I was already a fan of former New York Yankees catcher Jorge Posada, when I read his son Jorge was born with craniosynostosis, a rare birth condition I share with him. The elder Posada and his wife Laura wrote The Beauty of Love, a wonderful book about the family’s journey. I wanted to interview young Jorge for years and the opportunity finally arose.
A grad student at Loyola Marymount University, Jorge is working on his Azure Eclipse film project. Even as a toddler dealing with CS, Jorge imagined the Azure Eclipse idea and has been developing, refining and adding to it ever since. Finally, he will see the first part come to fruition with the completion of the Azure Eclipse movie short. Envisioned as about a five-minute movie now, Jorge has bigger plans for his creation in the future. In our interview, Jorge discussed his ideas and even showed his folder and iPad full of notes and drawings over the years.
Seeing those bits of the origins of his idea was really cool. That kind of material could easily be formed into a book to accompany the film and the subsequent versions he will create in the future. I love seeing that type of history.
I’m going a bit out of turn here, though. The interview started with Jorge discussing his experiences with craniosynostosis. CS is a condition where at birth, there is a premature closing of the sutures in the baby’s skull. This creates dangerous pressure within the head, which can have many bad repercussions, including death. Fortunately, for Jorge and me, our CS was detected, corrected and monitored. Like me, Jorge has some residual effects, but basically we are both healthy happy folks.
This meant so much to me, because I never discussed this publicly, nor have I ever spoken to anyone with CS. Talking to Jorge, sharing our stories and reading The Beauty of Love has been a wonderful, but emotional, experience for me. Hopefully, others with CS will benefit, but anyone can get a lift from how positive, articulate and passionate Jorge is.
Photo courtesy of Atria Books
Jorge’s enthusiasm got kicked up a notch when we discussed his father’s Hall of Fame worthiness at the end of the interview. Papa Jorge played 17 seasons, collecting 1,664 hits, 1,065 RBIs, 900 runs and a .273 batting average. He was a 5x All-Star, 5x Silver Slugger award winner and a 4x World Series champ. Those sound like HOF numbers to me!
Like the Azure Eclipse project, Jorge’s story is really just beginning. I look forward to watching his career develop and the Azure Eclipse universe expanded.
