Mr. Royal covers today with his sentimental send-off of Mr. Jeter.

Number Two

http://youtube.com/watch?v=DOknrp8NtCo

Now batting for the New York Yankees, the shortstop, Number Two, Derek Jeter, number two.

 

I was going to wait on this.

I was going to wait to watch the Gatorade commercial. I didn’t really want to watch his Jordan commercial. I forced myself to watch the ASG.

I just don’t think I’m ready to come to grips with the fact that next year when I go to Yankee Stadium Derek Jeter won’t be playing shortstop. Instead, there will be an open spot cleared out in Monument Park for “The Captain.”

I was going to wait until I knew the Yankees were out of it completely. But they’re 79-74 as I started writing this column, 4.5 games back in the Wild Card hunt with four teams ahead of the Yankees. Nine games left. Probably not gonna happen, I’m a realist.  In the end I guess I figured this column would be harder to write when he was definitely done playing. When I knew for a fact he would never take another AB. I’m trying to hold back the “he deserved better than this in his final year” feeling that I keep wanting to whine about. Fact is, the Yankees earned where they’re at and Jeter is still the Captain of that team. No we didn’t expect Cleveland to rebound and be ahead of us in the hunt. And yea, it stings that Billy Beane’s Moneyball squad is kicking our ass, and the small-market KC team who can’t even get fans to show up to their games are beating us, and Robinson Cano’s new team is beating us.

But I’m kind of at peace with it. I thought the lack of playoffs for Mariano’s final year would cheapen the goodbye but it didn’t. I don’t think about that when I think of Mo just like I don’t think about how the Yanks missed the playoffs in the final year of the old Yankee Stadium.

I think about the next year when the Core Four won it all in the first year at the new Yankee Stadium.

I think about how I stood in uniform during the National Anthem ten feet away from Jeter on the infield that year and didn’t have the guts to be that stupid fan that just wants his moment to hang to for the rest of his life where he shouted, “Hey Jeter! Love you dooood!” (like an idiot)

I told myself, Filler, and you guys I wasn’t going to be one of those sports bloggers who always wrote about his team. Hell, after UConn won the National Championship this year I started to write a manifesto professing my love for Kevin Ollie and Jim Calhoun and I stopped halfway through. Nope. Just not gonna do it. That’s so obnoxious, I thought to myself.

But this is different. I’ve had to read a bunch of hate stuff from Deadspin and Barstool about how much Jeter sucks, and how he’s been overrated, and how he’s a bad dude, and he’s self-righteous, falsely humble, he’s a bad interview, he’s not as nice to fans as he lets on. And that’s fine. Retard blow-hards who whine about everything are funny in a way and you just take accept them for what they are. I think it was Chris Carter who said something to the effect of “If you’ve got haters, you’re doing something right.” I challenge you to find a single well-respected athlete who doesn’t have a few idiots who find reasons to trash them. Hell, I trash Tom Brady because it’s funny to me, but mainly it’s just because I hate Boston.

Take Jeter out of it. Take the Yankees out of it (because most of you probably hate them, and that’s fine – I get why). If you can’t appreciate a little, that one of the best three shortstops in ML history is calling it quits after a 20-year, first-ballot HOF career with 14 ASG’s, 5 Gold Gloves, 5 Silver Sluggers, 2 Hank Aarons, a Roberto Clemente award, a Rookie of the Year Award and five World Series rings then you don’t just not appreciate Jeter but you don’t appreciate baseball.

Jeter is the only player left in any sport that I can honestly say I can’t remember not-rooting for in my lifetime. More simply put, I’ve been watching sports since I was five and I can’t recall a time where Jeter wasn’t on the Yankees. I saw Bernie Williams go, Posada, Pettite, Clemens, Boone, Martinez, Rivera, Torre, Cano, and many others but Jeter has always been there. I remember a time when Eli Manning wasn’t the Giants’ QB, I saw Tiki Barber come and go, I saw Strahan go. I rooted for the Knicks long before Melo got there, I saw Allan Houston and Charlie Ward go, John Starks and Patrick Ewing too. I remember the Rangers before Lundqvist got there, I just saw Captain Cally go. But number two has always been there.

I can’t describe what a surreal feeling it’s going to be when Jeter isn’t there. It was surreal when I hopped on a Jet Blue flight a few months ago to see him play in person for the last time.

I’ve always maintained that Jeter wasn’t my favorite player. I was too cool for that. In elementary school when people asked, “Hey who’s your favorite Yankee?” it was too cliché to say Derek Jeter. Everyone said that. You had to be different, show kids you really knew something about the Yanks and say, “Mike Mussina” or “Gary Sheffield” or something. That’s why I never bought a Jeter jersey. I wish I had. The truth is, when you really think about it Derek Jeter was my favorite player – he was all of ours favorite player.

Only now am I beginning to appreciate this. Some fans have yet to see a Championship in their lifetime – in all four major sports of their city. I whine about how bad the Knicks suck, I complained about how I’d never seen the Rangers win the Cup last year. Jeter and those Yankee teams brought me five Championships that I can actually recall in my lifetime. That’s amazing.

Only now do I appreciate how hard it is to come out of the Steroid Era unscathed. Sure, the same retards will baselessly accuse Jeter of using because, “Come on, everybody did it!” but that doesn’t explain how his name never popped up on a Bosch report, or a Mitchell report, never tested positive for anything.

All of those things should be enough. A non steroid-using perennial All Star with 3000+ hits and delivered 5 World Series Championships to the Bronx. When I think about him going away in that I’m at peace with this season. I’m thankful for 09’ when I got to see the Yanks win it all. I’m thankful for the game I saw a few months ago at the Cathedral. I’m thankful for diving into the stands. I’m thankful for the flip (why didn’t Jeremy Giambi just slide?). And I can stop praying to the baseball Gods to work a miracle for one last epic sendoff. That’s one dude who’s been epic enough.