Derek Jeter wears a boot to protect his injured left ankle at the Stadium last night during a game against the Toronto Blue Jays. (AP)
Derek Jeter vowed to get back on the field this season, and while others may question whether he will return to his old form, the shortstop does not.
“I have no doubt,” Jeter said when asked if he would play in 2013 after doctors discovered a new fracture in his surgically-repaired left ankle last week. “When you have doubt, that’s when you’re in trouble. I’ve been told this bone will heal and when it heals, I’ll be ready to go.”
Jeter was in The Bronx for the first time this season yesterday and while general manager Brian Cashman reiterated the shortstop would be out through the All-Star break, Jeter refused to announce a potential date for his debut.
“I’m not getting into timelines,” said Jeter, who originally intended to be ready for Opening Day. “The last timeline I set, I didn’t make. I don’t want to disappoint myself or anyone else. Whenever it heals, I’ll be back.”
Jeter admitted he had a finite date he expects to be back, but refused to share it.
Is it the All-Star break?
“What do you think?” Jeter said.
His opinion on the topic doesn’t matter all that much, something he acknowledged.
“I can fake my way past people, but you can’t really fake out a CT scan,” Jeter said of the test that found the new break.
Although he wasn’t wearing it during his press conference, Jeter has regularly been in a walking boot after being diagnosed last week following an unscheduled visit to Dr. Robert Anderson in Charlotte last Thursday.
“I know my body and I knew something was wrong,” Jeter said before the Yankees’ 5-3 victory over the Blue Jays last night. “I can’t say I’m glad they found something. I wish they didn’t find something, but all the things we thought it was, it wasn’t.”
Now, there’s not much left for Jeter to do but wait. And despite his belief and doctors’ assurances he will be the same player he was before originally fracturing the ankle during Game 1 of the ALCS last year, others are more guarded.
“Our hope is he just picks up where he left off last year once we get all this healed,” manager Joe Girardi said. “I don’t think any of us are going to know until we get to that point.”
Jeter still doesn’t know exactly when he suffered the new injury, though he assumed it was around the time he was first unable to go during spring training, when he was held out of a game against the Phillies in Clearwater on March 26.
What’s more important than when the setback occurred is Jeter’s ability once he does return.
And he said doctors told him his mobility would return when the injury healed.
As for his timing, Jeter didn’t pretend to know when that would return.
“I can’t answer that,” Jeter said. “I don’t know. I’ve never done it. I don’t think it will take long.”
Jeter admitted the new injury wasn’t “good news.”
“When I went up there [to Charlotte], I thought it would be something different,” Jeter said. “Tape it up, let’s go. That wasn’t the case. It didn’t feel too good.”
But he insisted he isn’t thinking more about his own baseball mortality while under contract with a player option worth $9.5 million for 2014.
“Me breaking my ankle wasn’t just because I’m getting older,” said Jeter, who earlier bristled when a reporter mentioned his “advanced age.”
“It was a freak thing,” Jeter said of the break suffered last year.
“I played on something I probably shouldn’t have played on and it ended up breaking. It’s not because of my advanced age. It would be different if my body started breaking down. This was just a freak thing that happened.”