WELL, it would seem that Stephen King has come down with a killer case of writer’s block. Letterman is having a hell of a time coming up with a funny Top 10. Tom Hanks just signed on for “Joe Versus the Volcano” and “Bonfire of the Vanities,” back-to-back. Springsteen just recorded “Mary, Queen of Arkansas.”
It happens, you see, even to the good ones, even to the great ones, even to those who breathe rarefied air. Derek Jeter went 0-for-4 last night. He is 0-for-his-last-12. He is stuck on 2,718 hits for his career, when he needs to get to 2,722 so he can break Lou Gehrig’s all-time Yankees hits record and we can all get on with the rest of the baseball season.
He is getting there the hard way. He is getting there the long way.
He is getting there with a pit stop through a most untimely mini-slump, and it’s a tribute to the kind of season that Jeter is having that even as a mini-slump it serves as the worst slump he’s experienced during an otherwise top-shelf season. Three o-fers in a row, at a time when everyone stops what they’re doing now to see what he does whenever he walks to the plate.
Is he pressing? Is he grinding himself too hard? If you think either of those things is what’s happening to him now, then you’ve obviously just shown up at the dance 15 minutes ago. Jeter doesn’t press. He doesn’t grind, not when there’s no season on the line, anyway.
Jeter does slump, though. He has had his share of 0-for-20s and 4-for-33s in his career. He may be the envy of a million Little Leaguers. He may have spent much of his 20s and early-30s working his way through Maxim’s Hot 100, may be the coolest guy in any room he walks into. It may well be a hell of a thing being Derek Jeter.
But he does bleed. He does sweat. He does strike out, sometimes two and three times in a game. He doesn’t get every nod of good fortune: Sometimes, his inside-out swing produces line drives that stay up in the air a little too long, the way his line drive in the eighth inning stayed in the air a little too long.
Just because it’s good to be the king doesn’t mean it’s always perfect to be the king. Pacino made “88 Minutes.” DeNiro made “Rocky and Bullwinkle.” Hoffman made “Ishtar.”
You think Jeter is consumed with this stuff? Then you should have seen him in the dugout last night, when just past 10 p.m., Nick Swisher connected with a Dan Wheeler pitch and sent it far and deep toward the right-field scoreboard. On contact, Jeter lifted his arms, as the ball disappeared he threw a towel in triumph, then did his patented Archie-hopping-in-the-convertible leap over the dugout fence, on his way to join in the mosh pit at home plate.
Soon enough, Swisher had a face covered in whipped cream and he was hamming it up for the crowd, the clear No. 1 star in a 3-2 Yankee win that moved them 40 games over .500 and sent them a few seats higher into the upper realm of their sport. Swisher’s moment, Swisher’s night, at a time when it seems the only thing worth paying attention to is Derek Jeter and his stagnant hit total.
An obsession for others. That’s what Jeter’s face said. And what his words would soon say.
“,” Jeter insisted. “.”
That’s not a typo. That’s the extent of Jeter’s postgame comments. He ducked out quick, and maybe you think that’s a nod to pressing and grinding; more likely it was his way of ceding the attention to Swisher. He isn’t going anywhere. And neither is his hit total.
So we will all have to wait another day for the inauguration of a new Yankees hit king. We will all have to settle in and realize that it may take till the weekend for Jeter to get those four hits he lacks, or into next week. It happens. Baseball humbles its mightiest practitioners, has from the beginning of time, will to the end of time.
He’ll survive. Spielberg survived “1941.” Scorsese survived “New York, New York.” Even the great ones swing and miss. And come back for more.