Last week I talked about endings in sports — and lo and behold, the difficulty of endings reared its ugly head yet again this week.

I am, of course, talking about the cat fight between Jorge Posada and the New York Yankees on Saturday. As many of you loyal readers know, I grew up a Yankees fan, so the drama in the Bronx on Saturday, when Posada refused to play for the Yankees when he was slotted in the No. 9 spot in the lineup, has been chief on my mind ever since. (Some of you might not care about Posada or the Yankees, but I would venture a guess that the Yankees have more fans at Stanford than any baseball team other than the San Francisco Giants — this would be great information to collect, Department of Admission).

Posada’s frustration over his lackluster start to the season — he is hitting just .165, and the switch-hitter is hitless from the right side of the plate — and his subsequent relegation to the bottom of the lineup is not just the a symbol of the waning of a former star’s career. Posada’s struggles, and his reaction to them, represent a crossroads for sports’ most-storied franchise.

In 2009, when the Yankees won their 27th World Series Championship, they were led by the so-called “core four”  — Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera. Just a year and a half later, Rivera is the only member of the group still performing well. Pettitte is retired, Posada was told to pack up his catcher’s gear in spring training and will only be a DH (a change he is clearly struggling with) and Jeter seems to have lost his ability to lift the ball — there have been loud calls for him to be dropped from the leadoff spot. One has to think that the 41-year-old Rivera will eventually slow down as well (but perhaps not).

The Yankees will always have the ability to spend money to bring in good players, but they won’t necessarily have the continuity and the leadership that the core four previously provided. Put more bluntly — there seems to be trouble in paradise.

Posada’s tantrum wasn’t the first noteworthy show of frustration. There were Jeter’s all-too-public contract negotiations last offseason. There have also been the calls for Jeter to move down in the lineup and questions as to why Posada was moved and not Jeter. The great Yankees teams of the ‘90s and ‘00s had their fair shares of internal drama, but I’m not sure there was anything as dramatic as the winding down of the careers of four Hall of Fame- or borderline Hall of Fame-caliber stars.

There are so many layers to this Posada rift, like the fact that Posada and manager Joe Girardi clearly weren’t on the same page when it came to Posada’s alleged back stiffness and general manager Brian Cashman’s midgame announcement of Posada’s insubordination. These are not the sorts of relationships and chasms that characterize a championship organization. Is a major overhaul coming? Perhaps.

The question of whether Posada would be forgiven, however, was quickly answered by Yankees fans before Sunday’s 7-5 loss to the rival Boston Red Sox. The fabled “Bleacher Creatures” included Posada, who was out of the starting lineup, in their game-opening roll call. Still, if Posada continues to struggle at the plate, he will have no way to help the Yankee team, even though he is making $13 million this season. He doesn’t play defense anymore, and when he is on base, he clogs up the base paths. This situation may have come to a head Saturday, but it could get downright ugly if things get worse.

Maybe this is all an overreaction. Maybe if the Yankees hadn’t entered Sunday’s game having lost eight of their last 11, this wouldn’t be a big deal. History says Posada and Jeter will begin to hit better than they have, and Jeter has already shown some signs of life. The Yankees’ issues extend beyond Posada, but if they are going to continue to compete for World Series titles, then the elder statesmen like Posada can’t be involving themselves in little spats like Saturday’s.

Daniel Bohm has a history of “little spats” when the sandwich artists at Subway don’t arrange his cheese the way he likes. Discuss the perfect sub with him at [email protected].