Derek Jeter, who leads off last night’s 7-3 win over the Red Sox with a single, then flubs a pop-up (above) in the bottom of the first.
CAPTAIN CRUNCH: The first-place Yankees, Mike Vaccaro writes, are as perfectly imperfect as their captain, Derek Jeter, who leads off last night’s 7-3 win over the Red Sox with a single, then flubs a pop-up (inset) in the bottom of the first. (Paul J. Bereswill (2))
BOSTON — When you consider the fact that by the fourth inning, there were some who wanted to order up a full battery of tests on the captain of the Yankees, it didn’t turn out to be such a terrible night.
Yes, there was the pop-up he Castillo-ed in the first inning. Sure, there was the botched ground ball that was generously disguised a hit by the official scorer, and the on-the-run toss that had so little mustard on it that Nick Punto, who will never be confused with Usain Bolt while running upright, beat the throw while sliding on his stomach in a cloud of dust.
And yes: after all of this, and after every time he swung the bat, you could see Derek Jeter shaking his hand and his shoulder as if he were trying to liberate a knot from some awful hiding place. Manager Joe Girardi told the television crew it was a “cramp.” But he also never told Jeter to come out of the game. Which was just as well.
“My job is to play every single day regardless of how I feel,” Jeter told the Post’s Joel Sherman before the game. “I don’t like excuses. People don’t want to hear what is wrong with you. I know I don’t.”
Oh, yes: Jeter also had three hits.
And, yes: the Yankees won the baseball game, 7-3, speeding far away from the sputtering Red Sox and soaring into the All-Star break.
So in a lot of ways the captain enjoyed a night that was an almost perfect microcosm of the season for the Yankees. There always seems to be something you can complain about around the team, if you want to go looking for it: Russell Martin’s anemic average, Alex Rodriguez’s microscopic slugging percentage, CC Sabathia’s groin, Andy Pettitte’s ankle, Mariano Rivera’s knee …
And, oh by the way, they’re right on pace for 98 wins.
Jeter? Today is the one-year anniversary of the day he went 5-for-5 against the Rays at Yankee Stadium, when the second of those hits, a home run off David Price, happened to be the 3,000th hit of his career. To celebrate, he collected those three hits yesterday, which makes 201 for his last 365 days and 147 games, which elevated his present batting average to .308 (less than a week after he dipped under .300 for the first time all year).
His drop in the first, on a routine, if wind-drafted, pop up off the bat of Cody Ross, provided the Red Sox with an unearned run and the citizens of Red Sox Nation with one of the few moments of levity this whole weekend. Jeter’s error on Saturday night may also have been what cost the Yankees a shot at a modern-day interpretation of the Boston Massacre, their first inning run totals reading thusly: 5-4-3-2.
By the end, after a singalong of “Sweet Caroline” that couldn’t have sounded more forced if it had been done at gunpoint, after the faithful had stormed the exits, you had a pretty good idea of what real problems for a baseball team look like. You start with the fact that the first two hitters in Bobby Valentine’s lineup wore uniform numbers 66 and 77. You keep going until you look at standings that tell you the Red Sox are now 9 1/2 games behind the Yankees, 10 in the loss column, and it feels like 20.
Those are real problems.
The Yankees are like their captain right now: perfectly imperfect, at a time, and in a season, when that’s plenty good enough to win the AL East and avoid a play-in wild-card game. There was a time just before that epic afternoon one year ago today when Jeter was struggling, when it became so much more a talking point to discuss the things he doesn’t do as well anymore instead of what he does, and it’s easy to fall into that same trap with these Yankees.
They don’t lead the world in hitting with runners in scoring position? Don’t win a lot of games when they don’t hit the ball over the fence? Occasionally get the kind of clunkers that they got from Phil Hughes and Hiroki Kuroda? Sure. All of those things could be better. They also have won 61 percent of their games so far this year.
In all of baseball, no one has done that better. Not yet.