Closing Closing out out Jeter Jeter era era
Final games will bring an emotional end to Derek Jeter era
Baseball is our game with no clock. Theoretically, it can go on forever. But time catches up to all of us in the end, even Derek Jeter.
The last days of The Captain are upon us — three games at New York’s Yankee Stadium today, Wednesday and Thursday and three at Boston’s Fenway Park on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. And then, poof, he disappears.
Jeter’s devoted fans are savoring his long goodbye. Yankees fan Teddy Liouliakis was among the 48,110 who attended Derek Jeter Day at Yankee Stadium on Sept. 7, and he confessed he wept openly as Jeter was honored with a starstudded pregame ceremony that was somehow deeply emotional and stiffly formal all at once.
“I was bawling,” Liouliakis said. “It’s not only about Derek — a piece of my youth is retiring with him.”
There’s the rub. Jeter’s fans are mourning not just the end of a great career. They also are measuring their lives against his. Jeter broke into the big leagues at 20 and is retiring at 40. The math is easy. Liouliakis, 36, was a high school kid when Jeter joined the Yankees. Today Liouliakis is approaching middle age, and Jeter is there already.
Jeter clearly understands this dynamic. He took the microphone after all the introductions and proclamations of Derek Jeter Day and talked directly and plainly to his fans, making a small, playful joke about his age and theirs, like snapping a towel at a teammate.
“You guys have all watched me grow up over the last 20 years,” Jeter said. “I’ve watched you, too. Some of you guys are getting old, too.”
Jeter shifted his weight naturally as he spoke, conveying the sort of grace and ease that is so much the mark of his career, contrasting nicely with the rigid ritual that came before. And then he said, simply, it was time to play ball.
The stadium’s team store was packed during the game, which somehow seemed secondary to all the pinstriped pomp. Liouliakis lined up with other fans buying all manner of Jeter-nalia — the Yankees sell nostalgia as much as they do ballgames — to purchase a collector’s box containing three size-71⁄ fitted New Era caps, each of them honoring Jeter.
Cost: $125. Cheap, really, for a wearable way to cling to one’s youth.
Between innings all through the game, famous faces from baseball and the broader culture appeared on the video board and said nice things about Jeter, mostly some version of this: He played the game the way it was meant to be played. They were preaching to the choir. The faithful who nodded their assent believe that to their core.
Jeter, in their minds, is not merely a great ballplayer, though he has surely been that. He also exudes a sort of human decency that eludes too many sports stars these days.
“There’s so much in sports that people are fed up with, and here is a guy who seems as genuine as you want him to be,” New York
Post sports columnist Mike Vaccaro says. “It’s not easy to be the most recognized figure in New York for 20 years, almost, but he was able to take it in stride. He enjoyed the baseball part but also the life part. That speaks to a lot of people.”
People such as Vivian Villano, 56, who carried a large sign with a picture of Jeter that said “Derek Day” at the top and “Free Tissues” at the bottom, where she had taped a jumbo box of Kleenex. “They are free for the taking,” Villano said.
How many would she need for herself ? “All of them, really,” she said. “I’ve been crying since the day Derek announced he was leaving.”
NAME COMPROMISE
Robert Jacobs Sr., 63, and Robert Jacobs Jr., 30, attended Jeter’s last series in Baltimore. They got seats behind the Yankees dugout so they could savor their last looks at their forever shortstop.
The newest Robert Jacobs, who’s 3, wasn’t with them, but they’d made this pilgrimage for him, too. He is not Robert Jacobs III, because he does not share their middle name of Anthony. He is, instead, Robert Jeter Jacobs.
“I wanted to name him Derek Jeter Jacobs, but my wife threw that out the window,” Jacobs Jr. said. “We compromised on a middle name. That way my son would always know he was named for the stand-up hero of his generation.”
Besides, he said, this way his son carries his name, and his father’s, as well as Jeter’s — a win-win.
“And now, as it turns out, we actually call him Jeter,” his wife, Natalie Jacobs, said cheerfully by phone.
Now, all these years later, Jacobs Jr. carried a manila envelope. He slid out the sacred secret inside, his son’s birth certificate, which he’d brought to the ballpark in the vain hope he could get his hero to sign it.
The document, like a box score, tells only unembellished facts: Robert Jeter Jacobs, born Dec. 8, 2010, 3:06 p.m., Womack Army Medical Center, Fort Bragg, N.C.
Jacobs Jr. was a sergeant in the 82nd Airborne who served 15 months in Afghanistan. “I’m a wounded warrior,” he said. “I have post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic arthritis in my right ankle.”
Jacobs Jr. measures life in Jeter time, too. He was 10 when Jeter broke into the big leagues. So much has happened since.
“The towers fell,” he said. “And I went to war.”
FAVORITE SON
Huck and Tom are presumed drowned when they sneak into church to see their own funeral in
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Hardly any of us gets that chance, though athletes who have their own Days sort of do. That was the awkward part of Derek Jeter Day. They were burying his career before he was done with it.
Chairs on the infield were filled by family members and friends, like a wake. Michael Jordan was a surprise guest, validating Jeter’s place in the cultural firmament. Astronauts called in tributes from the actual firmament.
“The Yankees know how to throw a big ceremony,” Jeter would say afterward, in typical Jeter understatement.
Jeter is hitting an un-Jeter-like .255 in his swan-song season, including a desultory, weeks-long slump down the stretch. Still, his career numbers are what will ultimately be remembered: five World Series titles, seven American League pennants, 14 times an All- Star, 3,459 career hits, alltime playoff leader in games, hits and runs — and longest-tenured captain in Yankees history.
Jeter hit a homer on opening day in 1996, his first full season in the majors. Maybe he’ll swat another in his final game. Ted Williams famously hit a home run in his last at-bat at Fenway Park in 1960. Less remembered is that Williams skipped a three-game series at Yankee Stadium after that. Jeter has the opposite schedule; he finishes at Fenway. No one expects him to duck his duty. There’s a wonderful scene in
The Natural, Bernard Malamud’s mythic baseball novel, in which Roy Hobbs bashes a first pitch into a clock on the right-field wall at Ebbets Field and “the clock spattered minutes all over the place.”
There aren’t many minutes left for Jeter. Perhaps, like Hobbs, he can make time stand still. Perhaps, like Williams, he can offer a valedictory home run. Or perhaps, like a mere mortal, he’ll bow out by groundout.
The game with no clock measures time by its greatest stars. The Jeter Era is coming to a close. Yankees fans will serenade him with their familiar sing-song salute: “Der-ek Je-ter!” Bet on Bostonians to echo it.