DON’T FORGET, he missed the team picture this year. Derek Jeter, eating pasta at the Posadas, forgot the camera was scheduled to click at 4 and showed up at 4:20, the only known time in four years with the Yankees that the ever-elevated corners of his mouth were witnessed to droop.
He even wore that little grin while the Yankees and Mariners were dukin’ it out in Seattle. As Joe Girardi was getting tossed around in a scene that looked like a staff meeting called by the Boss during a losing streak, Jeter stood on the fringes, like a goalie, yukking it up with his good buddy A-Rod. It was enough to make Chad Curtis’ hair stand on end. We mean, even more than usual.
Curtis went way over the line when he told Jeter he “didn’t know how to play the game” of course, and remained an unconscionable jerk all the way up until he won Game 3 with a 10th-inning homer. Eureka! Curtis does know how to play the game himself. Maybe Derek Jeter is not perfect after all.
In fact, last night he was even seen talking to Jim Gray, the worst human being who ever lived, right before giving George Steinbrenner a champagne shower in the midst of an interview. “Now, he’s in big trouble,” laughed the Boss, who, sure as he breathes, will bide his time waiting for the opportunity to nail Jeter to the wall: At Cooperstown.
Meanwhile, the Yankees keep hammering down championships like mad carpenters. No. 25 of the Twentieth came last night to a less-than-cathartic roar by the expectant 56,752 at the House That Derek Will Rebuild. Only after everybody sobers up will one championship for every four years in a decade come to seem like an existence more charmed than that of the shortstop. But even the fabled Bronx Bombers have a ways to go to prove that.
“Derek might outdo Yogi before he is done,” said GM Brian Cashman. Berra won 11 in 14 years. This is now three in his first four seasons for Jeter. When he leaped into air at 11:22 last night, the triumph seemed as newsworthy as a report that Derek can get a date.
“I don’t think you ever take them for granted,” said Jeter in a voice that suggests the opposite. “This one was different because we were written off all year.”
Aha! Another fault! Derek Jeter can’t read, at least none of the writers around this town, the most bold of whom suggested that the Yankees might be a little more vulnerable than a year ago. Jeter, of course, was always excluded. The rest of us are happy with whatever we get out of the Crackerjack box. But the world is his oyster, and there’s a pearl in there every time.
Ever notice how balls, like the one Gerald Williams tagged in the middle in the sixth inning last night, always seem to bounce perfectly into his glove? Ever observe that when it doesn’t, Jeter never has to say he’s sorry?
Jeter botched a ball in the eighth inning of Game 5 in Boston that turned a 4-0 breeze into a sweatbox until Ramiro Mendoza was blessed with entrance into the shortstop’s bubble. In reality, The Red Sox were messing with cosmos that were perfectly aligned on June 26, 1974, the date of the blessed birth.
Jeter glides through life. Everybody else wears snowshoes, including the Braves, who accidentally happened into Jeter’s path in this series. Silly, them, they actually thought they had a chance until Brian Hunter botched a Game 1 bunt, parting waters for Jeter, who, we swore, came to the plate with flowing robes, took the donut ring off his staff, and directed a bases-loaded single into left.
The next night, Jeter played the knife, after Chuck Knoblauch had opened another game as the fork, tablesetting back-to-back hits that started a putaway rally in the very first inning. Last night, John Smoltz, cast as the false Messiah for keepers of Atlanta’s faith, was looking stubborn into the third, when Knoblauch bounced one through and Jeter took an 0-1 to right, setting up an inning that turned on Ryan Klesko’s botch of Tino Martinez’ ground ball.
The rest, save an uprising doomed to fail the day Mariano Rivera was conceived, was simply a matter of the Yankees just hanging around Jeter. He hit .353 for the Series, .375 for the playoffs with a team-high 29 total bases.
“I don’t think you ever expect to win every year,” he said. “You never take it for granted.” But at this stage, why wouldn’t he? This season Jeter hit .403 with runners in scoring position and two outs. He made all the plays, said all the right things, helped keep his sidekick Knoblauch from going postal and continued to be the greatest thing to come to this town since the deli.
There is something about him that suggests he is in Greater Hands and he may need some too, to fit all the rings before its over. Asked which of the ones he got so far he likes the best, Jeter shrugged. “They’re all different. Depends what else I’m wearing.”
We didn’t think it was possible to get any smoother than Derek Jeter, but the light shining down on this 25-year-old, continues to illuminate ways.