Casual does not come easy to Buster Posey. Not yet.
Let's say he's sitting in the corner of a Triple-A baseball clubhouse, an hour before a game on a Thursday evening. He's playing cards against a teammate. A reporter walks up and wants to chat. The reporter says he just wants to hang out for a bit, wants to know what it's like to be a first-round draft pick, The Next Big Thing, a top-level recruit in the minor leagues.
The reporter says don't get up, to go ahead and play cards while they talk.
Posey says he's OK with that, but after one question, he folds his hand and says, "I can't do this."
It's not that Buster Posey can't do two things at once -- in high school, he got an A in advanced calculus the same semester he spent two weeks playing baseball in Asia -- it's just that he wants to do his best at everything. Baseball. Interviews. A game of cards. General conversation. He was raised in southwestern Georgia, grew up in a Norman Rockwell family, down a dirt road near a small town, one of those places where if you're having a conversation, you give the other person your full attention and look them in the eyes.
Even though he's one of the top prospects in all of minor league baseball and the San Francisco Giants' catcher of the future, Buster Posey maintains his humble attitude.
Even if it's a stranger. Especially if it's a stranger, actually.
As one of the top prospects in all of minor league baseball and the San Francisco Giants catcher of the future, Posey gets a lot of mail. They put it in a pile while he's on road trips, letters and photos and autograph requests.
"I'm trying to decide if the amount [of mail] you get is affected by whether you sign and return it or not," he says.
He answers almost every one.
"I just have a hard time," he says. "It's not like I'm going to write a one-page letter just because they ask, but if someone takes the time to write you, you want to sign something for them."
Don't believe him. He probably does write one-page letters. It's who he is, courteous, humble, friendly as a county fair.
It's enough to make a 30-year-old veteran hate him, as he vaults up through the minors in his first full season, busting past others and right into the lineup of the Fresno Grizzlies as a 22-year-old kid. He was hitting so well in Class A, they went ahead and pushed him all the way to Fresno last week. He hasn't done much thus far in Triple-A, but it's easy to picture him as the Giants' starting catcher next year.
He swings easier than Mickelson with a 9-iron. He has the timing of a stand-up comedian.
Aaron Hill, the Blue Jays second baseman, likes to say he isn't a home run hitter (he just happens to hit a lot of home runs) and that's the feeling you get from Posey. He's trying to hit line drives, and some of them happen to go too far.
Unassuming doesn't really begin to describe him, and if anyone could float through the minors without making waves, it's Posey. He got a $6 million signing bonus and showed up to spring training in what teammates described as a used rental car.
Being a Triple-A league manager is partly about managing extreme emotion, sending guys up to the majors for the first time, and nursing their egos back to health when they're sent back down.
Grizzlies manager Dan Rohn is perfect for the role, perfect for Posey and those teammates who have to be OK with Posey's talent and fortune, if for no other reason than Rohn doesn't take himself too seriously. He jogs to third base between innings, smiles a lot, has a Midwestern common sense in his voice.
About baseball, he likes to say things like, "You've got to hit a round ball with a round bat, squarely, then run around in a circle touching square things to score a point. It's a goofy game."
It's a perfect match, Posey with the Grizzlies, and he will no doubt start hitting soon. He's hit everywhere he's ever been, in small-town Georgia and Florida State and the Cape Cod League and now the minor leagues.
The teammate playing cards looks annoyed, but Posey hides his feelings. He will handle this interview, though it's inconvenient. Every time he gets to a new city he answers the questions with patience.
There's a lot more attention to come. And it's coming soon.
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