It is 25 years now since that first magical summer, when every corner of New York seemed to fall head over heels for the kid from Kalamazoo. Think about what that means. The first wave of Derek Jeter fans, 8 and 10 and 12 years old in 1996, are all in their 30s now, pushing 40, some even careening toward 50.
Back in the day, they were the Little League kids who, quite suddenly, all developed a similar quirk when they’d walk to the plate, half-heartedly asking for time from the umpire (even if that umpire was stationed behind the pitcher), crouching and waving their bats in sacred lockstep with the manner of No. 2 for the Yankees.
That batting stance dominated ballfields from Chappaqua to Cape May, from Bridgeport to Bridgehampton, from Montclair to Montauk Point. There were arguments and side deals and intense bargaining sessions over ownership of the sacred No. 2. Kids didn’t just want to imitate and emulate Jeter they wanted to BE Jeter.
Because why wouldn’t you?
The object of their obsessions is himself settling into a comfortable middle age, doing as many New Yorkers do, finding a next chapter in South Florida. By all accounts, the erstwhile gossip-page fixture who used to burn up the lad-mag charts is happy with his marriage to Hannah, and with being a father to Story and Bella, even as his new baseball team languishes in last place.
Those kids from 1996 who idolized and worshipped him have kids of their own now. They’ve retired to slow-pitch softball leagues. They play Wiffle ball with those kids. And every now and again …
“My son called me out the other day,” a 36-year-old teacher named Ken Flannery told me not long ago. “We were playing in the backyard and I involuntarily got into my Jeter stance as he’s getting ready to throw to me and the kid – he’s 10, and he misses nothing – said, ‘Dad, I know who you’re trying to be.’ And I laughed because what I wanted to tell him was, ‘You’re right. Only all my life.’ ”
Of all the things Jeter accomplished on the way to his Hall of Fame induction — membership on five world champions, seven pennant winners and 13 first-place teams; collector of 3,465 hits, five Gold Gloves, 14 All-Star selections and five Silver Sluggers; winner of the Rookie of the Year, one All-Star MVP and one World Series MVP — that is, without a doubt his most notable achievement:
He became, in both theory and reality, the perfect New York athlete. His was a career whose production equaled the hype, regardless of how much shade out-of-towners try to sometimes cast on it. He made an immediate impact — a home run and a game-saving catch his first day as a regular, in Cleveland, in April ’96 — and only built on that across the next 18 years, relentlessly adding chapters to his legacy.
He was accessible to fans even if, like Joe DiMaggio before him, those fans understood they would never, could never, get too close to him. He eased naturally into commercials, starting with the credit-card classic he did with George Steinbrenner. He enjoyed the perks of fame without once having it bleed onto him; you barely saw him on Page Six, let alone Page One, despite the winking acknowledgment that he was his era’s Joe Namath.
He was never going to be anything but a Yankee, we knew that from the start, and so did he, even if the occasional end-of-contract give-and-take sometimes caused a little rancor. He was never going to wind up in L.A. like Joe Willie or Cincinnati like Tom Terrific or Cleveland like Clyde. He didn’t want that. The Yankees didn’t want that. New York didn’t want that.
And all those kids with No. 2 on their backs and the wiggle in their batting stance, they certainly didn’t want that.
“Of all the things I’m proudest about,” Jeter said, not long after his induction to Cooperstown became official in January 2020 with 99.7 percent of the vote, “is that I’ll always be referred to as a Yankee, and nothing but a Yankee.”
His fellow Hall resident, Mariano Rivera, could say the same thing, as could his football counterpart, Eli Manning. It is fair to wonder if the door closes after them, if the modern realities and economics of professional sports have finally rendered the one-career, one-city icon extinct.
And you wonder if a singular athlete can ever capture the imagination again, quite like Jeter did. A quarter-century after first touching that generation of kids, those kids are still making sure to ask for time before waggling their bat and offering at fat softballs falling out of the sky with kegs of beer as stakes, still pretending it is Game 7 of the ALCS against the Sox, Pedro on the hill.
It is not easy to invade the imagination anymore, since you first have to penetrate the phalanx of iPhones and iPads, video games and TikTok. It may well be Jeter arrived — and departed — at exactly the right time.
That wouldn’t be surprising in the least. Everything about Derek Jeter, in the words of his old manager, Joe Girardi, “was like a movie.” The closing credits will roll next week in Cooperstown. The memories will last eternally, or at least until the last of those kids from the Summer of ’96 lays down their bats for good.