The Yankees won four World Series during Rudy Giuliani’s tenure as mayor of New York from 1994-2001. Here is Hizzoner’s self-penned tribute to Derek Jeter.
For 17 seasons now, it has been a daily pleasure — as a baseball fan, a New Yorker and an American — to watch Derek Jeter play the game as it was meant to be played.
Derek Jeter exemplifies what it means to be a Yankee. His work ethic, consistency, leadership and the joy he takes in performing his job well have earned Jeter a place among the most legendary Yankees. One hundred years from now, fathers will be telling their sons about Ruth, Gehrig, Berra, DiMaggio, Mantle, Ford — and Jeter.
With 3,000 hits, Derek Jeter has entered baseball’s most exclusive club. As the city celebrates this major achievement, it’s worth taking a look back at Jeter’s career to this point. Jeter is such a solid citizen, so universally well-liked, that his greatness as a ballplayer is perhaps not given its due.
Consider the numbers:
Three thousand hits in a Yankee uniform has never been accomplished by anyone before now — a shocking fact given the team’s lineage. After winning AL Rookie of the Year honors in his first full year, Derek Jeter helped lead the Yankees to five world championships. He’s been named to 11 All-Star teams. He’s been in the Top 10 in runs scored 11 times. But the raw numbers don’t tell the story. Beyond Jeter’s statistics, it’s his outstanding baseball sense that sets Jeter apart.
What baseball fan can ever forget the way “Captain Clutch” picked the biggest moments to play his very best? With the Yanks facing elimination in the 2001 playoffs, Jeter’s extrasensory abilities seemed to place him crazily in the precise spot — in foul territory on the first-base side! — to handle Shane Spencer’s wild throw and flip the ball to Jorge Posada for a season-saving tag. Later in the same postseason, Jeter ended a World Series game by sending a full-count pitch by the Diamondbacks closer over the right-field wall with his trademark inside-out swing.
In this age of giant egos and players and teams that show no loyalty to one another, it is a special privilege to watch a team-first guy head out to the ballpark every day and perform his job. That’s why, for as many great moments as Jeter has provided Yankee fans, the moment from his career that I remember most fondly actually was a period of struggle.
In 2004, Jeter began the season in the worst slump of his career. After an 0-for-32 period in April, Jeter was hitting only .189 by late May. Fans were wondering if Jeter had lost his form. Every day, manager Joe Torre was asked whether the slump was permanent, and every day, Torre sent Jeter out to shortstop. Anyone who ever had endured a rough patch identified with Jeter’s struggles, and when Jeter broke out, he did so with a vengeance. He finished the season nearly at .300 and scored 111 runs with a career-best 44 doubles.
That kind of leadership and perseverance are emblematic of the Jeter we’ve come to know and admire in The Bronx. And that’s the Jeter that future generations will come to know and admire in Cooperstown.