TORONTO — Derek Jeter is the Black Knight in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” insisting he’s sporting “just a flesh wound” as both arms are dismembered. If he wore a beard, we would say that, like Chuck Norris, the Yankees’ captain had no chin behind his beard, but rather another fist.
Back in the day, Jeter didn’t suffer injuries. Injuries suffered him.
Those days are gone now. On a night when Phil Hughes and the Yankees lost to R.A. Dickey and the Blue Jays, 5-2 at Rogers Centre — their third loss in four games and their first to Toronto after 10 straight victories — Jeter stood out simply for playing, starting at shortstop and going 0-for-3 with a walk. He hit into a 5-4-3 double play to end the third inning and struck out, with Austin Romine on first base, to conclude the sixth.
In his third comeback and sixth game of this cursed 2013 campaign, Jeter — now sporting an underwhelming .182/.280/.318 slash line — appeared more like a lottery ticket than a safe bet. Or to put it another way, the historically reliable Jeter hasn’t been this big a question mark since he was a rookie.
“I haven’t been able to work out my legs since October, since I had to let a bone heal,” Jeter said before the game. “If you think about it, it’s not surprising something happened to them
“… All I can do is go out and play and hope that everything’s fine. I can’t change anything what’s happened. I wish I’d had more time to do things, but we are where we are, so we’ll have to move forward and hope there aren’t more issues.”
If you can recall a more grisly season for someone this accomplished, then your memory is better than The Post’s. Remember when his left ankle, fractured in last year’s American League Championship Series Game 1, was supposed to heal in time for Opening Day? First came the re-fracture that set him back to July. Then we saw his July 11 appearance, when he couldn’t make it through a full game before straining his right quadriceps and going back on the disabled list. By comparison, his next stint was a rousing success, as he played in four contests (July 28, July 30-31, and August 2) before going down once more with a strained right calf.
Such a flurry of misfortune would figure to impact the guy who could teach a course in focus.
“I’m sure it’ll be in the back of his mind,” manager Joe Girardi said of Jeter. “If he gets through a couple of games, I’m sure it’ll disappear.”
Jeter didn’t have much of an opportunity to run the bases or test his defensive range last night; he recorded two putouts and an assist, none of which required much lateral movement. Offensively … it was Dickey, who is of course unlike any other pitcher Jeter will face in the big leagues.
“You can pretty much throw everything out the window, hope [the knuckleball] goes the direction that you’re swinging,” Jeter said.
“He looked fine,” Girardi said of Jeter, whom he batted second. “Everything looked OK to me. I’m curious to see how he feels tomorrow.”
How could he not be? You notice Jeter’s careful stride when he’s performing as elementary a task as walking through the clubhouse. The artificial turf here is better than it once was, yet it’s still less forgiving than natural grass. While a dramatically reduced Jeter can help the Yankees win games, an absent Jeter can’t do so, and he has been present for only 4.58 percent of this ultra-challenging season.
So here comes Jeter, Take Three, the expectations diminished and the enthusiasm curbed, joining a team that is a considerable longshot to qualify for an 18th postseason berth in Jeter’s 19 years. The A’s 8-6 victory over Detroit last night dropped the Yankees 4 1/2 games behind Oakland for the American League’s second wild-card berth.
“I approach it the same: We’re trying to win games,” Jeter said. “We try to win a game today. Whatever it takes to win a game.”
That’s the old-school tough talk that endears him to Yankees fans. Can he back it up with old-school durability? Not even Jeter can answer that with confidence.