Say hey for Jeter
Home run power isn’t usually a big topic in discussions about Derek Jeter’s career accomplishments, but it was Friday night when he went deep in the fifth inning of the Yanks’ 6-4 comeback win over the Red Sox. The drive down the left field line tied the game at 4 and gave the Yankee captain 250 homers for his career.
Jeter now has 16 seasons with 10 or more home runs and became the 10th Yankee to hit 10 or more this season. The only other time the Yanks had 10 players reach double figures in home runs was when they rolled to a championship in 1998.
“I always hear all the time I don’t hit home runs, but in my mind it’s a lot of them,” Jeter said. “It’s something I am happy with. I try to be consistent each and every year and do my job. Like I’ve always said, if you do it long enough, good things happen. I can think it’s a big number, and other people might not, but for me it’s a lot of them.”
Jeter and Willie Mays are the only players in baseball history with 3,000 hits, 250 home runs, 300 stolen bases and 1,200 RBI.
“He’s an amazing player,” Joe Girardi said, remarking how at 38 Jeter has been productive playing 15 days in a row.
Never one to obsess about reaching a big number, Jeter had been aware he was near a milestone home run since Tuesday when Nick Swisher hit the 200th of his career.
“Swish was bragging about getting 200,” Jeter said with a smile, “and I told him ‘You’ve still got a little ways to go to catch me.’ ”
WRIST PAINS TEIXEIRA
On the same night the Yankees got Robinson Cano back in the lineup after a two-game absence with a stiff neck, they lost Mark Teixeira with a recurrence of his left wrist pain.
“(Teixeira) is sore again,” Girardi said. “It’s something he’s been battling since he hurt it the first time, and it got to the point where we have to give him some time off again. I don’t think it’s a long-term problem, but we’ve just got to get through this.”
Teixeira originally injured the left wrist on July 29 against Boston while taking a swing and aggravated it the next night while diving for a ground ball against the Orioles. Girardi said Teixeira could miss Saturday’s game as well. Nick Swisher started at first base. “It’s probably time to give it a rest anyway, and it being little sore, it just makes sense to take a day or two off,” Teixeira said. “So we’ll see how long it takes.”
Teixeira said the pain is more the result of constant playing and not of a single at-bat or play. He said he doesn’t think he’ll need another cortisone shot and hopes the pain doesn’t linger for the remainder of the season.
“It’s the same thing I had two weeks ago, but here we’ve played 14 days straight, so it’s gotten sore the last few days and we want to give it a day or two to calm down,” Teixeira said.