The Long Goodbye With Derek Jeter

Eventually, Comes The End

I stopped writing about the Yankees on this blog after they won the World Series in 2009. I made that conscious decision because for all the hoopla, that edition of the Yankees was at an end, and all that remained was a strong of goodbyes to players I loved dearly. I knew it was coming, it was going to happen and I simply didn't have the heart to be around writing about the unwinding.

First, it was Hideki Matsui, who closed out his Yankee career with a bang, earning a MVP in that World Series. his contract ran out at the end of 2009 and he was gone. Andy Pettitte headed for the door too, and Jorge Posada ran out of rope at home plate and finished as a DH. One too many collision at the plate put an end to a historic catching carer. Other players of that 2009 squad quietly left. Nick Swisher signed with Cleveland when his contract ended. Johnny Damon, went and played a couple more seasons elsewhere and ended up in the wilderness the same way Bernie Williams finished. Robinson Cano surprised us all by walking out on the Yankees to sign with Seattle.

And of course there's been the whole Alex Rodriguez biogenesis circus.
CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira haven't really been the same since. The only player to have improved  in that squad since that time has been Brett Gardner. Andy Pettitte came back briefly, but in the end he bowed out with Mariano Rivera last year. That left Derek Jeter as the last of the 'Core Four'.

To be honest, the swashbuckling Derek Jeter we knew and loved finished at the end of 2012, dramatically fracturing his ankle in the post-season. It was as if it was as far as his body would carry him and it just broke. He's been nothing like he was before that injury.  In 2013 he tried to come back and that was mostly an abortive attempt. This year he declared would be his last, and as the season winds down it is clear he really hasn't been the same player he was before the ankle injury. It's been painful watching his at bats. Pitches he would have drilled in his better days would get fouled off or turn into weak grounders. It's been so bad, it's not been worth talking about. And now it's all mercifully coming to an end.

With that comes a tidal wave of reflection.

Back in the 70's when I was a kid, I used to watch the Bronx Zoo Yankees and wonder about single digit Yankee players. You can just go through them: 3 was BabeRuth; 4 was Lou Gehrig, 5 was Joe DiMaggio; there was no 6, 7 was Mickey Mantle, 8 was Yogi Berra; and 9... 9 was my fave Yankee growing up Graig Nettles. Nettles was a good player, but he wasn't a great player like Ruth Gehrig, DiMaggio or Mantle - He was a bit better than Chase Headley is today and that's about it. Nettles was awfully funny in interviews which is why I liked him. The Captain of that incarnation of the Yankees was Thurman Munson, and the big bat belonged to Reggie Jackson. It was a great team I'll never forget, but they were only together for about 5years.

Then sometime in early 1996 I noticed the Yankees were starting this shortstop wearing '2' and my jaw dropped. It's a big call, giving a single digit in that organisation, but there he was. And the Yankees won the World Series that year for the first time in 18years. The rest is, as we say, history. Over the years he's been exactly that player the Yankees needed, nothing less, and probably even more than they hoped for. And he did it for almost four times as long as the Bronx Zoo Yankees were together.

The 20years he has been playing in the Major Leagues is in of itself a mind bogglingly long time by any measure in sport. It's a stretch of time that takes me back to other odd moments. It goes back to the year the Australian test cricket team finally defeated the Windies at their home grounds. It goes back to a time Mark Taylor was the captain of that team. It goes back to a Wimbledon where Pete Sampras defeated Boris Becker, and Stefi Graf defeated Arantxa Sanchez. It was the year of the OJ Simpson trial. Feeling old now? I certainly do. It was the year The Atlanta Braves beat the Cleveland Indians in the World Series. I remember watching Chipper Jones in his remarkable rookie year.

The barracking, cheering and rooting for the Yankees for that length of time allowed me to relive my childhood in my spare time in such a way that I forgot I was growing old - seriously old!. For 20years, I followed the games, day in day out season in, season out. I lived and died by the moments and made mental notes on how to be graceful and gracious in the way he was, in both triumph and defeat. I held on to a flame that kept burning - a flame I had almost forgotten, and left behind with a pile of old memories. Instead, he provided a whole new bunch of memories.

When I sift through all the moments and stats, I'm most affected by the 2001 post season. It came right on the heels of the 9/11 World Trade Centre event. The world was reeling. You felt for New York City. The Yankees were reaching for one more World Series win with the late '90s Dynasty squad. Along the way to the World Series, we saw the Flip which cemented his name in history like no other play. But most poignant of all was the 'Mr November' Home Run.  The Yankees needed a miracle and at the stroke of midnight, the World Series crashed into November for the first time in history. yet another grim reminder of 9/11 and how it was changing the world in front of our eyes.
Moments later, Jeter launched that defiant home run which eventually sent the Series to Game 7. It was as if New York City needed something extra, a piece of something to hope on, and Jeter was there to deliver it. America needed something to save it from despair and for a moment the Yankees were everybody's team and Jeter provided that something with one stroke. The Yankees didn't win Game 7, but it was a moral victory of sorts that the Yankees went as far as they did that year. Without a doubt Jeter truly was the heart and soul of that defiant team.

Even as his career creeks to a rickety end, the memories are piled up like trophies. I am, from the bottom of my heart, grateful that he came along. Every game he played, there was every chance he would do something truly inspiring and extraordinary; and because of that all those days were filled with a happy anticipation. As those moments grew fewer in-between, I've been readying myself for this moment. No, he's not going to die or anything; yes, he too is the luckiest man on the face of this earth; but he will be gone. And so we think thoughts like when we try and compose eulogies and obituaries.

I realise today that what we hang meaning upon in our lives can be so arbitrary. There would be countless Yankee fans who will be waking up to this very thought when Jeter has put down his bat one last time. Maybe it will be waking up from a long, magical intoxicating, enchanting dream. In that, I feel a great kinship to countless people in New York City, across America and probably across the globe. He was a once-in-a-lifetime Yankee great and we've had ours, and now it's done.

I imagine I will look for him on the field when the Yankees take the field next spring, even knowing he's retired and gone. No, he won't be there. It will startle me. They'll still be the Yankees, they'll still be all that wining tradition and glorious history, but it will be the moment that will hit home that I'm just "rooting for the laundry" as Seinfeld would have it. I can't imagine how other fans will see the new guy manning shortstop. That guy, whoever he is, is not going to be as good as Jeter, for we know he can't be. And I'll know, we will never see the likes of Derek Jeter ever again in our lifetime.