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Derek’s greatest hit

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The summer before I started college in the fall of 2001 was one of travel. I went to Europe as a high school graduation present with my parents and sister and then took a road trip with a good friend of mine to 12 baseball stadiums in ten cities. Everywhere I went, I took a backpack into the Stadium and saw few security measures, if any at all.

Everything changed during my second week of classes when terrorists flew airplanes into the World Trade Center. I woke up to a bewildering voice mail from my dad telling me that a plane had struck the Twin Towers, and then I went to class. By the time I was out, the two buildings in Lower Manhattan had collapsed, and life as we knew it was over.

That fall is a bit of a blur in my mind. As I adjusted to life at college away from the city and my parents, I found myself on the road. I went home the weekend after Sept. 11 to be in the city and around family. I traveled up to Boston in October to visit some friends (and watch the Yanks run over the Mariners in the ALCS) and went back to school for the World Series after a stop in New York. Through it all was baseball.

When play resumed after a week off in September, the Yankees continued their march to what we hoped would be a fourth straight World Series title. After two quick losses to the A’s in New York, it seemed as though the aging Yankee had finally met their Billy Beane-inspired match. But then Derek Jeter saved the day.

That Play — the one that spawned my favorite sports column of all time — is how the baseball world knows Derek Jeter best. With Jeremy Giambi lumbering around the bases and Shane Spencer digging a ball out of the corner, Derek Jeter came out of nowhere to save an errant throw and shuttle-pass the ball of Jorge Posada. Giambi didn’t slide; Posada tagged the runner; and the Yankees’ season was saved.

Jeter will soon hold the Yankees’ all-time hits record. He’ll become the first New York Yankee to top 3000 hits. Yet, his defining image will always be The Play to save the season in 2001. His baseball instincts are just tremendous.

After that ALDS, the Yankees tore through the winningest team in AL history and drew a match-up against the Diamondbacks. New York City and I continued to heal. The city came together for a celebration of the Yankees, and the Yanks seemed predestined to win the World Series. I went to game three that year with my sister, and while the Yankees won, it was the least climactic of the games played in the Bronx.

The next night, I was watching the game with some first-year friends and a few upperclassmen, and despair settled among the room when the 9th inning rolled around. The Yankees were just three outs away from going down 3 games to one against a Diamondbacks’ team led by two fierce pitchers. But Tino Martinez delivered a huge two-run home run into the night, and the Yankees were alive.

In the tenth, the clock at Yankee Stadium struck midnight, and for the first time in baseball history, the World Series reached into November. It was a cool, crisp night, and Byung-Hyun Kim quickly got two quick outs. Then, Derek Jeter came up. Jeter worked the count full and then some. On the ninth pitch of the at-bat, Jeter swung and the ball soared into the night. Reggie Sanders tried to track it down, but the Stadium erupted as Jeter raised his fist in celebration. The Yankees had won an improbable game, and we were jumping for joy and disbelief.

Of course, the Yankees were do it again the next night before faltering in the desert. As Luis Gonzalez’s single fell past a misplaced infield, New York’s World Series hopes died. To me though, that home run — Derek’s only RBI of the 2001 World Series — was Derek’s greatest hit. It brought the city unimaginable joy at a time when it needed it the most, and as I settled into college and Derek’s ball into the right field stands, I knew everything would be okay.

Drafting Derek Jeter

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It might be tonight. It might be Friday. It might be Saturday. No matter the day, though, Derek Jeter will soon get the four hits he needs to become the New York Yankees’ all-time hits leader. Through a combination of health, talent and ability, Jeter has swatted his way to the top of the list of many Yankee greats. Next year, he may very well emerge as the organization’s all-time steals leader, and before he retires, he’ll lead the organization in runs scored as well.

With history upon us, Derek Jeter Nostalgia has been in full force. Dorothy and Charles Jeter have been making the media rounds, and columnists all over New York are warmly praising Jeter for his hard work and clean image. My favorite of these pieces is this Anthony McCarron column. The Daily News tracked down a yearbook photo of Derek from Kalamazoo and spoke to Dick Groch, one of the scouts who first evaluated the eventual Hall of Famer.

Today, we view Derek Jeter as the consummate Yankee, but that’s due more to history than anything else. Derek has come to symbolize the Yankee dominance of the late 1990s and the Yankee perseverance of the past decade. He is one ring shy of a full hand and hopefully will earn that piece of jewelry this year. Jeter though almost wasn’t a Yankee, and for that, we jump into the Wayback Machine.

The date is May 30, 1992, and the Yankees had just lost to the Brewers 8-3. Greg Cadaret drew the loss, and Bill Wegman walked home with the win. In the game recap, Jack Curry talked about the Yankees’ draft plans:

Miami catcher Charles Johnson, Pepperdine pitcher Derek Wallace and high school shortstop Derek Jeter are the players the Yankees are interested in selecting with the sixth choice in the amateur draft Monday.

Grouping Derek Jeter in with those other two players reminds me of the old Sesame Street song with the line “one of these things is not like the other.” Charles Johnson was selected 28th overall in the 1992 draft by the Florida Marlins. He played parts of 12 seasons for seven teams and hit .245/.330/.433. One can only imagine what would have happened had the Yanks opted for Johnson over Jeter in 1992, the year Jorge Posada moved behind the plate.

Derek Wallace is a name lost to time. Selected 11th overall in 1992 by the Cubs, he was traded twice and eventually made his big league debut with the Mets. His Major League career lasted all of 33 innings.

As the draft neared in 1992 and the Yankees considered their top three candidates, another team emerged as a potential player for Derek Jeter. Said Murray Chass:

The Astros, with the No. 1 selection, had been leaning toward Phil Nevin, a third baseman from California State-Fullerton, but late last week, they were considering changing to Derek Jeter, a high school shortstop from Kalamazoo, Mich.

With just five teams in front of the Yanks, the Astros were the prime candidate to snatch Jeter away from them. But the ‘Stros wanted Phil Nevin a little bit more than they wanted Jeter. In the end, the Yankees got their man, their four World Series and a Hall of Fame short stop.

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Postscript: The link in the last paragraph goes to a Jack Curry article from June 2, 1992. Curry talked with the Jeter family shortly after the Yankees made Derek the number six overall selection of the amateur draft. Curry speculated that Jeter would command the then-high signing bonus of $400,000, but Jeter, in Curry’s words, “downplayed” the money.

“I enjoy playing the game,” a young Derek said. “I think the money part is just an extra.” Indeed.

The Derek Jeter contract conundrum

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At some point soon — hopefully today because I’ll be there — Derek Jeter will become the Yanks’ all-time leader on the hit list. In a few weeks, we’ll hear rumblings of a potential MVP award. In a few years, he’ll reach that 3000-hit plateau and possibly even that 3500-hit mark. Along the way, he’ll hit his 250th home run and score his 2000th run.

There is, of course, one monumental event that is going to arrive before a few of those milestones: Derek Jeter’s ten-year contract will expire. Make no mistake about it; this is a big deal.

Over the last few weeks, Joe and I have spent some time exploring Jeter’s contract status. While Jeter hasn’t been saying much about his new deal, I speculated that the Yanks might break with tradition and sign Derek to an extension this year. Such a move would cut off the media circus surrounding Derek the Free Agent before it could begin. Late on Friday, though, Joe noted that multiple reports indicate the Yankees will wait until after 2010 to re-up with Jeter.

Today, Bob Klapisch introduces a few new elements to the mix as he asks one very big question: While the Yankees, in the words of Jayson Stark, will probably “take care of” Jeter, what will happen when and if Derek asks for a four-year, $100-million extension? In a piece high on superlatives, Klapisch writes that Jeter has “a larger footprint than anyone in the organization.” Since 1995, Derek Jeter has been a Yankee, and since shortly thereafter, the two — Yankee baseball and Derek Jeter — have been synonymous. Jeter, says Klapisch, knows this and knows what it can mean for him:

Jeter has made it clear he’d like to finish his career in pinstripes. The Yankees certainly want him back when his current deal expires after 2010. Everyone agrees on that much. But after earning $41 million in 2009-10, Jeter will be in no mood for a pay cut, not after seeing A-Rod awarded a 10-year, $275 million deal after the 2007 season.

How much will Jeter be worth at age 37 is a question the Yankee hierarchy doesn’t dare discuss publicly. No team in the last 50 years has won a championship with a shortstop that old, although that won’t deter either side from finding middle ground. That is, unless Jeter wants to stay at the position into his 40s and is thinking of earning $25 million a year.

The Yankees are bracing for the possibility that Jeter could indeed ask for, say, $100 million over four years, knowing the captain would have enormous leverage in the talks. That’s why management won’t even begin to discuss a new contract this winter; in the wake of an MVP-caliber season, the cost would be prohibitive.

Instead, the Yankees will run the table on Jeter’s existing deal and hope common sense prevails in 2011. One industry analyst says, “let’s see if (Jeter) realizes the market has come down” since A-Rod’s record-setting contract.

Giving Jeter a contract extension after his 2009 campaign would be, simply put, a bad business decision. The Yankees would be paying Jeter going forward for what he has accomplished this year, and while Jeter appears ageless now, he is more likely to decline over the next five years than he is to duplicate this season’s numbers. So the Yankees will wait.

Derek, too, will wait. He’ll wait for the money that he thinks should be his. He’ll wait for the offer that should head his way. In the end, Derek Jeter will resign with the Yankees. He can’t really go play anywhere else, and the Yankees can’t afford to see him leave. How much it will cost though to keep him is anyone’s guess. I fear that $100 million contract, but it won’t be too much less than that.

Jeter vs. DiMaggio

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Unless you’ve been living under the rock for the past two or three weeks, you know that Derek Jeter is approaching Lou Gehrig’s club record for career hits. Following today’s game, he’s just three hits away from tying Gehrig and four from passing him. I’m hoping that Jeter is kind enough to hold off for a few days so I can see him break the record in person on Wednesday, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

Anyway, Steve Lombardi at Was Watching takes a crack at comparing Jeter to another all-time great Yankee – Joe DiMaggio – and shows that determining who’s better may not be as easy as you think. It’s seems like just yesterday that the Cap’n was making his debut, but now we’re comparing him to some of the greatest players who’ve ever lived. Crazy, huh?

Don’t look for a Jeter extension before his contract is up

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Like it or not, the topic of Derek Jeter’s contract is going to come up a lot over the next year, and we’ll see increasing mentions as we move closer to the end of the 2010 season, when his current deal expires. We know that Jeter isn’t thinking about his contract right now, and it appears the Yanks aren’t either. Both Jayson Stark and Jon Heyman note the obvious: the Yanks will wait until after the 2010 season to negotiate with Jeter. In other words, everyone gets treated the same. Mo and Posada didn’t get extensions before their deals were up, and it appears Jeter won’t either.

Heyman notes that negotiations this off-season would heavily favor Jeter, since he’s in the midst of a top-three season (1999 and 2006 also stand out). While that’s true to some extent, it still doesn’t seem like the top reason why the two parties will wait things out. The idea of treating Jeter the same as his peers Posada and Rivera would seem paramount in this situation. Then again, the Yanks got burned on the Posada deal, and might have been able to lock up Mo for a bit less had they negotiated before the season. Perhaps they’d do better to haggle with Jeter this off-season.

There’s one sentence in the Stark piece that makes it seem as if the timing of the deal won’t much matter. “From what we’re gathering, Jeter and Close have been all but assured by the Yankees that the club will make sure Jeter is taken care of when the time comes.” That sentence is rife with ambiguity, from the opening clause to the “taken care of” bit. This is what many of us presumed. Both parties know that they’re best taken together, and neither wants a messy divorce. They’ll come to some sort of agreement. I’m pretty sure players can’t have an ownership stake in the team, but could the Yankees set that up for Jeter for when he retires?

Yes, this subject will be beaten to death by the time the 2010-2011 off-season rolls around. Sorry. The tenor of the discussion seems to be positive, though. I know many people who think that the situation could get ugly, but I’m not among them. Derek Jeter and New York go together like all those cliches about things that go well together. With his contract and endorsement deals, Jeter is set for life. I think we’ll see a rather painless reunion after next season.

Link Dump: Old news edition

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It’s the day after an off-day, and the Yanks are rolling. Hence, there’s nothing groundbreaking in the news. There are some tidbits we can look at before lunch time, though.

Hideki Matsui likes New York

Breaking news: Baseball player likes winning. Hideki Matsui has been part of many winning Yankees teams; since his debut in 2003 the team has failed to make the playoffs only once. In the interest of continuing on a winning team, Matsui has made it known that he does like it in New York. He won’t say that he certainly wants to return, at least not to the extent of Johnny Damon, Yet we’ve heard plenty over the past few weeks that the Yanks might not necessarily want Hideki back.

He’s past his prime and has creaky knees. That’s not a good recipe. Yet Matsui can be a very useful player. See the role Eric Hinske plays this year? Hideki can do that next year and better. The problem is that he might want a more prominent role, and an AL team might be willing to give it to him. Still, he knows that he did not live up to the four-year, $52 million deal he signed after the 2005 season. Perhaps that will factor into his decision.

Make no mistake, though: Matsui could be an excellent bat off the bench/part-time player if he were so inclined.

Rosenthal on Yanks payroll, Jeter

There’s a new Ken Rosenthal column, and in it he discusses a few things Yankees. First up, Derek Jeter. We’ve talked a lot about Jete’s improved defense in 2009, and that’s not by accident. The process started two years ago, and it seems that while it helped last year, it’s taking full form this season.

After the 2007 season, Jeter decided that he needed to work harder to combat the effects of age. He began training with Jason Riley, the director of athlete performance at the Saddlebrook training center in Tampa…

“He came in two years ago with the idea to evaluate his body, see what needs to be worked on,” Riley said. “His goal is to play many more years. We wrote up a program for him not just for the offseason, but for over the next five years.

“We’re starting to see the results of having two good offseasons under his belt. You can’t ask for a more dedicated, loyal player in terms of work ethic and everything else.”

Jeter worked to achieve more power and distance with each step while also seeking to gain greater efficiency, Riley said. The two studied video to assess Jeter’s body position, and even extended their analysis to the angle of Jeter’s toes when he is in the ready position.

It’s always a good story to see a ballplayer admit his flaws and then work hard to correct them. Jeter will never admit it to the media, but his defense was an issue. Now that he’s taken the measures to correct it, perhaps we can lay off those Jeter-to-left field arguments for just one off-season.

In a bit regarding Johnny Damon’s “very likely” return to the Bronx, Rosenthal drops a line about the Yankees payroll: “The Yankees reduced their payroll from $209 million in 2008 to $201 million this season, and they expect to further reduce that number next season.” I’m not sure where he’s getting this from, but Brian Cashman has been strumming the “lower payroll” chord for a while now. I expect they’ll enter the off-season with that goal, but if something comes along that would have them raise payroll with good reason, I don’t see why they’d shy away.

Joba throws 80 pitches, adds no innings to total

Marc Carig has a bit up about Joba Chamberlain and his extended rest. He hasn’t pitched since last Sunday in Seattle, but that doesn’t mean he’s been dormant the entire time. In fact, five days ago he threw a bullpen session, comprising 80 pitches. They don’t count towards his total, of course, because they weren’t thrown within the stressful situation of a real game. Then again, bullpen coach Mike Harkey was the simulated batter, and he’s one intimidating dude.

So Joba starts tonight on eight days’ rest. We’ll see how it affects his command. The good news is that it’s difficult to imagine him having worse command than he had his past few times out.

Yanks use longball to topple Sox 8-4

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The Boston Red Sox are a good baseball team. They have a potent offense which, despite a slump after the All-Star Break, ranks up there among the best in the league. They have two of the top starters in the league. Their bullpen, though not as good as it was in April, is still solid. Yet despite how good they are, they’ve run into a team playing even better.

The Yankees flexed their bats once again last night, hammering Sox ace Josh Beckett for eight runs, including five home runs, in eight innings. Derek Jeter started the assault, belting the first pitch of the game into the Red Sox bullpen. Robinson Cano and Alex Rodriguez each added a blast, and Hideki Matsui had two for the second time in the series. Those five hits accounted for seven of the eight Yankee runs.

The Josh Beckett on the rubber last night was not the Josh Beckett who has pitched most of this season. His funk started last time out in Toronto, when he allowed seven runs in 5.1 innings. He labored a bit in that one, throwing 99 pitches. Last night it seemed a bit different. He ran into more issues with the long ball, but was still able to keep his pitch count at a decent level, and also kept throwing strikes. Though he gave up nine base hits, Beckett walked no one.

CC Sabathia steered clear of the free pass as well. Like Beckett, CC wasn’t at the height of his game, but he was much closer. Trouble brewed in the second, after the Yanks had staked CC to a two-run lead. Again it happened with two outs, after CC struck out the first two batters in the inning. Lowell, Baldelli, and Varitek went double-single-double, tying the score and prompting a collective groan from the Yankees faithful.

That’s as bad as things would get. After a double play helped avert trouble in the third, Robinson Cano made his second error of the night, this one costing the Yanks a run. They had built a 5-2 lead by that point, so the run didn’t hurt as much, but there’s simply no reason to hand the Red Sox additional opportunities. As said in the opening paragraph, they are a good team. They will hurt you if you let them.

Four runs over 6.2 innings might not look great in the box score, but it was still a quality effort by CC. He didn’t walk anyone, and kept his strike to ball ratio in good standing. The Sox did knock out eight base hits against him, but just three of them were doubles. There were no homers. Sabathia also beared down with runners on, as he held the Red Sox to just 2 for 9 with runners in scoring position.

(Oddly, the Yankees just put three men in scoring position all night, one of whom, Derek Jeter, scored on a Mark Teixeira single. Hey, when you hit five dingers, who needs runners in scoring position?)

The win caps a 7-3 road trip and gives the Yanks a 7.5 game lead in the East. That’s the same lead they had after the previous series. Again, Boston’s a good team that’s run into a team that’s playing just as well if not better. They’ve shaken the 0-8 stigma for good, and even put a dent in the “they can’t win at Fenway” argument with two wins this weekend.

You can say that the Yanks have sealed the division, and on October 4 you might prove to have been right. But there are still a number of good teams in the AL that the Yanks will have to face along the way, and they won’t tread lightly. They’ll have another test right away, as the Rangers, a game behind the Red Sox for the Wild Card, come to town starting Tuesday. Unfortunately, it looks like the Yanks will have to do the Sox a favor.