XMASTIME

VIA.

No one, of course, will ever forget Derek Jeter’s final at-bat. He came to the plate in the bottom of the third, one out, nobody on. He swung at the first pitch, hit a dribbler back to the mound and was thrown out in roughly two seconds. This, however, did not faze him. Jeter kept running at full speed, past first base, all the way into the outfield. He was running out one last ground ball.

When he reached the outfield wall, Jeter touched it and turned left and — still hustling — ran along its entire periphery. At this point, the crowd started to feel that something special might be happening and rose to its feet. When he reached the left-field corner, he vaulted the wall and ran into the bleachers, head down, legs pumping. He ran up and down the stairs, chugging hard, all the way around the stadium. Slowly it dawned on us: Derek Jeter was running out all of life’s ground balls, for everyone, everywhere, forever. After a while, it didn’t matter that he’d been thrown out 20 minutes earlier or that the teams on the field had resumed playing and were now deep into the next inning. The crowd started to chant his name. The commissioner appeared on the JumboTron to give Jeter nine honorary retroactive M.V.P. awards and a lifetime-achievement batting title, but Jeter didn’t even look up.  

He was running, very fast, head down, running and running, running out that grounder. Whenever a player in the actual game hit a ball on the ground, Jeter would sprint back down from the stands and run alongside the batter as he ran to first base, then run tight little circles around him as he walked back to the dugout.