HE MATTERED!
Here’s what should go on Derek Jeter’s Hall of Fame plaque:
Derek Jeter, whom the Hall of Fame officially welcomes now as a most honored guest, isn’t the best ballplayer the Yankees ever had, and everybody knows that. He wasn’t Ruth or Gehrig or DiMaggio or Mickey Mantle, the most beloved Yankee of them all, even more loved than Yogi. Maybe the most telling stat about Jeter is that he ended up with more singles than any Yankee in history. So just as a hitter, it’s as if he got to Cooperstown, and this moment, one knock at a time.
But when you add it all up with Jeter, the longevity at shortstop and the 3,465 hits — most any Yankee ever had — and the winning he did and the quiet grace with which he went about his business, that grace making him the DiMaggio of his time, you must understand something about him:
No Yankee seemed to matter more than he did, all the way back to The Babe, the one who really invented the New York Yankees.
Jeter mattered because he came along at a time when the Yankees mattered again, even more than Reggie did when he hit town and began hitting home runs. Other Yankees won more, you bet. No one ever thrilled Yankee fans more than Mickey did, or got deeper into their hearts. But the Yankees hadn’t won a
World Series for nearly 18 years the day Jeter ran out to shortstop in Cleveland in 1996 and, of course, hit a home run. But everything began to change that day, with him at short and Joe Torre in the dugout and Bernie in center and Mo Rivera out in the bullpen and a big left-hander named Andy Pettitte, who had more than a little Whitey Ford in him, starting every five days.
Jeter, though, would become the star of them all, and the captain of the team. Say it again as he gets to Cooperstown, at last, waiting an extra year because of the COVID summer of baseball in 2020:
No. 2 was the one. Absolutely he has the kind of numbers he has, all over the Yankee record book, because he lasted as long as he did, all the way through a ground ball single to right against the Orioles, the last hit he ever got for the Yankees, a hit that won his team one more game. No. 2 is No. 1 on the list of the Yankees with the most hits in their careers. Then comes Mr. Gehrig, who wore No. 4. Then Babe, No. 3. Then Mickey, who will be No. 7 forever. Jeter had one of those numbers on his back. And became one of those Yankees.
People who still talk about his lack of range at shortstop make you want to laugh. You know what Jeter’s range was: His range was from 1996 until September of 2014, that last season, when he still had enough ball in him to play 145 games. His range was the era when the Yankees did become the Yankees again, when they became the last dynasty we will ever see from the team that became the home office for baseball dynasties, and the home office for enduring excellence in American sports. One knock at a time. One win at a time. And, in that splendid time between 1996 and the Subway Series against the Mets, one parade at a time.
“There may be players who have more talent than you,” he famously said one time, and not just to me. “But there’s no excuse for anyone to work harder than you.”
People say, well, he was hardly ever the best all-around player on the field. You don’t measure what Jeter did, and what he meant, and not just to the Yankees, by talent alone, as he himself says. You look at the body of work with him. You look at the way he played the game, and the way he repped the Yankees, before you ever get to the moments he provided.
And, Lordy, were there moments. There was the ball he hit against the Orioles in October of 1996, the one that ended up in the glove of a kid named Jeffrey Maier reaching over the right-field wall. There was the night he face-planted himself, but good, into the stands on the third-base side to catch a foul ball against the Red Sox. There was The Flip to Jorge Posada that likely saved a Yankee postseason one night in Oakland. There was the magical day when he hit a home run off David Price to get to 3,000 hits, the same day, oh by the way, that he went 5-for-5. That’s the short list.
Then there was the night when he became Mr. November against the Diamondbacks, nearly seven weeks after Sept. 11, in the shadow of that in New York City, hitting a 10th-inning home run to win Game 4 for the Yankees and even the Series. Jeter, once again made for a moment like this, didn’t just make the old Stadium cheer that night. He made our wounded city cheer, with an uptown moment like that after what had happened and was still happening downtown. e mattered on that night as much as a Yankee ever had. He was not a giant of the game the way Ruth was, the brilliant, doomed figure that Gehrig was. He couldn’t play the game the way DiMaggio did. Again, no one will ever be loved the way Mickey was. They all did so much winning Yankee fans finally took it for granted. Jeter — and Torre’s Yankees — came along when the Yankee had forgotten how to win. Jeter was there, out at short, when they needed him. That’s why he mattered. And why he feels like the last of the line that began with Ruth and Gehrig.
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