You can pound Zack Greinke and the Brewers on a sultry summer night at the Stadium late in June, and watch the kid shortstop single and walk and steal second base, and hear the drumbeat grow that the Yankees are better without Derek Jeter. It is knee-jerk madness, and no one knows this better than Jorge Posada.
“I don’t see that. Nobody in this organization sees that,” Posada told The Post before Yankees 12, Brewers 2. “Derek Jeter belongs in this organization, and they need him to be here. He is the guy that we look up to and the leader of this team. . . . [He’s] the guy that keeps doing and he’s going to keep doing what he needs to do to bring winning baseball to this organization.”
In fact, such is the bond between these Yankees championship brothers that Posada, as highly as he regards the talent in the room around him, goes as far as saying that the Yankees, 10-3 now with Eduardo Nunez at shortstop — will be hard-pressed to win a 28th World Series without The Captain.
“He’s the guy that we follow,” Posada said. “He’s a winner. I don’t see this organization doing what they need to do without him.”
It is easy to be seduced that the Yankees do not need Jeter on nights when Nick Swisher bangs a three-run home run and lines an RBI double and throws out a runner at the plate and Mark Teixeira crushes his 24th homer and Freddy Garcia throws a workmanlike six innings.
It is easy to forget that they will need him in September and October. That no one has dubbed Nunez, who wields a wicked bat and a nervous glove, Mr. November.
“If all of a sudden we were 50 games below .500, and then we made a drastic turnaround with him out, OK, people can begin to talk,” Curtis Granderson said.
Once Jeter returns and gets that 3,000th hit, people can talk about a leadoff platoon with Brett Gardner all they want. Fair enough. But you fight the Red Sox with Derek Jeter.
“He’s the best,” Francisco Cervelli said. “No matter [whether] he’s struggling or not. He’s The Captain, and when you need it, he’s going to be there.”
Posada, who talks to Jeter in Tampa every day, chuckled when I asked him how agonizing this must be for his forever friend to be away from his team.
“You know what? At the end of the day, he probably understands what’s going on, they want him to be healthy,” Posada said. “But for him, it’s probably the toughest thing to be away from the team and not be able to play.”
Jeter has five rings. Posada has been part of four championship teams. Posada had that one bad May night when he refused to play, but Yankees fans were quick to give him a mulligan. Posada has gotten off the deck with a torrid June (23-for-61 .377, two homers, 1-for-5 with a right-handed RBI single last night) in his new role as DH.
“I talked to David Ortiz. I talked to Edgar Martinez a little bit when we were in Seattle, and they all said, ‘try to have a routine.’ “ Posada said. “I still don’t have a routine. . . . Just be ready for that at-bat that you’re going to have, and that’s what I’ve been doing lately.”
He would like to keep on doing it beyond this season. For the Yankees, preferably, and Yankees fans.
Posada was asked if it would be difficult for him to see himself in a different uniform.
“Very,” he said. “I really have fun putting the uniform on every day. And this one especially. It doesn’t get any better than putting the Pinstripes on and playing in Yankee Stadium.”
You never forget the first time you put on the Pinstripes.
“ ‘95 callup. . . . [I was] sitting in the dugout all by myself at two o’clock in the afternoon, talking to my parents, crying that I made it,” Posada recalled.
He and Jeter observed the Yankee Way that September from the likes of Don Mattingly, Paul O’Neill, Wade Boggs, Mike Stanley.
“They taught us how to put our uniform on in the minor leagues,” Posada said. “There’s only one way to be a Yankee, and that’s just go out there and play the game the right way.”
At 37, Jeter might never again play the game the way he once did. But he still can show you how to win, even with a .260 batting average. Let’s not be so quick to bury the guy.
steve.serby@nypost.com