HOUSTON – Derek Jeter still gets a kick out of walking into an All-Star clubhouse. He still gets chills walking onto an All-Star field. He still has to pinch himself when he exchanges small talk with All-Star ballplayers, around the batting cage, during the team photo, in the dugout during a game.
After all Jeter has done in baseball, and all he still expects to do, the All-Star Game still matters to him the same way it did when he was 10 years old and watching the game on the family television set back in Kalamazoo.
“There’s nothing like it,” Jeter said. “It’s the most fun thing possible.”
Even October?
“Obviously, you play this game to win championships,” Jeter said. “That’s the bottom line. That’s great, too, but in a different way, because when you get down to that part of the season it’s all business. You’re playing for a title. It’s still fun, but a different kind of fun. But the All-Star Game is just . . . it’s just different.”
Especially this year. The way Jeter approaches his game, and this Game, he wasn’t a likely candidate to ever take his appearances here for granted. Still, since he’d been a regular in every All-Star Game from 1998-2002, he could have grown to take it all for granted.
Except he missed last year’s game, after an injury-shortened first half.
And he found out that he not only missed it.
He missed it, too.
And when he started the season in his deep batting funk, being introduced before the All-Star Game was one of the furthest things on his mind. But the fans voted him in. And the fact that he’s got his numbers up to perfectly representative levels – (.277, 13 homers, 48 RBIs) allows him to walk back in with his head held high.
“Put it this way,” Jeter said. “It’s good to be back playing in this game. It’s good to be able to take it all in. There’s a lot of things in this game that you want to enjoy to their fullest, because you can never be sure if you’ll ever get to experience them again. This is one of them. I’ll never take this for granted.”
And even though he doesn’t care for the new format where the winner of the game assures home-field advantage in the World Series for their respective league, the thrill of playing in this game never diminishes.
“I’m a traditionalist,” he said. “I’m an old-fashioned guy. I don’t really care for interleague play either, but the fans love it, so it’s great. And that’s what makes the All-Star Game great, too.”