TAMPA — Just another day at Steinbrenner Field. Over here you have the head coach of the Jets, Rex Ryan, sitting by the first-base dugout. Over there you have the best player in the history of the Jets, one Joe Willie Namath, sitting in the dugout.
Inside? That’s where a present Hall of Famer, Reggie Jackson is trying to win a game of verbal jousting with a future Hall of Famer, Derek Jeter, as he joins a crowd of folks around Jeter’s locker.
“You’re just one of the media now, Reggie,” Jeter said.
“Does that mean you won’t talk to me?” Reggie replies.
“I talk to these guys all the time,” Jeter says, “I don’t just stir [stuff] up the way you did.”
The laughter that fills the clubhouse isn’t the forced press-conference laughter that sometimes confuses manager Joe Girardi or Giants coach Tom Coughlin observations with Jimmy Fallon or Seth Meyers quips; this may well be the funniest moment of Jeter’s career, somewhat as startling as seeing Namath in a No. 12 Yankees jersey.
Oh, and the second-best left-handed pitcher in team history stopped by for a visit freshly into his retirement. The last time that happened, two springs ago, Andy Pettitte brought his game glove and a secret, and he slipped away to do some top-secret throwing in the bullpen … and he could read everybody’s mind as he got ready to throw batting practice on Field 2.
“I don’t think I’m ever going to not miss it,” Pettitte said of the game that brought him to the front porch of Cooperstown, if not completely in the door. “But I’m not able to be all-in anymore.”
Yes, these are the kinds of days you’re going to encounter every now and again if you spend enough time around the Yankees, Tampa or The Bronx, March or May or September, familiar faces and forever old-timers walking around like a live-action fantasy camp.
In a lot of different ways, this was the perfect setting for David Robertson’s first appearance of spring training. There is always a sense of renewal and replacement in camp, season-to-season and generation-to-generation. You don’t always get to observe the moment when someone officially replaces a GOAT.
As in Greatest Of All Time.
George Selkirk started in right field for the Yankees on April 16, 1935, the first time in 16 years that position wasn’t manned by another guy named George, better known as “Babe.” Brent Barry was the starting shooting guard for the Bulls on Feb. 5, 1999, the first game after Michael Jordan ended his Bulls career with his title-winning jumper the previous summer.
It’s a special kind of job description, following a GOAT — in this instance, Mariano Rivera — and Robertson looked fine yesterday, overcoming a hit batter with his second pitch, inducing a double play, throwing a clean fourth inning in a 4-2 Yankees win over the Nationals at Steinbrenner Field.
“It was OK,” Robertson said. “Can’t complain. It was a decent outing, velocity good. It was good to pitch again with players behind you, without a screen in front of you.”
Robertson is the most important Alabama Crimson Tide alumnus the Yankees will care about Monday, next week, next month, even with Namath in the house as he was on this day. Robertson took an English class at Bama with Namath’s daughter, Jessica, and they renewed acquaintances while Namath and Jeter spent time before the game chatting in the Yankees dugout.
And, man, the stories they could share …
But even that can serve as a beacon for Robertson, whose personality and makeup seem of a perfect design to handle the weight of the transfer. After all, there is a strong lineage connecting Namath and Jeter, Broadway Joe and Captain Cool, as much for the way they led their teams to championships on the field to the way they led quintessentially high-profile New York lives off it.
And Jeter, whose own career and legacy will cast an enormous shadow on somebody come this time next year, enjoyed all of that. So did Namath.
“I admire his confidence,” Jeter said of Namath.
“It’s human to err,” Namath said, with some public experience to bolster his words. “Derek Jeter hasn’t made many errors that I have seen.”
“It’s special,” Namath said, pointing to his fully pinstriped outfit.
For him, maybe. But, really, it’s just another day at Steinbrenner Field.