Each at bat these past few days had been a symphony of sound, an orchestra of acoustic resonance. It would start every time they cued up the tape of the late Bob Sheppard, booming once more throughout the great yard in the Bronx: “Now batting … number two … Derek … Jeter … number two … ”
The people would stand then. They would cheer and they would chant, and it was loud but also respectful, as if they wanted to say thank you even before they’d see what they so desperately wanted to see. “I grew up with these people,” Derek Jeter would say. “They’ve known me since I was 20 years old.”
He is 37 now. And ever since he returned to Yankee Stadium Thursday, on the doorstep of 3,000 career hits, every second he stood in the batter’s box was a unique collection of clamor. Every called strike brought an angry growl. Every ripped foul ball delivered a hopeful burst of energy, replaced by a hush. Every ball brought a collective sigh. And then, at straight-up 2 o’clock in the afternoon, a Tampa Bay Rays pitcher named David Price rolled a 78-mph curveball toward Jeter, whose legs never moved an inch, a flat-footed pass at the baseball that unwittingly called to mind another forever Yankee, a fellow named DiMaggio, who used to collect his hits the same way.
And this is what you heard at Yankee Stadium in that splendid second, the last second Jeter would spend outside the exclusive, 28-man room that is the 3,000-hit club: Nothing. It was as if nobody could believe what was taking place in front of their eyes. There were 48,103 people inside the gleaming new palace on 161st Street, and surely every one of them had crafted in their imagination what this moment would look like: a strafing drive into the right-center field gap, perhaps; maybe a line drive over an infielder’s head. Jeter himself would smile and say, “I didn’t care how I got it. Just as long as nobody caught it.”
Someone would, all right, but he wouldn’t be wearing a Rays jersey.
No, once the ball cleared the auxiliary scoreboard in left field, once it flew over the secondary wall behind 10 rows of seats and a red insurance company ad, it reached the waiting arms of 23-year-old Christian Lopez, a former football player at St. Lawrence University, a cell phone salesman from Highland Mills, N.Y, up in Orange County. He had gotten the ticket from his girlfriend. He got the baseball from a legend who had launched it 405 feet from where he stood. Jeter rounded the bases and that silence was replaced by the kind of thunder that rattles foundations.
Some days are more interesting than others. For the superstar. For the super fans. For everyone. Jeter has been the face and the soul of the Yankees since 1996. There have been, quite literally, hundreds of thousands of area Little Leaguers who have copied Jeter’s batting stance in that time, plastered his poster on their walls, thrilled to every hit, every throw, every victory. Christian Lopez represented every one of them. And seemed to know it by instinct. He didn’t hold the Yankees up for a ransom. Didn’t demand payment, or tickets, or even a hat. He volunteered the ball.
“Money is cool,” he would say, using words that you might swear had been written in the Derek Jeter handbook. “But I’m only 23. There’ll be time for that.”
So Jeter got his ball. Everyone else got a moment they’ll hold onto forever. It felt like the best kind of trade-off on the best kind of afternoon at the yard.
mike.vaccaro@nypost.com