O/T News Posada refused to catch in spring training?
New York Yankees DH Jorge Posada(notes) has enjoyed the good side of being famous in New York for more than a few years. Now he's getting to "enjoy" the downside.
In what is now a well-documented flipout, Posada reacted strongly when asked to bat ninth in the order Saturday. Sources tell the New York Daily News that Posada didn't just tell GM Brian Cashman and Manager Joe Girardi that he wanted out of the lineup that night but that he wanted off the team in general.
"It was just something said in the heat of anger and frustration," a close friend of Posada's told the paper. "What happened had nothing to do with being dropped to ninth in the batting order. It was just the combination of everything building up in him - his frustration at not helping the team and the feeling that, right now, he sucks, and that everything in his world is pretty (expletive)."
Everybody has supposedly made up and apologized and all of that but the Daily News reports a new supposed disagreement between Posada and the team: He supposedly wouldn't catch during spring training. "According to Yankee sources, Posada was told by the team that in addition to his fulltime DH duties, he should also be prepared to catch an occasional game or in emergency situations," the paper reports. "But sources claim that when Posada was asked to catch in a game in the spring, he declined, citing headaches and concern over the concussion syndrome he suffered after taking a foul ball off the mask the previous September."
However, Posada denied to the Daily News that the team ever asked him to catch at all during spring training.
