We know the way he wants to go out. He wants the Elway Exit. He wants the Jordan Farewell. He wants the Teddy Ballgame Goodbye.
That’s the only missing element to the literal storybook that has been Derek Jeter’s career, right? He already aced the beginning: a home run and a game-saving catch on his first Opening Day, in Cleveland’s Jacobs Field, in 1996, followed by the first of five World Series rings collected on his watch.
The middle? Yeah. He mastered the middle just fine, assembling the finest two-way résumé of any shortstop in modern history, winning those championships, piling up 3,316 base hits, earning close to $255 million in salary, earning the affinity of untold millions of baseball-loving kids (and adults) across the years. And, like any self-respecting hero, he regularly got the girl(s).
And now, the ending.
The gold standard for this, in his own sport, is Ted Williams, knocking one over the wall at Fenway Park in his last time at bat in 1960, sprinting around the bases and then disappearing into the dugout forever, ignoring the pleas of a sparse crowd because, as John Updike famously observed, “Gods do not answer letters.”
Jeter, you suspect, wants more than that.
There is Michael Jordan, of course, who swished the 18-footer that won the Chicago Bulls their sixth championship in eight years in June 1998, the last thing he ever did in that familiar red-and-black uniform, and that certainly sounds more like Jeter’s style … well, except for that epilogue portion of Jordan’s career, where he foundered and floundered for the Washington Wizards.
Jeter, you know, wants more than that.
So there is John Elway who, unlike Jeter, knew nothing but failure early in his career, who in fact suffered so many big-game indignities, he spent much of his time in Denver as an anti-Jeter, never able to win the Big One, never able to shake loose the shackles of three Super Bowl calamities … and then, just as he was packing up his things, won back-to-back Super Bowls and left the arena a forever champion, left the people wanting more.
Yeah. Now that’s more in line with what Jeter has in mind.
“I don’t want anything different this year than I’ve wanted my whole career,” Jeter said a few weeks ago in front of his locker at Steinbrenner Field, the same stall he has occupied in every spring training going back to 1996, which was his first and the Yankees’ first in Tampa. “I want to do whatever I can to help us win the World Series. I know that might sound like a broken record, but that’s how I feel.”
One thing we know Jeter will want to avoid: the kind of final-year blues that have affected so many iconic Yankees. Babe Ruth, a .349 lifetime hitter as a Yankee, hit a soft .288 in 1934 with his lowest slugging percentage since 1917 — when he was still a full-time pitcher. Joe DiMaggio, with lifetime slash numbers of .325/.398/.579 (AVG/OBP/SLG), was only .263/.365/.422 in 1951.
And of course there never has been a sadder final lap than the one taken by Mickey Mantle, who saw his lifetime batting average dip from .302 to .298 in 1968, when he hit a paltry .237 and had only six more hits (103) than strikeouts (97).
Jeter still hasn’t given a full accounting of why he decided this would be the right time to walk away, but it doesn’t take a lot of leaping to figure that those were not the precedents he wanted to follow, and while all three of those icons were, in fact, younger than Jeter will be this year, Jeter would still seem to have the chops to more easily replicate the younger version of himself.
That’s the hope, anyway. He’s already authored quite a tale for himself. All that’s missing is the ending. For the moment.