season by 6-for-14 with four walks in the ALDS, battling every pitch and grinding out every at-bat the way he had so many times before.

No one wants to come to the realization that their abilities are no longer what they once were, especially someone as proud as Posada, who will watch Jeter and Rivera continue to matter for the Yankees along with a new generation. It would be one thing if the Core Four all left at the same time, but for Posada (three years older than Jeter and two years younger than Rivera) to watch his teammates dating back to 1992 in the minors continue to play without him is a lot harder than any of us can imagine coping with.

I’m happy that Jorge Posada took the $117,458,500 or so he made in his career and decided that the only hat he would put on is a Yankees hat. It would have been disappointing to see him with the Indians or the Mariners or the A’s (I’m just naming teams and I’m not sure if any of these teams were actual options), and it would have hurt to see him return to the Stadium to a “Welcome back” ovation before hitting a straight A.J. Burnett fastball into the Yankees’ bullpen.

“I don’t want to be gone. I don’t want to be somewhere else. I consider myself a Yankee.”

I will remember Jorge Posada for his bloop double against the Red Sox in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS that tied it all at 5 and gave me the type of sports high that you only get a handful of times in your life, if you’re lucky.

I will remember Jorge Posada for laying the tag on Jeremy Giambi on the “Flip Play” to save the 2001 season and give Yankees fans an unbelievable memory.

I will remember Jorge Posada for the 293 times in the regular season that he walked to the mound to shake Mariano Rivera’s hand after a save. And I will remember him for taking that same walk and doing that same handshake following all the postseason saves as well.

I will remember Jorge Posada for the two emotional games in 2011. The grand slam game in his return to the lineup on Aug. 13, and the game-winning hit in the postseason clinching game on Sept. 21.

I will remember Jorge Posada for standing in the Fenway dugout during Game 3 of the 2003 ALCS and letting Pedro Martinez he wasn’t going to stand for his antics. I will also remember him for the bench-clearing brawl he started at the Stadium against the Blue Jays on Sept. 15, 2009.

I will remember Jorge Posada for the go-ahead solo home run he hit against the Twins in Game 3 of the 2009 ALDS just four pitches after Alex Rodriguez tied the game with a solo shot of his own as the Yankees tried to end the World Series drought.

I will remember Jorge Posada for his .429 batting average and .571 on-base percentage in the five-game loss to the Tigers when it seemed like he was the only guy who didn’t want to go home while those who have guaranteed contracts in 2012 and beyond failed in big spots.

I will remember Jorge Posada for being part of five championships, for building the team into what it is today and for being a major reason why I enjoy baseball and like the Yankees as much as I do today.

I’m going to miss, “Number 20 … Jorge Posada … Number 20.”

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Blogs • Yankees

Mar 31, 2010

Opening Day Butterflies

The Yankees will no longer be world champions on Sunday night They will be defending world champions. And the only thing harder than winning a championship is winning back-to-back championships.

This column was originally published on WFAN.com on March 31, 2010.

Something about this spring training coming to an end just doesn’t feel right. This spring has that feeling you get when you leave your house and feel like you forgot something, but you convince yourself you didn’t, and then when you are too far away from your house to go back, you remember what you forgot. I have figured out what has been missing from this spring training, and it’s the distress of the last eight springs.

From 2001-2008, no matter what situation the Yankees faced, I believed they would prevail in the end. But that was me being spoiled and stupid as a Yankees fan, trying to hold onto the magic from 1996-2000. Up until Luis Gonzalez fought off a cutter into shallow right field, I honestly thought the Yankees would never lose again. Winning had become routine and losing wasn’t even considered an option anymore. It’s hard for anyone who is not a Yankees fan to understand this, and trying to explain the concept to non-Yankees fans is like Ron Washington trying to explain to the Rangers front office why he failed a drug test. However, it wasn’t until they hit rock bottom in 2004 that I was able to admit that I was unsure of the next time the Yankees would be world champions.

In 2004, I didn’t even care that the Red Sox won Game 4 because I knew the series would end in Game 5. But when I left Fenway devastated after having wasted nearly all my spending money for the semester on a ticket to Game 5 with my friend Jim, thinking we were going to see the Yankees clinch the pennant in Boston, I still believed the Yankees would finish the Red Sox off in Game 6. And if not, they would certainly get the job done in Game 7.

The Yankees failed in every imaginable way from 2001-2008, and with each year removed from 2000, the offseasons lasted longer and the anxiety for another title grew larger. The Yankees slowly evolved into what the Patriots have become in the NFL, and it wasn’t until November that they were able to rid themselves of their fading image.

Every spring for the last eight springs, I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out where the holes on the team were and how Brian Cashman could fill them in order to bring the team back to glory. But this season, there are virtually no holes. The No. 4 starter had a 2.87 ERA in the National League in 2009, and the No. 7 hitter hit 30 home runs a year ago. The only thing to complain about right now is why the Yankees are opening and closing the season in Fenway Park. Aside from that, the team has an answer for everything, or at least it appears that way.

There might not be much to worry about with this team, but there is always something to worry about with every team. Any fan who is completely content with their team is lying to you and lying to themselves. To me, there are two crucial components to the success of the 2010 Yankees. While I’m not all that worried about them, there is still a cause for concern since the margin for error in the AL East is zero, and the difference between these two things working out and not working out is the difference between championship No. 28 and a third-place finish.

1. The production from 2, 20 and 42
The same way I don’t want to believe that Eric Taylor of Friday Night Lights isn’t really a high school football coach at East Dillon, I don’t want to believe that Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera will one day be bad at baseball.

Jeter is going to be 36 in June, Jorge will be 39 in August and Mariano turned 40 in November. At some point these three won’t be the same players they are going to be remembered as being. Let’s hope that never happens, but more importantly, let’s hope it doesn’t happen this year.

The Yankees are in a position in which the success of these three will likely dictate the success of the team. Since 1996, the team has made the playoffs in 13 of a possible 14 seasons. The only season they didn’t was the year when Posada appeared in only 51 games. When they are healthy the Yankees win, and it’s as simple as that.

Eventually Father Time is going to catch up with the trio, but their demise has been falsely predicted each season for the last few seasons. This year, many analysts and “experts” are jumping on the bandwagons of the Red Sox and Rays, banking on old age finally catching up with the old guard. But the “experts” have been wrong before and will likely be wrong again.

I don’t think we are at the end of the road with these three, but eventually we will be and no one knows for sure when that will be. Not only does that deeply sadden me, but it also scares me since a decline in production from Jeter, Posada and Rivera will mean the end of an era and a year without postseason baseball.

2. The bridge to Mariano
The first time I saw Joba Chamberlain fail in person was May 6, 2008. Aside from the midges in Cleveland, it was the first time Joba had every failed in the majors. Joba allowed a go-ahead three-run home run to David Dellucci at the Stadium, and then leaned over on the mound in disbelief, appearing as though he was going to throw up on his spikes after what happened. The entire stadium felt the same way. Joba had been untouchable in his career up to that point, and seeing him blow a lead was like seeing Brian Bruney hold a lead.

In 2007, the only run he allowed in the regular season was a solo home run to Mike Lowell. When Ron Guidry went to the mound to check on him following the homer, Joba reversed roles with the pitching coach. Joba patted the Gator on the back and sent him back to the dugout, assuring him that he was fine and that it wouldn’t happen again. That was the personality of Joba Chamberlain before he became a starter and before the Joba Rules were created.

Joba wants to be a starting pitcher, and he has made that very clear. Why wouldn’t he want to? That is where the glory and glamour is, and the big money as well. But will knowing that he lost his starting spot after the team tinkered with his career and arm for a year and a half cause him to be a different reliever than we know him to be? Will he still possess the personality that meant a 1-2-3 inning and an emotional outburst?

When Joba returned to the bullpen during the postseason, the aura from 2007 and the beginning of 2008 was back, and so was his fastball. It was like watching the guy get the girl at the end of a movie. Everything was the way it was supposed to be, and the result was a happy ending in the form of a championship.

The world now knows two Jobas: Reliever Joba and Starter Joba. Joba might be a reliever now, but that doesn’t necessarily make him Reliever Joba. No one knows what to expect from him as he returns to his original role with the team.

This offseason seemed to go by a lot faster than years past, which is partially due to the Yankees playing until Nov. 4 and partially due to not longing for another championship. Eight springs as the hunter and not as the hunted have made me value championships more than I did the last time the Yankees won, when I took the Subway Series win for granted.

Fans of the other 29 teams will credit the 2009 World Series to the Yankees spending $429 million last offseason, but that was just part of the process. The thousands of breaks, the vast amount of luck and the tens of injuries the team dodged made up for more than half of the pieces to the 2009 World Series puzzle.

If CC Sabathia had actually been hurt when he left in the second inning of a game against the Marlins on June 21, the new Yankee Stadium would have opened the same way the old one closed. If Phil Cuzzi doesn’t call Joe Mauer’s ground-rule double foul in Game 2 of the ALDS, and if Mike Scioscia intentionally walks A-Rod in the bottom of the ninth in Game 2 of the ALCS, maybe the Canyon of Heroes goes unused for another fall.

I have tried to cherish the 2009 season as much and as long as possible because after Josh Beckett delivers his first pitch to Derek Jeter on Sunday night, the Yankees will no longer be world champions. They will be defending world champions. And the only thing harder than winning a championship is winning back-to-back championships.

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Blogs • Yankees

Feb 17, 2010

Some Questions Still Unanswered

Five questions surrounding the Yankees as spring training begins.

This column was originally published on WFAN.com Feb. 17, 2010.

The first day of pitchers and catchers is the first official day of the season. It’s a day that represents the closing days of winter and the excitement for spring and summer. It grants new life to the 29 teams that didn’t finish the previous season with a win, and gives hope to clubs looking to be this season’s dark horse. Today is that day.

Coming off a world championship, Tampa should be relaxed for the first time in a decade. New York’s real baseball problems are in Port St. Lucie at Mets camp where Omar Minaya is trying to build a rotation on the fly and trying to figure out exactly who is going catch that rotation. No one in Queens is satisfied with the situation at first base or in right field, and the team’s center fielder isn’t going to be ready for Opening Day. It’s a good time to be a Yankees fan.

But even with the Yankees boasting a team as good if not better than their 103-win club of a year ago, there are still a handful of minor housekeeping matters to be taken care of over the next six weeks. Here’s five questions surrounding the Bombers at the beginning of spring:

1. Can the veterans stay healthy?
The difference between the 2008 and 2009 Yankees was 14 regular season wins and another 11 wins in October. A serious rash of injuries created this difference. Aside from Alex Rodriguez missing the first month of the season, the Yankees were remarkably healthy in 2009. In 2008, they weren’t as lucky.

The injury bug wreaked havoc on the ‘08 Yankees, landing the following players on the disabled list at least once: Jonathan Albaladejo, Wilson Betemit, Chris Britton, Brian Bruney, Joba Chamberlain, Johnny Damon, Dan Giese, Phil Hughes, Jeff Karstens, Ian Kennedy, Hideki Matsui, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, Alex Rodriguez and Chien-Ming Wang. Starters landed on the DL, as did their replacements, and their replacements’ replacements. It was a disaster from Opening Day through Game 162 in what was the worst season in the Bronx since 1993.

This season, the Yankees are somewhat younger than they were a year ago after trimming Johnny Damon (36) and Hideki Matsui (35) from the roster. However, there is still cause for concern as the team’s superstars get up there in age.

Here are the current ages for the starting lineup: 26, 27, 28, 29, 29, 31, 34, 35 and 38.

Here are the current ages for the starting rotation and closer (Hughes and Chamberlain included): 23, 24, 29, 33, 33, 37 and 40.

There are a lot of 30s listed there, and they are all very significant players on the roster. The Yankees are going to need good fortune and a bill of health similar to 2009 to make another October run, and they are going to need to leave camp healthy.

2. Who’s going to play center field?
When the Yankees traded for Curtis Granderson, I thought they finally had a long-term solution in center field. I was also thinking that Johnny Damon was going to be back in left, but that is clearly not the case. As of now, it looks like Granderson will be in left and Brett Gardner in center, and maybe that is for the better.

The Yankees lost 24 home runs and 82 RBIs from Damon, and 28 home runs and 90 RBIs from Hideki Matsui. Granderson is going to be asked to make up for the offensive production lost with Damon. Nick Johnson will be an upgrade in the on-base department over Matsui, but he isn’t going to be able to provide the power that Godzilla gave the Yankees at DH – unless he becomes a product of the short porch.

With Granderson in left, there will be less wear and tear on his body than there would be in center, allowing him to be stronger offensively. No one is counting on Gardner’s bat anyways and any offense he can provide the team is a plus, but not needed.

If the Yankees feel that Granderson’s game has diminished in center like it appeared to be during the final weeks of last season, then Gardner is the right man for the job. It’s safe to say whatever decision is made at the end of spring training will be changed more than once throughout the year.

3. Who’s going to be the long reliever?
Joe Girardi didn’t think it was necessary to have a long reliever on the Opening Day roster last season. It didn’t take him long to change his mind.

Early on, the bullpen was overtaxed and it didn’t help that the team was asking Edwar Ramirez, Phil Coke, Jose Veras and Brian Bruney to get important outs. Chien-Ming Wang pretty much caused the bullpen fatigue for the first couple of weeks of the season, and the relievers didn’t recover until the Yankees finally made wholesale changes. The same thing can’t happen this season.

Chad Gaudin and Sergio Mitre will be the long reliever candidates since no matter what the Yankees say, the competition for the fifth spot in the rotation doesn’t include them.

When it comes down to it, Gaudin is the better option. He is more reliable (3.43 ERA in 42 innings with the Yankees) and has had previous success in the majors. Gaudin’s high pitch counts forced Girardi to have a short leash with him in most of his starts, but the ability to help the team is certainly there. I don’t know if you can say the same for Mitre.

Mitre might only be a little over a year removed from Tommy John surgery, but it’s not like he was some stud before his injury. Mitre allowed 71 hits in 51 1/3 innings with the Yankees last season, and posted a 1.63 WHIP, which was only worse than the pitcher formerly known as Chien-Ming Wang’s 2.02 and the always-exciting Edwar Ramirez’s 1.96. I would like to think that the best team in baseball would have someone more reliable than Mitre in the bullpen and serving as the long reliever. Give it to Gaudin.

4. Which A.J. Burnett will show up?
The difference between winning 95 games this season and 105 games depends on which A.J. Burnett comes to pitch.

There’s no doubt that Burnett has No. 1 stuff, but many times, he pitches like a No. 5. His potential no-hitters can quickly turn into four-run deficits, and when his game begins to south, there is no way to right the ship until five days later.

Burnett proved himself in the postseason after finishing the regular season with just 13 wins in 33 starts. His performance in Game 2 of the World Series made up for all the eggs he laid throughout the summer, but it wasn’t enough to fully gain his trust.

When Burnett takes the mound, you hope that you get the guy who allowed one hit to the Red Sox over 7 2/3 innings in August and not the guy who allowed a grand slam to Jason Varitek in April. The season won’t be won or lost because of Burnett, but he has the ability to make the Yankees untouchable in the division and the league.

5. How will the Yankees handle Derek Jeter’s contract situation?
A lot of newspapers will need to fill space between now and the end of the season, and they will argue about the contract status of Derek Jeter to do so.

When Jeter, Casey Close, Brian Cashman and Hal Steinbrenner sit down to hammer out a new deal for the face of the franchise and the face of the game, they are going to give Jeter what he deserves: whatever he wants.

Jeter isn’t going to be given a low-ball offer filled with incentives like Joe Torre was, and he isn’t going to be left hanging in the balance like Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada were. Jeter is going to be given a multiyear deal for a lucrative amount of money, and there is no other way it will happen and there is no other way it should.

Speculation can be justified when it comes to the contract statuses of Mariano and Girardi, or with Posada at the end of next season, and that’s because they are not Derek Jeter. There is only one Derek Jeter, and because of that, he ‘s going to get treated and taken care of in a way that no other player will or should. End of story.

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