Jeter History Watch

UPDATE: As I was typing this, Jeter hit the first pitch he saw tonight for a double.  2,998!

Derek Jeter's only 3 hits away from 3,000 (the first ever Yankee to do so, which sounds weird no matter how many times you say it), meaning he might even do it tonight.  I'd love to know how many of his hits I've witnessed on the color tv set.  I've been here for 13 1/2 seasons.  Let's say I've missed 100 at bats a year, which is a high estimate, but I'd rather err on that side.  That's 1350 at bats.  His lifetime BA is .312, meaning I've probably missed about 421 of his 2,997 hits.  So I can safely estimate I've seen 2,576 of Derek Jeter's hits.

I'm not saying that makes me a part of it, I'm not saying DJ will give me a shoutout afterwards.  Maybe he will, maybe he won't; that's up to HIM, not me.  PROBABLY he won't, but again, that's not for me to say.

Well. This is interesting.  Jeff Niemann's pitching for the Rays tonight, and we see this:

3,000 Watch: 2,997 and counting. Jeter is 5 for 9 with a walk lifetime vs. Niemann. No player has ever picked up his 3,000 hit against Tampa Bay. On Sept. 9, 2009, Jeter had three hits to tie Lou Gehrig’s franchise record of 2,721. All three hits came off Niemann.

Interestingly enough, I was at the game the day after Jeter broke Gehrig's record.  (No, I'm not a hero.)


HERE'S reason #45,339 Jeter's who he is and I'm not:

“My job is to play every day. When I came up in this organization, when The Boss was here, young players, at first we didn’t get too many opportunities. That all started with Bernie, Bernie having success. When we got that opportunity, we didn’t want to sit out because we thought someone else was going to play. You never want to be in a situation where someone else comes in and does your job. That’s why myself, Jorge, Mariano, Andy, the guys who came up in the organization, we wanted to be out there every day.  I’ve taken a lot of pride to try to be out there every single day.”