SAD GOODBYE: Jorge Posada, with his wife Laura at the Surrey Hotel for the Jorge Posada Foundation to raise money for Craniosynostosis, said his Yankees career is over, but he is uncertain whether he will retire or not. (Charles Wenzelberg/New York Post)
Jorge Posada doesn’t know if he’s going to be playing anywhere next year, but he sain Wednesday it won’t be for the Yankees.
“I don’t think there’s even a percentage of a chance that I could come back,” said Posada, who hopes to make a decision about whether he’ll play anywhere next season by February.
The longtime Yankees catcher said his agents have been contacted by five or six teams and his old team was not among them.
“It’s not gonna happen,” the 40-year-old said.
General manager Brian Cashman said yesterday he intended to call Posada’s agents, but has expressed no desire to bring him back.
Posada said he’s not bitter about how his tenure with the only organization he’s known came to an end, even after an eventful final season.
“It’s a business,” Posada said at a benefit at the Surrey Hotel on the Upper East Side for the Jorge Posada Foundation to raise money for Craniosynostosis, a condition of the skull that afflicted Posada’s son, Jorge.
“You look back and you wish there were some things that could have gone differently, but they didn’t and it was nothing I could control,” said Posada, who had a rocky relationship with manager Joe Girardi.
“I’m not bitter at the Yankees, I’m not bitter at Joe Girardi, I’m not bitter at Brian Cashman. It just happened.”
So now Posada has to decide whether he wants to play for another team for the only organization he has known, something he admitted he’s not sure he’s prepared to do.
“I will always be a Yankee,” Posada said. “The New York Yankees, for me, are a second family and it would be tough to put on another uniform for real and learn another set of rules. That’s one of the things I have to see if I want to keep playing.”
At times during 2011, it seemed the decision would be made for him, but he had productive stretches as the season wore on, including a productive playoffs.
“I felt good and am happy with the way things turned out,” Posada said. After hitting .235 with 14 homers and 44 RBIs during the regular season, he hit .429 in the ALDS. “Do I want to leave home and do it all over again without knowing anything?”
Posada’s wife, Laura, chimed in by reminding him that they live in Miami and that playing for the Marlins would be “an easy transition.”
Though Posada began working out on Nov. 1, like he always does, he’s not prepared to make up his mind.
It’s an issue Bernie Williams faced and the former teammates talked yesterday.
“He said, ‘Make sure you make the decision the right one and don’t say something or do something that you regret later,’ ” Posada said. “Because I don’t know.”
When asked if he would be reluctant to go somewhere else because he has spent his entire career in Pinstripes, Posada said, “Yes.”