2009 Yankees: Jorge Posada Delivers in the Clutch

Welcome back to the next chapter of 2009 Yankees: The Last Championship - a week-by-week remembrance of the year in which they gave us their most recent World Series title. The Yankees were scuffling and they closed April with a mundane 12-10 record, but they opened May with a flourish as they overcame a five-run deficit and stunned the Angels on Jorge Posada’s walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth inning.

NEW YORK (May 1, 2009) - During the summer of 1994, as Jorge Posada was trying to make his way through the Yankees’ farm system and to the big leagues, there was a difficult moment that very nearly derailed that quest.

Posada was with Triple-A Columbus and there was a play at the plate in a game against Norfolk where Mets farmhand Pat Howell tried to score on a ground ball. Posada positioned himself to block the plate, which was a legal maneuver at the time, and the confluence of Posada anchoring his left foot just as the ball and Howell arrived resulted in a broken fibula.

Columbus manager Stump Merrill recalled hearing the bone break from the dugout and after Posada had been carried into the clubhouse on a stretcher, he looked at the catching gear that had been stripped off him and – according to author Bill Pennington in his book Chumps to Champs – said, “I’m not ever putting that stuff on again. Never. I’m done.”

Merrill, recognizing the trauma Posada had endured, tried to calm his young catcher and he said, “You’re going to be OK. Relax.”

In his 2015 autobiography, The Journey Home: My Life in Pinstripes, Posada wrote of that incident. “I think Stump thought I was talking about the injury ending my career. I was trying to say I didn’t want to catch again. I’d gone along with everything everyone had told me to do. I had improved, and this was how the baseball gods rewarded me? Work your ass off for what?”

Posada missed the rest of 1994 recovering from multiple surgeries, and when he realized the only way he was ever going to make it to the Yankees, or any other team, was to get back behind the plate, that’s what he did. He put in two-plus more years in Columbus before getting the call for his first extensive playing time with the Yankees in 1997 and never looked back.

Through it all, one thing never changed. While Posada was still a work in progress defensively, and he had to come to grips with the dangers of his position and the toll it would take on his body, he never doubted his ability to hit, nor did anyone in the Yankees organization.

Posada could always hit and now, even at 38 years of age in 2009 and coming off shoulder surgery which had limited him to 51 games in 2008, he was still coming through in big moments. On this crazy night at Yankee Stadium, Posada was in the epicenter of a huge come-from-behind 10-9 victory over the Angels.

He launched a two-run homer in the first inning which gave the Yankees a 4-0 lead and it looked like it was going to be an easy night for a team that hadn’t had many during the first month of the season.

But then Angels starter Jered Weaver found something and recovered from that miserable beginning. He blanked the Yankees over his final five innings and was in line for the victory because in the top of the sixth, his teammates erupted for six runs off Andy Pettitte and Mark Melancon, and they put up three more on Jose Veras in the seventh to give Los Angeles a 9-4 lead.

However, the Angels bullpen had gotten off to a terrible start in 2009, the Yankees knew this, and in the bottom of the eighth they began to peck away. Posada drew a walk and later scored on a two-run single by Ramiro Pena as the Yankees scored four to get within 9-8.

And then in the ninth, with closer Brian Fuentes on the mound, a man who would go on to lead the major leagues in saves in 2009 with 48, Mark Teixeira walked, Hideki Matsui and Robinson Cano singled, and Posada ripped a line drive to left center to chase home Teixeira and pinch-runner Angel Berroa with the winning runs.

“We had a good chance to win two in Boston, and we didn’t,” Posada said, referring to the Red Sox sweep the previous weekend at Fenway Park which was part of a four-game Yankees losing streak. “We keep fighting, that’s what I like. This team’s got a lot of life, and we have a lot of things that we want to do. It’s really good to see, not giving away at-bats even when the score is up.”

No one was happier about the finish than Pettitte who was still kicking himself over the way his outing had flamed out.

“Oh man, I was in a real bad mood,” Pettitte said of his blowing the early lead. “I hated to give up that lead and it was a depressing game to be sitting (in the clubhouse) watching and see them tack on those runs. But I couldn’t be more excited to see the guys come back. Anytime you can come back like that, it’s a great win.”

New York won when trailing by five runs or more at the end of the seventh for the first time since Sept. 14, 2007, when it rebounded from a 7-2 deficit to win 8-7 at Boston. The Angels hadn’t lost when leading by that much after seven since blowing an 8-3 lead at the Chicago White Sox in a 9-8 loss on Sept. 1, 2000.

“This shows that we can come back. We can come back against tough teams, and we do have a lot of weapons on this team that could pitch in and contribute for us,” Johnny Damon said.

“Hopefully we can grow a lot from this,” Posada said. “We did a lot of things bad after (Pettitte) left, but we were able to settle down and do a lot of things well.”

Here’s how the rest of Week 4 went for the Yankees:

• April 27: Licking their wounds after getting swept at Fenway Park, the Yankees moved on to Tiger Stadium and lost their fourth straight game, dropping a 4-2 decision as Detroit’s Justin Verlander hurled seven shutout innings to beat CC Sabathia. “We’re going to have more four-game winning streaks than four-game losing streaks,” said Mark Teixeira, who was batting .220. “It’s the time of year right now that we’re just not getting it done.”

• April 28: The Yankees got back to .500 at 10-10 and ended their losing streak as they smashed open a scoreless game through six innings with a 10-run seventh to beat the Tigers 11-0. Phil Hughes, still trying to find his way in the rotation, pitched six scoreless two-hit innings. “That was the best I’ve seen him throw,” Joe Girardi said.

• April 29: Another big inning, a seven-run fourth, lifted the Yankees to a series-winning 8-6 victory, though they had to hold on as the Tigers scored five in the ninth, the last three on a home run by Curtis Granderson off Mariano Rivera. Nick Swisher homered twice to back Joba Chamberlain’s strong seven-inning performance. At this point, Swisher was leading the team with 19 RBI and 19 runs scored.

• April 30: Back at Yankee Stadium, Melky Cabrera’s RBI single and Ramiro Pena’s two-run double broke a 4-4 tie in the eighth for a 7-4 victory over the Angels.

• May 2: The Angels avoided a sweep with an 8-4 victory. Sabathia pitched five scoreless innings but then gave up five runs in the next two to drop him to 1-3 on the young season. When he left the game, he fired his glove and cap at the bench and stormed into the clubhouse. “I was letting out some anger; I had a lot of it,” he said. “If we’re not scoring runs, it’s up to the pitcher to keep it close. I haven’t done that.”

NEXT SATURDAY: This exciting victory over the Angeles was the Yankees’ fourth in a row, but just when things seemed to be turning around, they proceeded to lose their next five including two more to the Red Sox which dropped them to 13-15 and 5.5 games behind AL East-leading Toronto. But then they went to Baltimore, and Alex Rodriguez, who had been out since early in spring training, made a memorable season debut.