Don’t expect sudden outburst of emotions

SOMETIMES, the moment moves them to grand, exceptional gestures. In 1966, Ted Williams stood in front of the Hall of Fame and said, “I hope that someday the names of Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson in some way could be added as a symbol of the great Negro players that are not here only because they were not given the chance.”

Five years later, with Williams’ words serving as the ignition, the Hall opened its doors to Paige as a full-fledged member.

Sometimes, the moment moves them to reveling in the sweetness of the day. Derek Jeter’s spiritual antecedent as Yankees shortstop, Phil Rizzuto, delivered a 29-minute valedictory in 1994 in which he spoke about baseball and also being seasick his entire time in the

Navy as well as his wife, Cora, who

“didn’t need a girdle” and was “pretty well built.”

Often, the moment overwhelms even men known as stoics on the playing field. Dennis Eckersley spoke of overcoming alcoholism. Mike Piazza’s voice broke several times. Randy Johnson, Frank Thomas, Ken Griffey Jr. — all paragons of fire and ice as players, all of them surrendering to the enormity of the instant.

Maybe that will happen Wednesday afternoon, sometime, after 1:30 p.m., on the steps of the Clark Sports Center, a mile and a half down the road from the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. Maybe, at last, there will be a moment too great for even Jeter to deflect, that moment when he is welcomed to the eternal corridor of immortals. That isn’t likely, though.

A day after falling one vote shy of unanimous induction in January 2020,

Jeter did seem to open the curtain to his feelings more than we’d ever seen since he became a regular part of baseball New York in 1996.

“It doesn’t get any better than this,” he’d said, in what passed for an emotional gush for him. “There’s no more awards, no other places you can go. This is it. This is as good as it gets.”

It was always a fundamental part of Jeter’s baseball DNA to remain wholly unimpressed by the scrapbook of forever snapshots that he acquired in his career. We would get the occasional fist pump. After huge home runs from teammates like Tino Martinez, Scott Brosius and Aaron Boone, Jeter would be the first to leap over the dugout railing, his smile as long as the 59th Street Bridge.

After his 3,000th hit, a home run off Tampa Bay’s David Price, he smiled and fell into the welcoming embrace of longtime teammate and pal Jorge Posada at home plate. And when he ended the Yankee Stadium portion of his career with a walk-off RBI single against the Orioles, he walked out to shortstop and knelt down in thanks and remembrance. So he wasn’t exactly a zombie.

But he also wouldn’t have done what he did if every time he seized a moment he celebrated it the way most of us would. This was always a point of conflict between Jeter and his family, who knew how fast his career would speed by, who begged him to do as Ferris Bueller once advised — stop and look around once in a while at his career, lest he miss it.

“My parents always told me to sit back and enjoy the moment, I was just never able to do it,” Jeter had said that day in early 2020. “I don’t know if that’s a character flaw or if it’s part of the reason why I’m here. It was always just what’s next, what’s next. If we won, I forgot about it and prepared to try to win the next season. If we lost, I forgot about it and tried to prepare for the next season.”

Jeter has other things occupying his time now in Miami, trying to turn the Marlins around. It has mostly kept him away from Yankee Stadium the past few years. If he ever wishes to have a commemorative reminder of all he means to that building, to that team, and especially those fans, all he needs to do, any time across the next 40 years, is take a step inside. The place thundered for Babe Ruth, it shook for Joe DiMaggio, it roared for Mickey Mantle. It’ll do a little of all of that for Jeter, whenever he wants. If he ever wants.

But he’s never much needed the praise. It allowed him to build that scrapbook, all of those snapshots. It delivered him to Cooperstown on Wednesday afternoon. Maybe such a moment is too big a deal for any man. Maybe there will be a crack or two in his voice, a dent in his composure. Maybe.

But it’s Derek Jeter who’ll be making that speech.

Expect it to go flawlessly. And perfectly.