THERE are 49,464 people scattered across the city this morning who will tell you they walked into Yankee Stadium with a swagger and they left with a swagger and they never had any question about what they would see last night. That in their minds the Yankees are that much better than the Twins, that the final might have been 7-2, but it could have been anything the Yankees wanted it to be.
This is what you would call selective amnesia.
“Our guys were into it,” Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said. “We were battling pretty good. We got a 2-0 lead [in the top of the third inning] and wanted to go back out there and shut them down.”
Gardenhire smiled, a bitter smile, not a ha-ha smile.
“And then,” Gardenhire said, “Derek Jeter did what he does best.”
Every year, there seems, a growing number of numerologists and nattering nabobs join the army that believes — that swears — that Jeter isn’t nearly the equal of his reputation. That he is a product of the New York hype machine, that the notion that he elevates his game is nonsense, is fiction, is product of a parochial press.
And then . . . well, almost invariably, Jeter does what he does best. He seizes a moment. He controls a game. When he walked to the plate in the bottom of the third, one out and one on, he already had delivered one message, mashing young Brian Duensing’s first-ever postseason pitch for a lead-off single, and he would add two more walks and two more runs later on.
But at this moment the Yankees were trailing 2-0, there was already a thin sliver of dread snaking its way around the aisles and corridors of the new house. You didn’t have to listen very closely to hear what October paranoia sounds like.
And in a flash, what you had was a completely different sound.
“I think, the stadium started to wake up a little bit,” Jeter said.
And it wasn’t just the Stadium, it was every saloon, every den, every living room, every car, everyplace where Yankees fans chose to spend their first night’s return to autumn after a brief hiccup of October inactivity. Suddenly — as the ball soared high into the night, tried to climb over the night, finally finding the left-field seats — they all remembered a very simple truth:
“Once the lights hit the postseason, it’s Jeter Time,” Nick Swisher said.
“That’s Derek Jeter this time of the year,” manager Joe Girardi said.
We have been watching Jeter do things like this for 14 years, seen him usher calm into the postseason, righting the order of things with one swing of a bat. Jeter will never be remembered as a slugger, not even a little bit, and yet so many of the touchstones of his career center on a ball splitting a chilly night, an outfielder retreating, a ballpark either exploding or expiring, depending on what city you happen to be in.
It is the Old Stadium in 1996, a Jersey kid doing Jeter a solid and stealing a ball away from Baltimore’s Tony Tarasco. Or it is Shea Stadium in 2000, Jeter making Bobby Jones’ first pitch of the night disappear. Or it is the Old Stadium again, in 2001, a few minutes after October melted into November. Or it is Fenway Park in 2003, the day all hell broke loose, when Jeter invited the first hint of hell by planting a Pedro Martinez heater on Lansdowne Street.
Or it is right here, at the new Stadium, waving his bat and turning 0-2 down into 2-2 square, welcoming everyone back to October, urging them to believe all over again.
It can grow wearisome following and seeing the same old angles, the same old plotlines, so it was good that Alex Rodriguez drove in two runs last night, it was right that CC Sabathia turn in 62/3 ace-like innings. But sometimes it’s the old storylines reassure just as surely as a neat pile of Chip-A-Roos and a cold glass of milk. As long as Jeter is playing for the Yankees, that comfort is constant.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com