BALTIMORE—The Orioles faced the New York Yankees Sunday in one of the final occasions in which retiring shortstop Derek Jeter will stand in the Camden Yards batter’s box. Come next year fans won’t have a chance to see the player many call the greatest shortstop of his generation – and one of the greatest ever – again.
Yet the Camden ovation for Jeter in his first at-bat was muted – a collection of appreciative cheers from some of the baseball fans including a large turnout of Yankee fans, as well as some expected boos.
Perhaps that can be explained by a Brett Gardner home run a batter ahead of Jeter, but also because of Jeter’s career stats against Baltimore entering the game. In 281 games against the Orioles, Jeter has hit .300, with 24 home runs and 137 RBI according to the Yankees media guide.
The numbers lead all active Yankees with at least 20 games against the O’s except for average, in which Jeter is second only to Jacoby Ellsbury. In those 281 games, Jeter has helped knocked the Orioles out of the 1996 American League Championship Series with the controversial Jeffrey Maier grab of his “home run” ball as well as many other heart-breaking plays in his career against Baltimore.
He’s been a perennial fire-starter for the Yankees, whom he leads in career hits with 3,407 (8th in MLB history in that category). He’s handled controversy after controversy in New York – not his own, but just the kind that are part and parcel of playing in the Big Apple – with aplomb.
Jeter dealt with George Steinbrenner’s questioning of his personal life – doled out indirectly in statements issued through the Boss’ publicist – nonplussed. Jeter continued game after game, to do what he does well – lead.
Sure, Jeter has been no choirboy during his career off the field; his rampant Page 6 appearances with models and actresses like Jessica Biel and Hannah Davis have been nearly as frequent as his alleged day-after gift basket purchases for hookups with far less famous women in road cities.
But let us not forget, Babe Ruth – the greatest Yankee and greatest baseball player of them all, the bar owner’s son from Baltimore – was no choirboy either.
Babe didn’t care. His larger-than-life personality was something that Ruth enjoyed, and embellished upon to become the most popular player of his time, and all-time. But Jeter hasn’t sought it out, per se. He has dated who he has wanted to date, but hasn’t made that a promotional ploy.
Unlike his teammate Alex Rodriguez, Jeter hasn’t cheated along the way – at least there has never been any evidence of PED use ever found against him. Jeter has just played the game of baseball the way it is supposed to be played.
His retirement this year will mark a passing of the torch – a progression from Cal Ripken to Derek Jeter to whomever can pick up the shortstop mantle next. (Yes, Rodriguez was thought to be a torch-bearer at one point himself as well – but Rodriguez’s rampant cheating, and lying about it, according to MLB findings, make any such progression barely worth mentioning). Jeter though is Cal’s true heir – the next great shortstop after Cal.
Orioles fans this season should honor Jeter, or at least appreciate him, in the same way they and other MLB fans appreciated last year’s retiring Yankee Mariano Rivera. Rivera, like in Cal Ripken’s final season, was cheered and honored in ballparks across the league.
While Rivera and Jeter played on the same teams over their careers, Rivera set a record (career saves) which is, like Cal’s consecutive games record, unlikely to ever be broken in our time and without controversy. Rivera was rightly cheered all across baseball.
But with Jeter it might not happen, even if it should. Rivera got the “Cal” treatment because he was great, for so long, and never, ever in the news, never ever on Page 6, and his personal life was anyone’s guess because it was never brought up or talked about.
Jeter is a far bigger bulletin board for fans’ anger – at least especially those in New York’s division- for games lost by the Orioles, or seasons lost by the Orioles. O’s fans have been bitter – really bitter – and Jeter has been an easy target or the bitterness -the 1996 playoffs and 17 playoff-less years in which Baltimore has watched New York win world championships with Jeter in 1996, 1998-2000, and 2009, plus the shoulda-been Series loss in 2001.
That’s a lot of time spent watching Derek Jeter’s trademark bat flexing and head-stretching at home, on television, rather than at Camden Yards where the Orioles didn’t host a playoff series again until 2012, of course against Jeter and the Yankees.
So even though Jeter will leave the game as one of its greatest players and leaders in the game’s history, he probably still won’t receive the love he has given to Baltimore where employees at several Harbor East restaurants (an area of town Jeter often visits) routinely speak of his willingness to sign autographs nearly anywhere he goes, for anyone, and where he almost universally described as a class act. The fans booing at the game may never recognize how great a player Derek Jeter is. They just should.
