But if you were standing by the back field at the Yankees
complex earlier this morning, you could have seen the Yankees
practicing that exact play. Third-base coach Rob Thomson stood on the
infield grass and rapped liners into the right-field corner as a line of
outfielders took turns digging the ball out and throwing it to the
cutoff man while the infielders went to their respective positions …
including the shortstop running the Jeter route to the first-base line
each time.
Like most folks, I was – and still am – amazed by that play, but the
more I watched the drill today the more Jeter’s assertions make sense.
“Where else would the shortstop be?” he has always said.
And today Jeter goes into deep, deep detail about the play for the first time:
“My job is to watch the runner. The runner at first was Jeremy
Giambi. I saw the ball down the line, and my job is to see if there’s
going to be a play at third base, right? But once you see that Giambi is
going to go home, my job is to turn into the third cutoff man to
redirect the throw to third base,” Jeter continued. “Now, we don’t
practice actually shuffle-passing the ball to home plate but my job, if
you look at the replay, if I actually wanted to throw to third base, we
could’ve got Terrence [Long, the batter] at third.”
The decision to flip the ball home instead of turning and trying to
get Long at third, Jeter explained, was made because Giambi was not a
fast runner. “I said this before, and I say this very respectfully, the Giambi
family is not very fast, so I knew we had an opportunity to get him at
the plate,” Jeter cracked.
I for one had never heard he was originally gonna go to third.
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