HOUSTON — As always, we go back to the beginning, back to the start, back to when Derek Jeter was simply a promising prospect and not the idol of his age. We go back to April 2, 1996, because that was Jeter’s first Opening Day, because anyone who says now they knew then he would become what he has become is either lying or one of Jeter’s parents.
“I was just trying to prove I belonged,” Jeter said a few weeks ago, recalling that bone-chilling day at Cleveland’s Jacobs Field, the day he announced that something special had permeated our midst. It is as much a part of the Jeter Legend as the Mr. November home run or the flip play or the fact that his 3,000th hit came on a home run.
He was 21 years old that day. The Yankees hadn’t won a championship in 18 years. The New York sporting world we know today was upside down then — the night before, Rick Pitino had led Kentucky to the national championship at the Meadowlands. The Knicks were just getting to know their brand-new coach, an intense jangle of Xs and Os named Van Gundy. And Rey Ordonez had made that throw from his knees the day before against the Cardinals at Shea.
Ordonez vs. Jeter, everyone said. Willie, Mickey & the Duke for the new millennium. Jeter admitted he’d watched that play a time or three on “SportsCenter,” but “just because Rey had a good game, it didn’t mean I needed to.”
The day before the opener Jeter’s manager, Joe Torre, a huge advocate, had conceded that Jeter didn’t exactly look like Babe DiMantle during spring training: “He’s suffering from inexperience. He’s got those bumblebees inside him and he has a tendency to make the game too fast. He rushes.”
And then the games started, for real.
Then his career started. For real.
There is a scene in “The Godfather,” before Michael Corleone flips to the family business, when he discovers that guards have abandoned his father’s hospital room. He and Enzo, the baker, pretend to have guns in their coats, and the cars carrying the assassins pull away. Enzo can’t light his cigarette because his hands are shaking so violently.
Michael? Calmly, he flicks a lighter, lights Enzo’s Lucky Strike. He has no visible nerves.
And so it was on April 2, 1996, that Jeter would hit a home run off Dennis Martinez in the fifth inning, the Yankees clinging to a 1-0 lead, the ball flying toward left field and Jeter thinking: “Please don’t catch it.”
“I haven’t hit too many,” he would say later, “so I don’t know what it feels like.” And then: “Don’t expect too many more.
“The ball just hit my bat right.”
And so it was that two innings later, David Cone still nursing that 2-0 lead with a man on second and two outs, Omar Vizquel sent a flare out to short left-center field. Cone, knowing an RBI single when he saw one, cursed and ran to back up home plate. Only he didn’t have to. Jeter made the catch.
Because, of course, he made the catch.
“It feels good,” he would say later. “I did all right. We won the game.”
Eighteen years later, would it surprise you even a little bit if he had something special in store for Tuesday evening, when the Yankees and the Astros open their seasons at Minute Maid Park, which is precisely where the Yankees ended a frustrating season last year, one in which Jeter was barely a rumor around the club, his foot and his birth certificate conspiring to wreck his year.
Would it surprise you if there was a long throw from the hole, or a leaping catch, or an expertly turned double play that broke the Astros heart somewhere along the way? Would it stun you if, late in the game, runners on base, Jeter found a hole in the infield or a gap in the outfield?
And would it surprise you if he said something like this when it was all done: “It feels good. I did all right. We won the game.”
You want to know why Jeter is Jeter, how Jeter is Jeter? Go back to the beginning. Go back to the start. And randomly select any of a thousand other moments from across the past 18 years. And then enjoy, one last time, as Jeter dives into one more baseball season. We won’t see his like again soon.