Buster Posey

Every team gets a star now and then. We got a catcher who showed up in the middle of 2010, took over the cleanup spot, and then just kept winning until we had three parades in five years. Buster Posey never looked rattled, never looked like the moment was bigger than him, and for a dozen years he was the one guy on the field you'd trust with everything.

He was born Gerald Dempsey Posey III on March 27, 1987, in Leesburg, Georgia, and the Buster came from his dad's childhood nickname. He grew up a Braves fan, played four sports, and at Lee County High he pitched and played shortstop. As a senior he hit .462 with a school record 14 homers and went 12 and 0 on the mound with a 1.06 ERA. Jason Heyward's Henry County club beat his team in the state final, which is a funny little footnote now.

He went to Florida State as a shortstop and started all 65 games as a freshman. Then an assistant coach, Mike Martin Jr., talked him into catching. That turned out to be a decent idea. As a junior in 2008 he hit .463 with 26 homers and 93 RBIs, played all nine positions in one game against Savannah State, and swept the big college awards: the Golden Spikes, the Dick Howser Trophy and the Johnny Bench Award. In 2019 they renamed that last one the Buster Posey Award.

The Giants took him fifth overall in the 2008 draft and gave him a $6.2 million bonus, the biggest up front bonus in team history. He tore through San Jose and Fresno, got a September look in 2009, and struck out against Hiroki Kuroda in his first big league at bat. Fine. He came up for good on May 29, 2010, went 3 for 4 with three RBIs that night, and when the Giants traded Bengie Molina to Texas on June 30, the job was his.

That rookie summer was ridiculous. Over ten games in early July he hit .514 with six homers, a National League record for a rookie over that kind of stretch. He had a 21 game hitting streak, won Player and Rookie of the Month for July, and settled into the four hole like he'd been there for years. He homered in the eighth to beat the Padres 3 to 0 on the last day of the season and clinch the West, hit .305 with 18 homers, and won Rookie of the Year. Then he caught every single inning of the postseason, and we won the whole thing for the first time in San Francisco.

On May 25, 2011, Scott Cousins of the Marlins ran him over at the plate in the 12th inning at AT&T Park. Broken fibula, torn ankle ligaments, season over. It was awful to watch. Posey's response was to tell fans to leave Cousins and his family alone, and the play ended up changing the sport: the rule against running over catchers that MLB adopted for 2014 is still called the Buster Posey Rule.

He came back in 2012 and had one of the best seasons a catcher has ever had. He caught Matt Cain's perfect game in June, made his first All Star team, hit .385 after the break, and finished at .336 with 24 homers and 103 RBIs. That was the best average in baseball and the first NL batting title for a catcher since Ernie Lombardi in 1942. He won the MVP, Comeback Player of the Year and the Hank Aaron Award, and in October he hit the grand slam in Cincinnati and the go ahead homer in the World Series clincher in Detroit.

In March 2013 the Giants gave him eight years and $167 million, the richest deal in franchise history. He caught Tim Lincecum's no hitter in San Diego that July. In 2014 he hit .311, and he and Madison Bumgarner hit grand slams in the same game, which had never happened for a battery before. That October we won a third title, and Posey became just the second player ever, after Pete Rose, with a Rookie of the Year, an MVP and three World Series rings.

The run of seasons after that was steady excellence. He caught Chris Heston's no hitter at Citi Field in 2015, won the Wilson Defensive Player of the Year award in 2015 and 2016, broke Yadier Molina's eight year hold on the NL Gold Glove at catcher in 2016, and kept making All Star teams. In the spring of 2017 he helped Team USA win its first World Baseball Classic, and that May he caught all 17 innings against the Reds and then won it with a walk off homer, the latest one in franchise history.

The hip finally caught up with him. A torn labrum ended his 2018 in August, and 2019 was the worst offensive year of his career, .257 with seven homers. He opted out of the shortened 2020 season, mostly because he and Kristen were adopting premature twin girls during the pandemic. A lot of people wondered if he was done.

He wasn't. In 2021 he homered on his first swing back, became the first Giant ever to catch 1,000 games, made his seventh All Star team, and hit .304 with an .889 OPS for a team that won a franchise record 107 games. He homered off Walker Buehler in Game 1 of the NLDS. We lost that series to the Dodgers in five, and on November 4 he retired at 34, still one of the best catchers alive. Nobody's ever hit higher in a final season as a catcher.

He's been running things ever since. He joined the ownership group in September 2022, took over as president of baseball operations on September 30, 2024, and on August 8, 2026 his plaque went up on the Giants Wall of Fame alongside Pablo Sandoval, Brandon Crawford, Brandon Belt and Joe Panik. He and Kristen also started the BP28 Foundation in 2016 to fight pediatric cancer.

Catchers don't get to be clutch the way sluggers do. Half their October is spent calling pitches, blocking dirt balls and keeping a 21 year old lefty calm. Posey did all of that, every inning of the 2010 postseason as a rookie, and then he kept coming up with the hit anyway.

Look at the swings. Last day of 2010, he homers in the eighth of a 3 to 0 win that clinches the division. Game 4 of the 2010 World Series, he homers off Darren O'Day to make it 4 to 0 behind Bumgarner. Game 5 of the 2012 NLDS, down two games to none in the series and facing elimination for the third straight night, he hits a grand slam off Mat Latos to make it 6 to 0. Game 4 of the 2012 World Series, the Giants down 2 to 1 in the sixth, he takes Max Scherzer out to left for the lead. That's four of the biggest swings in modern Giants history, from the same guy.

And the thing I always come back to is the face. Whether it was a 3 and 2 count with the season on the line or the last out of a perfect game, he looked exactly the same. Three rings before he turned 28. We were so lucky.