The years fly by much too fast and none of us, not even our sports icons, are Forever Young.
Derek Jeter, The Captain, turns 50 on Wednesday.
“I don’t believe that one bit,” Aaron Judge told The Post. “He don’t look 50, man. It’s incredible, what he’s done for this organization, kind of the path and the road he led, and a legacy he left here. He was the captain for a long time for a reason and held that title with the best of the best. Looking back at all the former Yankee captains, man, he’s probably the top of that list.
“That’s impressive, man. I wish he was around a little bit more here, I know he’s busy, he’s a family guy, he’s doing stuff with Fox and other things, but that guy’s a Yankee through and through. He wore the pinstripes better than anybody, man. It’s something special.”
Judge is the 16th Yankees captain. Jeter was the 15th.
“I can probably do all the cliché postseason moments he had — the jump throw against Oakland, the shovel pass — but my favorite memory, honestly, is just when I got named captain and signed back here, him showing up here, him showing the support, getting a chance to talk with him on the phone even when I was going through my free agency stuff and kinda talking about, ‘Hey, how did you handle teams taking you to arbitration or doing this or things they said, like what do you got on all that?’ ” Judge said. “Just him being a sounding board where he could have kinda not answered the phone and go, ‘Hey, man, I’m retired now I’m not dealing with any of that baseball stuff anymore,’ but he still stays in contact and is always watching, man. It’s probably the coolest thing for me.”
Jeter never made our jaws drop with any Judge-ian blasts, never captivated the nation enough for the Roger Maris family to witness the coronation of a new single-season home run king, never soared in the air or floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee or became a global icon as Michael Jordan and Muhammad Ali, respectively, did, never dominated his sport the way Tiger Woods and Wayne Gretzky and Messi and Serena Williams dominated theirs.
“They remember you if you win,” Jeter said once, “especially Yankee fans.”
We remember Eli Manning because he won, especially Giants fans.
“He did things the right way,” Manning told The Post. “He was just an awesome role model to have as I got to New York.”
Jeter had already won four championships by the time Manning arrived in New York in 2004.
“I remember watching some of his press conferences after games, and even after he had great games or great things happened, always giving credit to his teammates, being positive, and even after bad games, kinda taking the heat, taking the blame, never making excuses, never throwing another guy under the bus,” Manning said. “It sounds like something easy to do. In New York, it’s harder. You can get asked the same question over and over again, and he never got tired of giving his answer. He never got discouraged, he never got annoyed, he always seemed polite. … He never changed his demeanor, he never changed his attitude and always showed up to play and loved playing the game and treating everybody with respect.”
Manning, so much like Jeter, recalls the shortstop offering him advice during his rookie season.
“He just said, ‘Keep grinding, keep working hard every day,’ ” Manning said. “ ‘Everybody goes through the struggles. Don’t let the media, don’t let anybody, get to you, just keep working hard. I promise you it’ll get easier. Don’t get discouraged after a just a few weeks of doing this.’”
We remember Tom Brady because he won, especially Patriots fans. Brady won seven rings and won them without the natural gifts of Patrick Mahomes and many other quarterbacks.
Jeter won four rings in his first five seasons and five in all. He was for George Steinbrenner and Joe Torre — Mr. T, Jeter calls him, even now — what Brady was for Robert Kraft and Bill Belichick.
We might want to call him Sinatra in Pinstripes. He did it his way. And he did it his way in New York, New York.
And he did it for 20 years, did it for 20 years at the only position he dreamed of playing to Turn 2 and the only team he dreamed of playing shortstop for.
He did it with respect for a game that he played the right way, every day. He did it with an accountability and responsibility to his teammates and team, to his fans, to New York. And he had fun doing it every single day.
This is what he told Yankees fans at his Hall of Fame induction in Cooperstown: “I wanted you to be able to count on me.”
The way he was raised in Kalamazoo, Mich., by his parents, Dorothy and Dr. Charles Jeter, was never lost on him, or on us. We watched them through the years swelling with pride watching him from the stands.
He was always at his locker to answer the tough questions and shield his teammates when necessary. His answers steered clear of headlines but he was accessible and cordial. In a burgeoning look-at-me world, he led the league in humility and selflessness. His class was always in session.
“Your image isn’t your character. Your character is what you are as a person,” Jeter was quoted as saying.
He navigated the social media minefield and the omnipresent Page Six spotlight as seamlessly as Manning did as a New York Football Giant, even as he dated high-profile singers (Mariah Carey) and actresses (too many to name). Until he wed the former Hannah Davis in July of 2016, he was married to the Yankees.
His was an unremitting drive to prove doubters wrong, and the bigger the moment, the more clutch he was, in large part because he had no fear of failure. He did all the little things, too, that don’t show up in the box score. Same guy every day, every game: .310 average in the regular season, .308 in the postseason.
Take your pick of the lasting images of greatness that Captain Jeter left us:
- The Flip Play, when he raced across the diamond to snare an errant throw from right fielder Shane Spencer midway between first and home and backhanded an assist to Jorge Posada to nail Jeremy Giambi at the plate in Game 3 of the 2001 ALDS in Oakland with the Yankees, up 1-0 in the seventh inning, down two games to none. “Doing my job,” Jeter said.
- His disregard for his body with a face-first dive at the end of a desperate sprint into the third-base stands at the Stadium on July 1, 2004, against the Red Sox to backhand a 12th inning Trot Nixon foul pop that left him bloodied but unbowed. “If I coulda stopped,” Jeter said, “I woulda stopped.”
- His Mr. November moment when he cracked a 10th-inning HR off Diamondbacks reliever Byung-Hyun Kim in Game 4 of the 2001 World Series.
- His 2000 Subway Series Game 4 leadoff HR on the first pitch from Bobby Jones.
- His 2,722nd hit in 2009 to pass Lou Gehrig as the Yankees’ hit king, en route to 3,465.
- His 3,000th hit in 2011 — a home run, at that.
- His Hollywood-ending, walk-off single to right in his last Yankee Stadium at bat in the ninth with that classic inside-out swing.
Derek Jeter today:
Five rings, four children, no regrets.
Derek Jeter today and yesterday:
2 Good To Be True.
