MLB

Ankle injury biggest test yet for Jeter’s unyielding resolve

OUCH! Derek Jeter always has toughed it out, playing through pain without giving excuses. His recovery from a broken ankle (above) has proven his toughest task yet.

OUCH! Derek Jeter always has toughed it out, playing through pain without giving excuses. His recovery from a broken ankle (above) has proven his toughest task yet. (AP)

OUCH! Derek Jeter always has toughed it out, playing through pain without giving excuses. His recovery from a broken ankle (inset) has proven his toughest task yet. (
)

Derek Jeter is on the short list for greatest shortstops. You have the 3,304 hits and 255 homers and 348 steals and arguably more postseason plays of distinction than any other two or three men combined.

Yet my first thoughts about Jeter always revolve around toughness. In fact, for a player whose tangibles and intangibles have been discussed and dissected on near endless loop for two decades, Jeter’s sturdiness perhaps has been undervalued and underappreciated. Maybe it is because he has that matinee idol persona — more Bieber than Butkus.

“If you were with him, you know this: He takes a backseat to no one in toughness,” Joe Torre said by phone.

People remember Jeter going headlong into the stands and emerging with a bloodied face against the Red Sox on July 1, 2004. Do you remember that he played short the next day? Heck, it was against the Mets. You would have had a better chance of removing his spleen with pliers than getting him out of the lineup.

You probably remember Jeter making a somewhat similar play in the decisive Game 5

of the 2001 Division Series, tumbling back-first into the seats to catch a Terrence Long pop in the eighth inning. George Steinbrenner cried afterward in discussing the gallantry of the play. What you might not recall is Jeter hardly could walk by Game 7 of that year’s World Series. But he kept playing.

You probably remember Jeter flying into Ken Huckaby’s shinguards and separating his shoulder on Opening Day 2003. He thought he had fractured his collarbone. He was in anguish, but told Torre, “Don’t worry, Mr. T — I will be back in tomorrow.”

After an MRI exam, he returned to SkyDome in a sling for a postgame news conference. He was told the timetable for recovery was six weeks to several months. He defiantly said he would be back in six weeks. Forty-two days later — six weeks exactly — he returned. Teammates will tell you he had strength/discomfort issues in that shoulder the rest of the season. Yet he played 118 of the Yankees’ final 125 games — starting 117 — found a way to hit .324 and never said a peep about his pain.

That had been the Jeter code. Ask him about an injury and he was fine. The excuse-free stoicism was ingrained in him by his parents and galvanized — I believe — by lockering near Chili Davis early in his career. The veteran Davis’ mantra used to be essentially: If I am in the lineup, I am healthy enough to play. If I am not, assume I am not. End of discussion.

When you hear an athlete talk about an injury by saying, “Not to make an excuse, but …” what will follow is an excuse about the injury. Jeter never gave that. Not on the record. Not off the record. Not to teammates and managers.

“I would literally see him walking out of the trainer’s room and ask how he was doing and he always just said, ‘fine,’  ” Torre recalled. “And you won’t see him grimacing on the field just so he could say, ‘look what I am going through.’ He is not wired like that.”

Jeter felt incredible responsibility to be on the field

every game. He was joyless when he did not play.

In a horrible irony, it probably was this mindset that led to the injury that might finally

conquer Jeter. He played through relentless foot problems late last season and into the playoffs. And all the games and innings and twists and turns proved a drip-by-drip erosion until finally his ankle fractured while Jeter chased a Jhonny Peralta grounder in Game 1 of the ALCS.

There was no getting up from that one, no getting back in the next day. Jeter needed surgery. True to his code, he promised to be ready on the earliest possible date, Opening Day. But he couldn’t put sustained game action onto that ankle in spring and backed up his timetable to May 1.

Now, another chip in the ankle has been discovered, and the return date is a hopeful after the All-Star break. But Jeter will turn 39 during his recovery. This is his landing foot hitting, his push-off foot to try to field a ball in the hole. His job demands constant quick starts and stops. Forget about the All-Star break — Jeter’s ability to play with any consistency and excellence at all is in peril.

Even as big a fan as Torre acknowledged the odds but added the proviso, “If there is any way it could happen, it will happen because it is him.”

Torre knows Jeter’s brilliance is fueled by off-the-charts positivity and self-confidence. Jeter is going to believe absolutely that he will return. His will is iron.

It has to be. When he crumpled last October, Jeter’s shortstop odometer was at 23,402 2/3 innings between the regular and postseason. That is 2,688 games. Only Omar Vizquel has played more games at shortstop. But Jeter also has 14 seasons of 145 or more games at short, and no one else — not Cal Ripken, not anyone — has even 13.

You do not play the middle infield that often for that long without a resolution that could bend steel. We talk about five tools, but those tools mean nothing if you are not available to use them. Jeter always was available. He was a metronome of ability, attitude and dependability for Torre and Joe Girardi. They could worry about the rest of their lineups — Jeter was playing.

Before we learn anything else about Eduard Nunez — like can he actually hit and field at a quality

enough level in the majors? — we will have learn if he can stay on the field. Jeter has been hit by a pitch 163 times, 11th most ever, and just kept playing through it. Nunez had been hit twice this year and on both occasions looked as if he were felled by a cannon and missed time.

Jeter’s toughness was something that became embedded in the fabric of the Yankees, a physical and mental resiliency. So his absence may be about more than a missing star shortstop. And his absence also should provide a testimonial to just how much he has been present the last two decades. The matinee idol was a tough guy.

joel.sherman@nypost.com