Lupica: Posada locates plate, maybe one day Fame

Lupica: Posada locates plate, maybe one day Fame

Andrew Theodorakis/New York Daily News

Former New York Yankees Jorge Posada throws out the first pitch before the opening day game against the Los Angeles Angels.

The first pitch had been thrown by now to his father, all the questions had been answered in the inter view room across from the Yankee clubhouse, on this day that was both a hello and a goodbye for Jorge Posada. Now Posada walked toward the elevators, no ballpark sun in here, no cheers from Yankee fans, a Yankee season finally beginning without him outside.

It was one thing not to go to spring training, he said in the hallway, and another not to be in St. Pete for the opener. But for me, the season never started until it started here. It didnt start until we got home.

Posada said, The Yankees are always more the Yankees when were here.

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On the day when all the talk would be about the fine pitching of Hiroki Kuroda at the new Stadium, the pitch that they would remember was the one Posada threw high to Jorge Posada Sr., the one that really began this Yankee season on 161st St.

For a few more moments on Friday, even out of uniform, even throwing from the pitchers mound instead from behind home plate, Posada was back on that field. He was a Yankee, a great Yankee, at Yankee Stadium.

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Oh, you saw him throw high, Posada saying again and again after the game, all the way to the elevator for his trip upstairs to give another interview on television, that he was afraid of looking bad and bouncing one in there. But he put it in his fathers mitt and then he turned and hugged the Yankees in formation behind him, one by one.

Then he was off the field and hugging Mo Rivera. He is still the closer and Derek Jeter is still the shortstop and Andy Pettitte, the other member of the Core Four, is improbably on his way back to the rotation after a year in retirement. Pettitte was the first of them to retire, only now he is back. It is Posada who watches them go on without him the way a baseball season finally does in the Bronx.

He talked about how he had offers from other t eams to play this season, but finally turned them down.

I didnt want to be another guy on another team, Posada said Friday.

He was the first to hit a home run in the new Yankee Stadium the day it opened, but you know his best days and nights were across the street, when Posada was behind the plate for some of the best Yankee teams you will ever see in this world, when he began playing himself to Cooperstown.

This is my opinion, an old catcher named Mike Scioscia said on the field before the game, but any conversation you have about the great catchers, Jorge Posada has to be a part of it. And when it was pointed out to Scioscia that some people see Posada as a borderline Hall of Fame candidate, Scioscia shook his head and said, People who say that about him don't know what they're talking about. Hes a slam-dunk candidate as far as I'm concerned.