Derek Jeter
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Mar. 27, 2023, 1:39 AM ET (AP)
Top prospect Volpe, 21, wins Yankees' starting shortstop job
Anthony Volpe grew up watching Derek Jeter star at shortstop for the New York Yankees
Derek Jeter, in full Derek Sanderson Jeter, (born June 26, 1974, Pequannock, New Jersey, U. S.), American professional baseball player who, as a shortstop for the New York Yankees of Major League Baseball (MLB), was selected to multiple American League (AL) All-Star teams and was one of the most popular players of his time.
Jeter grew up in Michigan and started playing Little League baseball when he was about five years old. After an impressive high school baseball record, including a .557 batting average in his junior year, he was drafted as a first-round pick in 1992 by the Yankees. He started at the minor league Class A Tampa Yankees and did poorly, with 21 errors in 58 games. Over the next few years, Jeter improved and was named Most Outstanding Major League Prospect by the South Atlantic League in 1993 and Minor League Player of the Year by Baseball America in 1994.
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In 1996 Jeter became the starting shortstop for the Yankees. In his first season he carried a batting average of .
314 and had 78 runs batted in (RBIs). He was named AL Rookie of the Year, and the Yankees won the World Series against the Atlanta Braves. In 1998 the Yankees had another World Series victory, this time against the San Diego Padres. The Yankees again beat the Braves in the World Series in 1999, and Jeter acquired a reputation as one of the premier postseason hitters in baseball after posting a combined batting average of .375 in the Yankees’ three play-off series. In 2000 Jeter was named Most Valuable Player (MVP) of the All-Star Game and the World Series, as the Yankees defeated the New York Mets to become the first team to win three consecutive World Series since 1974.
From 2004 to 2006 Jeter won three consecutive AL Gold Glove awards as the best-fielding shortstop in the league. He also won the AL Hank Aaron Award (for best overall hitter) and the AL Silver Slugger Award (for best offense at a position) in 2006, a season in which he finished second in the balloting for AL MVP. In 2009 Jeter recorded his 2,674th career hit, breaking the record for the most hits by a shortstop in major league history.
The Yankees ended the 2009 season with a victory over the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series. On July 9, 2011, Jeter registered his 3,000th career hit, becoming just the 28th player to reach that mark.
His play had fallen off in the 2010 and 2011 seasons, but he rebounded to bat .316 and tally a league-leading 216 hits in 2012. However, his season came to a premature end when he fractured his ankle in game one of the AL Championship Series (ALCS) and missed the remainder of the Yankees’ postseason (which ended with a loss in the ALCS) as well as all but 17 games of the 2013 season. Jeter announced before the 2014 season that it would be his last, and he retired in September of that year with the sixth highest hit total (3,464) in major league history.
Jeter was part of an ownership group that purchased the Miami Marlins in 2017, and he became the franchise’s CEO. Over the next four seasons, the Marlins posted losing records, except in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.
That year Miami advanced to the division series, where it was swept in three games. In 2022 Jeter stepped down as CEO, and he also severed financial ties with the team.
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In 2020 Jeter was elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, coming just one vote shy of unanimous induction.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.
All good things must come to an end, and that includes Derek Jeter and his Hall of Fame career.
Even in the many, many years that the New York Yankees didn’t win the World Series under his watch, Derek Jeter’s retirement didn’t seem real.
He defied age for so long that fans just kind of assumed he would play well into his forties. Even in 2012, his age-38 season, Jeter hit .316 and led the majors in hits while also finishing seventh in MVP voting.
That all came crashing down in Game 1 of the ALCS against the Detroit Tigers. After battling back to force extra innings and now trailing in the 12th inning, Jeter went to field Jhonny Peralta’s groundball, but fell down in agony. He was helped off the field and later diagnosed with a broken ankle. The Yankees lost the game and the series.
Setback after setback meant Derek Jeter played just 17 games in 2013. Without their captain, the Yankees missed the playoffs for the first time since 1993. Legends Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte retired at the end of the year. The Jeter Dynasty and everyone who helped build it were now in the rearview mirror.
It became fully official in February. Following the 2014 season, Derek Jeter would retire from baseball. Approaching age 40, it was time to walk away.
But not without an epic curtain call.
The Derek Jeter Farewell Tour
No New York Yankees fan fondly remembers the 2014 season. It wasn’t just because Derek Jeter was retiring at the end. Homegrown favorite Robinson Cano demanded a 10-year deal in free agency and got his wish…from the Seattle Mariners. In response, New York overspent on guys like Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann, and Carlos Beltran.
Instead of getting the Yankees back to the playoffs, it was more of the same. Underachieving. Underperforming. Disappointment.
In the middle of it all, whenever New York was on the road, Jeter would get his own little send-off for his final trip to this particular city.
The gestures were nice, albeit semi-infuriating.
Think about it. “Hey, Derek, we know you’re retiring after this year and your team is underperforming and in danger of missing the playoffs two years in a row. Here’s some custom commemorative art to go with a donation to your charity!”
Things didn’t improve. The Yankees played .500 ball for most of the year and managed to stay in the race before being formally eliminated in September.
September 25, 2014. It was finally time and the fans had their tissues ready. Facing the Baltimore Orioles, Derek Jeter would play his final game in Yankee Stadium.
An instant classic
Baltimore already had the AL East clinched, but still played hard.
Just ask starter Hiroki Kuroda, who gave up back-to-back home runs to Nick Markakis and Alejandro De Aza to start the game.
But as the Orioles played well, so did the Yankees. New York got both runs back in the bottom of the first. Almost fittingly, Derek Jeter got it started when his double scored Brett Gardner. Jeter would later score when McCann reached on an error.
Later, the team would small-ball its way to a 5-2 lead in the seventh inning. It was looking like Derek Jeter would soon say goodbye to a sold out crowd in the Bronx, albeit in an anticlimactic manner.
Lucky for everyone involved, David Robertson blew the save in the ninth. Going into the bottom half, we were tied 5-5. Jeter was due up second.
An emotional goodbye
Because ticket prices were through the roof, I sadly couldn’t witness the Yankee captain saying goodbye in person.
I thus figured I’d watch his last game the same way I did Rivera’s, on my couch and sobbing into a large pepperoni from Ray’s Pizza.
Things changed when my parents invited my then-fianceé (now wife) and I over for dinner. Not one to turn down free food, we graciously accepted while establishing the game would be on.
And it was a really bittersweet moment too. Besides Derek Jeter, which New York Yankees shortstops had I known? Tony Fernandez, the switch-hitting journeyman who was his immediate predecessor. Diminutive and light-hitting Mike Gallego, who never stayed consistent enough to be a regular starter. Randy Velarde, the original super-utilityman who preceded Ben Zobrist by almost 20 years.
This wasn’t just the end of Derek Jeter the player, but practically mine and a bunch of other young fans’ childhoods. Our cool big brother/uncle was finally hanging them up to do something we’d never witnessed: live their life and not be a professional baseball player.
Jose Pirela singled to left off of Evan Meek to start the bottom of the ninth. Speedster Antoan Richardson pinch-ran and moved to second on Brett Gardner’s sacrifice bunt. Jeter’s 20-year career was about to come to a head, and we all began to get misty-eyed.
“Now batting for the Yankees, number 2, Derek Jeter,” boomed the voice of the late, great Bob Sheppard over Yankee Stadium’s PA system. “Number 2.”
The chants of “DE-REK JE-TER” and the ensuing claps had been deafening all night. Just a couple of innings ago, with Jeter in the field, even the usually stoic captain appeared to hold back tears. He stepped into the batter’s box, Meek entered his windup, the game on the line.
86 miles per hour up in the zone, perfect for Jeter’s signature inside-out swing. He laced the ball through the hole on the right side as the crowd officially exploded.
“Base hit to right field!” shouted Michael Kay on the YES broadcast. “Here comes Richardson. Here’s the throw from Markakis. Richardson is safe! Derek Jeter ends his final game with a walk-off single! Derek Jeter, where fantasy becomes reality! Did you have any doubt?”
His teammates mobbed him at second base. I fell off my parents’ living room couch, sobbing in a crumpled heap while shouting, “He did it!” over and over again.
New York celebrates
The celebrations continued. Waiting at home plate were some key people from Derek Jeter’s past. Joe Torre, the Hall of Fame manager who guided Jeter through his early years and to four World Series rings. Pettitte and Rivera were joined by Tino Martinez, Jorge Posada, and Bernie Williams, proving the Core Four was really the Core Five or Six all along.
Even Gerald Williams was there, having stayed great friends with Jeter despite being traded midway through the 1996 season.
“You guys dressed up, huh?” Jeter joked, hugging the latter Williams. It was the last thing to do before doing what no one wanted: Derek Jeter saying goodbye. He took his lap around the field, tipping his cap and saluting the crowd as Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” blasted.
A .310 lifetime batting average. 3,465 career hits, sixth all-time in MLB history. Five World Series rings. 14 All-Star selections. Even as he did his on-field interview after making his rounds, Jeter stayed humble, insisting he was only doing a job. He even congratulated Baltimore for making the playoffs before ending on a perfect note.
“What are you going to miss most about this uniform and this place?” asked YES correspondent Meredith Marakovits.
“Everything,” said Jeter. “But most of all, I’m going to miss the fans. They’re what made this special.”
A perfect finish to, in the opinions of some, a perfect career.
I hesitated to write about Derek for a long time.
Mainly due to the fact that the number of pathetic texts about the Captain is off scale. And there will be more and more of them, texts, with every moment of parting.
Reason number two - Derek is not my hero. Just as Mariano Rivera was not my hero.
He couldn't be my childhood hero because there was no baseball in my childhood. There was only football in my childhood, and Rinat Dasaev was in it. So he was the true favorite football player of childhood.
Derek couldn't be my hero in any sport other than football. This throne has long been occupied by Michael Jordan.
Michael taught me two things. First, everything is possible. Second, if you can't change something, change your attitude towards it.
Armed with my love for Michael Jordan, I managed to love Kobe Bryant too. Instead of spitting poison on Kobe, I got hope for a miracle. Phil Jackson is a witness to this - a miracle happened more often than a failure. As a result, Michael Jordan saved me a lot of nerves.
Along the way, I fell in love with the Lakers, who have been with Phil, my favorite coach for too long, and Kobe, my second most loved basketball player after Jordan. And the Lakers are only one step away from the true evil empire of American sports - the Yankees.
The phenomenon of New York's most successful team is the most intriguing thing about the Yankees. New York chewed and spit out the baseball Giants and Dodgers, brought the Mets to near bankruptcy, kept the Knicks and Rangers from becoming successful, the football Jets and Giants for years. And only the Yanks have always found their way to the championship in a city where there is too much of everything except the sport itself.
With an interest in the Yanks, the idols of this team also migrated to me.
The Big Four are Jeter, Rivera, Petit and Posada. I have nothing to say about any of them. Yes, these are great players, but their formation and flourishing passed without me. I saw only the sunset of this era. I can’t squeeze out something personal about the departure of each of them. It was personal when, for example, Batistuta or Romario left (we remember that in childhood there was only football).
So after finishing this long lyrical introduction, I'll tell you the following with my eyes, unclouded by love for Derek.
Derek is not the offensive genius that Alex Rodriguez once was. And he is not at all a defensive miracle, which was, for example, Omar Viskel. Jeter might not even be the best shortstop in the game. He is rather somewhere behind the backs of Honus Wagner and Kal Ripken.
Derek is by no means the best batter in Yankee history. The maximum that he is in the top five is after Babe, Lou, Joe and Mickey.
Derek's true greatness is not measured by statistics or submetrics.
There is no need to look for Jeter's greatness in the number of hits and home runs, in percentages, and even try to justify them with the main postulates of the submeterists' faith (there is only WAR and wOBA, and everything else is from the evil one).
Derek's greatness is not only in his charisma, in his ability to be a leader, in his ability to lead a team. The same Thurman Munson was an even more successful captain-leader. With him as captain, the Yanks won two World Series and lost one. With Derek as captain, the Yankees won only one, but lost both the 2003 World Series and the 2004 Series to Boston. Before captaining, Derek had won four World Series in five attempts.
Derek's true greatness lies in his ability to be the first man in the Yankees for a long time, in his ability to be the main man in the main New York team for almost two decades. On the team that ate more baseball stars than any other. In a city that has swallowed, destroyed, and broken more stars than any other.
Derek's career is a hymn to how a person can be himself, without breaking or bending under the weight of scrutiny, criticism and failure. The story of Derek Jeter is the story of how a man became exceptional in sports, not because of his crazy talent. This is the phenomenon of Derek Jeter, the uncrowned king of the Yankees. The king the team hasn't had for so long.
My main personal hope for the Big Four is that things will happen to them that Jordan and Pippen didn't. The great duo of the great Chicago. As a child, it seemed that even in retirement they should live side by side, visit each other and remember the victorious times. As it turned out, this couple is not even friends. What if the big four Yanks could remain friends, even when they no longer share the goal of winning the World Series. Naive, but honest...
PS
Derek experienced for the first time in his career that baseball had become a job, not a pleasure. Derek Jeter will start preseason for the first time in his career with a team that does not include River, Petit, or Posada.
Derek is 40 years old and will have played 20 years in MLB by the end of next season. It's time to leave.
The best and most rewarding thing Derek could do at this point in his career for himself, his legacy and his team, was to decide to end it. Now everyone is happy. And the Yankees, who received a second farewell mega tour in two years, and Derek, who deserved such a year, the crown of his career.
PS2
The main problem is that the Yanks have a pronounced generation gap. Who will be the next team captain? Who will be the next face of the Yanks? Could become Kano, although there are big doubts about his leadership qualities. Remember the style of play Roby, who always found the opportunity to be lazy on the field. It is possible that this was precisely the reason that the Yanks did not fight for him to the last. Remember the gray hopelessness of the first summer month, when Roby had everything in parallel.
With the departure of Derek, the team will have a void - there will not be a single better in it who would have made his way from the minor system to the main team and would be worthy of the title of captain.
Bret Gardner doesn't even come close to the role. McCann or Tex are good candidates, but they came to this team from the outside.
PS3
To complete the Yanks idyll, all that remains is to spend the 2015 season saying goodbye to Ichiro, and then A-Rod and Beltran will catch up ...
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Days before Derek Jeter hit his 3000th career hit, I wrote a 3000 word essay about his legacy and influence on the game. It formed the basis of this story.
Derek Jeter is not remembered for having 3000 hits. No one from this club is remembered for the number itself, with the possible exception of Roberto Clemente, who hit exactly 3,000 hits before dying while delivering aid to the victims of the earthquake in Nicaragua. This number is forever associated with him, although Clemente certainly gave more reasons to remember it than 3000 hits.
This includes all 32 men who have hit the ball 3,000 times in their careers. All of them were remembered for something big, intuitively evoking memories. Ripken's tenacity, which he showed day after day. Ricky eluding someone who is trying to trap him. Mace's flying cap. Yaz stand. Musial coming out of the box. Aaron's modest run after hitting a home run. Rose flying head first. Ichiro signature chop. Sharpened Cobb spikes. Beltre's annoyance when someone touched his head...
Jeter is also remembered for more than 3000 hits. He is remembered for the moments. Lots of moments. I believe he is the most viewed player in baseball history. What I mean? Baseball used to be shrouded in mystery. How many people across America have seen Tris Speaker play? Stan Musial? Frank Robinson? Rhoda Carew? Even George Brett, Dave Winfield or Lou Brock rarely appeared on TV screens; they were mostly names on scorecards, often shortened to Mus'l or R'bnsn. They were grainy black-and-white photographs in local papers.
They were static images on the Game of the Week show.
Now we can watch any game, any highlight, whenever we want. We can watch games in high definition, and high definition can look brighter than reality. Derek Jeter came into a game that left no room for imagination. He personified her. He was everywhere and always, all his superpowers and shortcomings were exaggerated and enhanced beyond measure.
Jeter was the lead guitarist in the most indomitable baseball rock band of his era. In the playoffs, he batted 734 times, a full season of October games and a league record. His shot knocking out Jeremy Giambi at home; stunt jump to the stands; November home run; jump shot; hitting right field are all among the most famous baseball looks of our time, making them the most famous baseball looks in history.
But that's not all. We saw how he looks warming up before going to bat, how he ran onto the field, how he sat on the bench in dugout. We know the models he dated. We know quotes from his interviews by heart (although most of them are hardly worth memorizing - "We win as a team", "We lose as a team", Jeter spoke often, but, in fact, did not say anything).
We can close our eyes and imagine everything he did on the pitch.
No, Derek Jeter won't be remembered for 3000 hits. There are too many other reasons.
And yes, I still think 3000 hit points defines a Jeeter. It was the work of his whole life.
What does 3000 hits even mean? It's just a number, not too different from 2994 or 3003. And the word "hits" is so vague. What are the hits? They can be singles, doubles, triples, home runs - and they're not that different from each other. Eddie Collins had 32 more hits than Willie Mays, but do you think they were similar hitters? Mace earned about 1,800 more bases, even with fewer hits.
"Hits" is just as indefinite a noun as, say, "cars". Here are two people who own a hundred cars. One could be Jay Leno. The other is a dealer in a junkyard.
Reaching 3000 hit points is essential. It matters. Three thousand hits means 200 hits a year for fifteen years. That means 175 hits every season from age 23 to age 40.
That means 150 hits a year for two decades.
Three thousand hits is a relentless climb on cold spring days, sweltering summer evenings, endless rain delays and 12-game away streaks. Three thousand hits is a daily battle between a hard-throwing guy who isn't sure where the ball will go, with a funny reliever who hides the ball for as long as he can as if he doesn't want to let it go, with a veteran who no longer has anything, apart from knowing the batter's weak points, and with a dominant pitcher in his prime throwing fireballs.
In some odd quirk of the baseball calendar, the dominant pitcher seems to be hitting the mound more often than he should.
Three thousand hits is a daily struggle against odds, elusive sliders, diving fielders and umpires ready to send you out for a kervball flying an inch or two over home plate.
Three thousand hits is a lifetime. That means hitting when you're young and green, hitting when you're at your peak and the pitchers know your weaknesses, hitting when you can't react to a fastball anymore.
To reach 3,000 hits, a batter must overcome countless slumps, injuries, and caught lane drives. The batter has to overcome pitched balls fading into the shadows, managers who want to know why you haven't batted in the last two days, coaches who tell you to rest more, statisticians who think you only got to first base because of an infielder's mistake.
This goes on every day, week, month, every summer. You will not be able to win throughout your career. There will always be another match, another season, another changeup that will fool you, make you swing the bat ahead of time. There will always be tomorrow.
But for the few who reach 3,000 hits, this is like a final victory. This cannot be achieved by luck. It's impossible to fake it. One successful series or dozens of such series will not lead to this result. All players who reach 3000 hit points are linked to each other. They came back again and again when their partners stopped, long after it became pointless to continue.
This is a real club, more than 500 home runs or 300 wins. Those 28 batters who hit 500 home runs aren't a club, they're a bunch of people who happened to be at the same party. What, after all, do Reggie and Killebrew have in common? How hard does Mr. Cub have to squint to see Manny Ramirez in the mirror? Eddie Murray and Mark McGwire were the first basemen - this is where the comparison starts and ends.
The 300 Victory Club is not a club either. Pitching has changed. Pitchers have changed. The careers of Nolan Ryan, Warren Spahn, Walter Johnson, Randy Johnson and Phil Nycro would not recognize each other if they met in a bar.
But there is only one way to reach 3000 hit points - every day to take one more small step towards the goal. Pete Rose has said that he likes to hit four hits in a game because it means he has a chance to hit five. Mace and Musial played baseball with the same emotion. Aaron, Yaz and Al Kaylaine - with the same goal. Boggs, Gwynn and Carew were outstanding craftsmen.
George Brett said that each of his games was accompanied by one fear - the fear of failure, shame, disappointment of his father. So did Clemente and Ripken. Not all players who reach 3000 hit points are the same, but they do have some common traits. They took every swing of the bat seriously. There is no other way to hit 3000 hit points.
They were, for want of a better word, always "present".
And I would say that there has never been a more “present” player in the history of baseball than Derek Jeter.
Jeters are wildly overrated. But Jeter is also wildly underestimated. No other player in history has been so praised for playing defense with so little evidence of it. On the other hand, no five-time Golden Glove winner has been so heavily criticized for being a disaster on defense.
Detractors argue that if Jeter wasn't a player of the hyped Yankees, he would be nothing. “Imagine,” they say, “what people would say about Jeter if he spent his entire career with Minnesota.
If that's true, then it's also fair to say that few of the players were voters in the League's MVP poll. He could have received this award in 1998, 1999, 2006, perhaps even in 2009. But he didn't win a single one. Where was the advantage of playing with the Yankees then?
Jeter's legend is that he led his team to victory with the help of intangible abilities - courage, will, leadership. This leaves critics grumbling that his best qualities must be taken for granted.
But Jeter's career is by no means intangible. He created more runs than any other shortstop, including Honus Wagner. He also scored more runs, hit more hits and hit base more times than any other shortstop in history.
There is a reason for this clash of opinions: Jeter was impossible to ignore. He tried very hard to remain neutral. He spoke many pleasant and empty words. He carefully created his image. He kept the divisions within the team at bay. And yet he evoked opposing emotions, both in his favor and against him.
When Jeter took to the field, in any stadium in America, many different sounds and shouts could be heard from the stands. But there was never silence.
I think this brings us back to the original question of how to become viewed : Jeter has been consistently "present" for twenty years. I like the word "presence". It can mean "a state or fact of existence". That's why kids say "present" when their name is called during an attendance check (at least that was the case in the old Little House on the Prairie episodes). Jeter was exactly that "present"... he played in 145 or more games in 16 seasons - one more than Cal Ripken. Ten times in his career, he went to the bat at least 700 times. Only Pete Rose has more seasons with 700 PA. The most underestimated quality in sports is player accessibility. Jeter was always available.
There is another definition of "presence": "the impressive manner or appearance of a person."
And this is also about Jeeter. He never changed.
He was always, until the very end, focused, concentrated, ready. If you watched him play in April 1998, June 2009, July 2012 or August 2000, you always saw the same guy.
Of the 2,747 regular season games he played, he hit at least one hit in 2,114. He had several hits in over 1,000 matches. He was always at the top of the lineup, always went into the shortstop position, always calmly spoke in hackneyed phrases that were then covered in the newspapers, and never rocked the boat. Was Derek Jeter the best player of his era? No. Was he the most stubborn, the most enduring, easily liked and just as easily disliked, easily praised and at the same time aroused cynical criticism? I don't even know who could be second on this list.
That's why I think Jeter represents 3000 hits like no other. How to get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice and more practice. And how to reach 3000 hits? Blow after blow. Eight times Derek Jeter hit 200 hits in a season. No other shortstop has played more than four such seasons.
Twelve times his batting rate was over 30%, more than Clemente or Brett.
And these were not just hits. Jeter hit double-figure home runs sixteen times, again a record for a shortstop. Jeter stole double-digit bases seventeen times, a record for a shortstop. Jeter scored at least 100 runs thirteen times, a record for a shortstop.
But the hits tell his story best: Jeter was unstoppable and relentless. We won't be able to remember all his hits. But we can remember that there were more than 3,000.
Jeter hit the 3000th hit of his career on July 9, 2011, a warm and sunny day at Yankee Stadium. He entered the game, without two hits to the coveted mark. In the first inning, he hit the number 2999 hit, a weak groundball from David Price's serve that somehow rolled through the infield. However, as baseball players say, a hit is a hit.
Jeter's pursuit of 3000 was significantly different from other such episodes because he was a Yankees player. When Adrian Beltre knocked out his anniversary hit, this event, as it were, crept up unnoticed by all of America.
This is basically what happens. But in the case of Jeter, it all started back in 2009, when his single hit number 2722. This blow allowed him to pass Lou Gehrig and become the leader of the Yankees of all time in their number.
For a team with a history like the Yankees, not having a representative on the club was a rare omission. So for two years everyone was waiting. Everyone was getting ready. In 2010, Jeter played his first season below average (although he still won the Golden Trap and made it to the All-Star Game), and he played in 2011 as well. But at least 3,000 hits were on the way.
Finally it happened. At exactly 2:00 p.m., with the fans on edge, Price threw a 78-mile kervball. Jeter needed a fastball, but the ball hung in the air like the moon over Miami. And he did what even his most ardent fans found difficult to accomplish: he crushed that ball. It's been two months since Jeter last hit a home run. He started abruptly from boxing, ran as fast as he could, because he did not expect the ball to go over the fence.
At that time, he no longer fully trusted his strength.
But the ball flew into the stands.
And then… madness. The Yankees were out of the dugout. Tampa's infielders cheered languidly. Christian Lopez, a 23-year-old man who was given a ticket to the game by his girlfriend, fell on the ball in the stands behind the left side of the field. The roar at the new Yankee Stadium was just as loud as the old one when Jeter hit his famous November home run in a 2001 World Series game. He quickly ran around the bases, and when he touched the home plate, he landed in a bear hug from Jorge Posada. He became the fourteenth player to score 3,000 hits on the same team. He became the second to hit a home run. He became the first to do so with the Yankees.
But, oddly enough, that home run was not remembered from that day. Not his 3000th hit. Because in the next outing, Jeeter hit a double down the left side of the field. Then there was a right liner, his favorite type of hit, that landed a single followed by a stolen base.
The fifth time he hit a groundball in the middle, which brought another single. Five out of five.
It was Derek Jeter, relentless to the end, continuing to hit hits when there was nothing left to prove.
Jeter wanted to keep playing more. For most players at the club, hitting 3,000 is the pinnacle of a career. But a year after his anniversary hit, Jeeter began to increase strength training, switched to a different training regimen, and found a second youth. He led the league with 216 hits. Its efficiency on the beat was 31.6%. He finished seventh in the race for the MVP title. He wanted to play forever.
But this is not given to anyone. Injuries and age took their toll. In 2014, when he was already 40, Jeter became a substitute in an aged and tired team. It is impossible to write the ending that you would like yourself.
It's a tradition in Yankee Stadium that when a game starts, a group of fans start chanting the names of the players on the field until they answer.
Some baseball players have their own rituals. They beat their chests, flex their muscles, or wave their arms gleefully, as people used to wave to the crowd when sailing from the shore in a huge ship.
Jeter also had a ritual, with the prefix "anti". As soon as the stands started chanting his name (before they even got to "errr"), he extended his hand with a trap towards the fans. Enough. Thank you. He did it without looking, automatically, without looking away from the batter. It seemed perfect to me. Jeter greeted the fans without looking up from the game. He seemed to say: "I hear you, I love you, but now I'm working."
That's what he's been doing all these years. Have worked.
One of his partners once said that what makes Jeter special is not that he is special, but that he always remains the same recognizable guy, Tuesday in Texas, Wednesday in Chicago, in the seventh game of the World Series.
Of course, this seems impossible. We all have good and bad days, happy and grumpy moods, black streaks in life.
