Jetes!

Mike Lupica on the fact that Derek Jeter WAS the Yankees:

Here is all that really matters, all this time later: One more time Jeter was exactly where the Yankees needed him to be, the way they needed him to be at shortstop in 1996 when he was a rookie, and all the winning began again for the New York Yankees, and they really became the Yankees again.

Here, though, is what Derek Jeter really was: He mattered in his time as much any Yankee had since Ruth. He was the face of the team and the star of the team when the Yankees became the Yankees again, with him at short and Joe Torre, the guy he called “Mr. Torre,” in the dugout. He was the player kids rooting for the Yankees wanted to be, the way Mantle had been that player in the 50s and 60s.

He was the star of that team, at Yankee Stadium, the old one and the new one. So he was on the biggest possible baseball stage for two decades. He played longer than any great Yankee. In the modern world of social media, with more scrutiny than the old Yankees could ever possibly imagined, as the biggest sports star in New York City, he never embarrassed himself, or his team, or his sport.

No. 2 ran out to shortstop, for good, that day in 1996. Then stayed 20 years. The Yankees won five World Series with him and could have won more and Jeter thought they should have won more, because that’s the way he was built, and wired. His DNA was old-Yankee DNA. After this there will never be another baseball career in New York like this, for anyone. One hundred percent.

Xmastime on Jeter as he was finishing up his career:

Players came and went, but the lineup was always electric. And the one constant? Derek Jeter. Of course.

Today, it’s hard to imagine myself as a Yankees fan next year. I don’t mean I still won’t identify as one, and I’ll still keep up. But I probably won’t rush to get home at 7:05 every day. I probably won’t put off weekend days until the game’s over.

And it’s not just because we’ll probably wander in the wilderness of mediocrity/losing for a long while. I can live with that. It’s the nameless, faceless players on the team now. Or just old. Players come, players go. But Jeter was always there, that one last connection to the Joe Torre years, to Paul O’Neil and Bernie and the Core Four and Tino and on and on. The connection to those magic moments, some of them his own. New York has infinitely changed since he first took over short. The world has. I have, we all have. But we always knew #2 would be there every day. And now he won’t be. “The end of an era” is so clichéd, but it’s true. He was this thread that drew us back, back, back together over the years, years so unfathomably long ago now that always seemed like just yesterday; cold opening day games, seemingly meaningless Sunday games in June, and of course thrilling nighttime moments in October. Even the way he had that final hit at The Stadium was one so familiar to us: a single punched into right field. Just like we'd seen all those times before - heck, a home run wouldn't have felt as perfect as that. Those days were so long ago now, but he was there, and so were we. And now he’s gone. And a part of us is too.

I'll always watch the Yankees. But it will never be the same. As sad as I am, I also feel lucky I had a front-row (well, tv) seat to it all, over all those years.  

Congrats to Jeter on his induction into the Hall of Fame (I now he's reading this, he's a big fan).

And thanks for magical memories like this.