Feinsand: Yankees’ catcher Jorge Posada say he’s pumped up by critics’ chatter

With two years remaining on his contract after this season, Posada knows he won’t be catching the 130-plus games he did every year from 2000-07, but he has no plans to vacate his position any time soon, either.

“I have a lot of fun behind the plate, I enjoy it and I don’t think I’m hurting the team,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt the team. When the time comes that I think I am, I’ll do what I need to do.”

Posada is hardly the first player to deal with this. Derek Jeter’s critics have been calling for the Yankees to move him from shortstop for the past few years, yet the captain continues to take his position every night without a second thought.

“Everybody is going to be criticized at some point, I don’t care who you are,” Jeter said. “It’s how to respond to that criticism that matters. I’ve told him, ‘You’ve got to take criticism as a challenge.’ He’s doing that.”

...“If somebody steals a base off of him, people say, ‘He can’t catch,’” Jeter said. “Maybe a guy just stole a base. That’s the unfortunate thing; once you get labeled, it’s pretty hard to shake that.”

...“People try to read too much into everything,” Posada said. “True baseball fans, they understand.”

I am the backstop man.
Well the men don’t know, but little fans understand.