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Inside the visitor’s clubhouse at Ranger’s Ballpark, as the champagne had just begun to fly, Buster Posey broke from the scrum of bouncing, hollering teammates in their already-soaked “World Series Champions” T-shirts.
“Where’s Kristen?” he asked, scanning the room.
Told that family members had to stay outside, Posey pushed through the clubhouse door and into the wide concrete hallway, packed now with relatives and reporters, baseball officials and security guards.
“Kristen!” He called out. There she was, making her way through the crowd. They wrapped their arms around each other, then found a bench and sat knee to knee, smiling and talking, as if in a bubble.
“She’s my best friend,” Posey said, explaining why he bolted from the clubhouse to find his wife. “She’s as much a part of this as I am…It was really important to be able to share all the World Series excitement with her.”
Said Kristen, “I think of us as a team. With this lifestyle, we have to have each other’s backs.” Never has the couple’s partnership been more important, or put to a tougher test, than in the months since Posey’s season-ending injury.
Kristen still winces when she recalls the night of May 25th at AT&T Park: the Marlins’ runner barreling down the third-base line, her husband waiting for the throw, the moment of impact, Posey facedown, his hand pounding the dirt in pain.
“I had my hands on my head,” Kristen says. “I knew it was bad. He’s tough as nails; he gets banged up all the time. But when I saw him on the ground like that, I started crying and left my seat immediately to get down into the trainer’s room to see him.”
She didn’t stop crying until she saw him and could see for herself that he hadn’tinjured his head or neck. When they left the park at 1:30 that night, they knew Posey’s season was over. For the next week, no medication could blunt the pain. “I tried to make him confortable, but it was impossible to do,” Kristen says.
In the midst of Posey’s painful recovery, his mother, Traci, and Kristen had to pack up their multi-level rental house in Walnut Creek and move to a single-level house.
“It didn’t help through all this that I was pregnant (with twins) and wobbling around,” Kristen says.
And it didn’t help that Posey’s injury sparked a debate about who was to blame and wheter baseball should cahnge the rules to protect catchers.
“I tried not to read or watch too much in the media,” says Kristen, who averted her eyes every time the collision was replayed on television. “It wasn’t doing us any good to hear people say Buster was in a bad position and that’s why he got hurt.”
Posey admits he went through a period of anger, but it quickly passed.
“Kristen helps me keep things in persepective,” he says. “I think that has helped me through this whole process. I’m very appreciative and love what I do for a living, but there are more important things than baseball for me-my faith, my family.”
“It’s definitely hard not to play. I want to be out there. At the same time, I can look at it like this: I’m about to have my first two kids, and I’m happy that I’m going to be there for that.”
Kristen, who delivered Lee and Addison on August 14th, insists her husband keeps himself grounded. It’s just who he is.
“Its hard to imagine him ever being full of himself,” she says. “We don’t think of ourselves as special. A lot of people are really good at what they do, and Buster happens to be really good at baseball. We know what’s important. Yes, baseball means a lot to us, but it’s a game.”
The two grew up in the same Georgia town, worshipped at the same Methodist church and began dating when Posey mustered the courage to ask the beautiful and (in his mind) intimidating Kristen to the prom. Kristen played softball and has watched hundreds of baseball games. She’s an astute student of teh game, but she knows her husband needs her support more than her analysis.
“She’s the person I talk to every night after the game,” Posey says. “That’s big for me to have someone who listens and is on my side. As we all know, not everybody is always going to agree with you. Everybody on TV and radio has an opinion, and you try not to pay attention to it, but it’s almost impossible not to catch some of it. It’s nice to have her back me up 100%.”
“Sometimes, I think this lifestyle is tougher on her than on me. I always want her to know how much I appreciate the sacrifices she makes-the travel, being alone all the time, taking care of all the logistics.”
In early July, the couple ventured out to Napa, for their first dinner out since Spring Training. They’re homebodies who prefer evenings with their two dogs and some TV, uncomfortable with the attention that comes with Posey’s fame. On this night, they headed out with the scooter on which Posey rests his left knee.
“We get to the restaurant, and there are stairs,” Kristen says. “Buster gets off the scoots and is hopping from one step to the nest. And I’m trying to haul the scooter. We got to the top and looked at each other like, ‘We’re a pair, aren’t we?’ He’s got a broken leg and I’m 31 weeks pregnant with twins. We just had to laugh.

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