Jorge Posada with a clutch, bottom of the 8th 2 RBI hit, this time for the AL East

Final score Yankees over Tampa Bay Rays, 4-2, Sept. 21, 2011

• Now: Above left,, 9/21/2011, Posada reacts to bottom of the 8th 2RBI tie-breaking hit sending the Yankees to the AL East title. getty

Then: Above right, Jorge Posada, 2003 Game 7, ALCS, 10/16/03. Bottom of the 8th, Yankees trail the Red Sox 5-3. Posada hits a 2 run double, score tied 5-5. The Yankees won 6-5 in the bottom of the 11th and went to the World Series.

• 11/13/2007, "No Place like Bronx for Jorge Posada," Mike Lupica, NY Daily News

"He sat in the visitors' clubhouse at Comerica Park one year ago, after another Yankee postseason had ended in the first round. To the end, Jorge Posada stayed in there. He kept swinging. There was a two-out single in the seventh inning, when it was already 8-1 for the Tigers. Then came a two-run homer in the ninth, Posada making the last game of the season, 8-3.

• To the end, he was a great Yankee.

It was quiet in front of his locker 30 minutes later. It is usually quiet there, unless Posada has something to say. Then he lets you have it.

"It's the thing people don't always see from Jorge," Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said yesterday. "How emotional he can be. It's mostly because he's always wanted to win as much as anybody we have."

That day in Comerica Park, some Yankees already were out of the shower and dressed and thinking about the bus to the airport. The first moments of next season are always the same when you lose the last game, whether you are home or on the road. They are looking to go, especially when it ends 8-3 and one of the only ones fighting is the catcher. The catcher wasn't going anywhere. He was still in uniform, sitting there in front of the locker. He had at least made that one last swing. He had not made the last out of the season. A year later, against Joe Borowski of the Indians, he just missed hitting a ninth-inning home run that would have brought the Yankees to within a run and scared the Indians half to death. At Comerica, in October of '06, one of the writers came by and told him that this might not be the time to say it, but he was going to say it anyway,

• what a great Yankee Posada was.

Posada thanked the guy, shook his hand.

"You never think it will end this soon," he said. "Not after what we used to do."

He gets paid now by the Yankees for all of it, what he used to be and what the Yankees used to be, for being

• one of the last members of the Class of '96 - class in all ways - who is still here."...

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