Mike Lupica: Derek's night has a ring to it

The New York Daily News
October 4, 2006


The captain of the Yankees, one of the most famous and popular Yankees of them all, comes out of his clubhouse in the late afternoon. Kim Jones of the YES Network, who has an appointment to interview Derek Jeter before he goes out to stretch with the rest of the Yankees, is waiting for him. Before Jones can say anything Jeter says, "I have about 92 seconds." The television lights go up, Jeter answers a couple of questions like he is going from first to third. Then he is gone, down the runway toward the Yankee dugout, bat in hand, walking fast, nearly running now. The playoffs are starting. In an October when he goes for his fifth World Series ring, this time the playoffs start with 5-for-5 from him against the Tigers.

The Yankees have not won the World Series for five years and that means Jeter, who we once thought might win World Series the way Joe DiMaggio did, hasn't won, either. He is not just the captain of the Yankees. He is their DiMaggio. It's not like everybody else has been losing for five years and he gets to be bulletproof. It doesn't work that way for Joe Torre and it doesn't work that way for the shortstop.


If Jeter could win the whole thing by himself, maybe he would have as many rings as DiMaggio by now. He does not. As much as the Yankees are going to hit teams the way they hit the Tigers a couple of times last night, lay teams out the way Ray Lewis lays out a quarterback, they are still going to need the kind of big outs they got from Scott Proctor in the top of the seventh last night, when Magglio Ordoñez was the tying run in a game the Yankees were supposed to have won already.


Proctor is supposed to be one of the guys out of Torre's bullpen who gives them seventh and eighth innings the way Nelson and Stanton once did. For all the greatness of so many Yankees, Jeter and Mo Rivera and so many others, they have won the World Series only when the whole bullpen has been great.


"You still need to pitch, you still need to catch the ball," Torre says. Jeter always says the same thing.


But if there is a game plan for these Yankees it goes like this: A little of the old magic out of the bullpen, a lot of offense. If it goes like that, the Yankees finally win again.


The offense still starts with Jeter, even if he no longer leads off. It starts with him and last night it ended with him, with his fifth hit of the night, that shot over the center-field wall in the bottom of the eighth. This is the October when he hears the same "MVP" chants at the Stadium that he has been hearing for so much of the second half of the season. If big things happen again for the Yankees, if they finally move off 26 world championships with enough big innings, it is expected that Jeter is in the middle of it all. This is his team as much as Torre's. Torre's job has always been made easier because Jeter is on his team and in his clubhouse, whether he thinks taking up for A-Rod is part of his captaincy or not.


And so in Game 1 of another October for him, coming into that Game 1 with more postseason hits than any player in history, Jeter hits the ball all over the Bronx and even goes to his right and starts a double play in the top of the third that was the play of the game. His place again last night. His time of year. Biggest postseason night he's ever had, even if it's just the first.


"You always wish going into a playoff game really quick that you had something against the (opposing) team, that you didn't like their players, that you had some extra motivation," Detroit manager Jim Leyland was saying yesterday. "But you don't (with the Yankees). How can you not like Derek Jeter?"


Then Leyland watched Jeter come out of the blocks even faster than he ever had before in October. A single to left in the first inning, his first time up. A double behind Johnny Damon's infield single in the second, a run scored as the Yankees were going ahead of the Tigers, 5-0. Then came a single to right in the bottom of the fourth and then another double and another run scored as the Yankees were making it 7-3 in the bottom of the sixth. He had 142 postseason hits coming into last night. Now the number is 147. His last two at-bats of the last postseason, Game 5 against the Angels, also produced hits, before A-Rod grounded into that famous 5-4-3 double play. So make it seven in a row now.


He has produced bigger numbers than he did during this regular season, even had a bigger batting average once. He has never been more important to his team. It is why he has a chance to get the MVP award away from Justin Morneau and Frank Thomas. None of that will matter to Jeter if he doesn't win his fifth World Series ring, if there is finally a Yankee team worthy of standing with those first Yankee teams on which Jeter played.


So he got his hits last night. The Yankees hit the Tigers big and fast and loud in the third and scored more later. Scott Proctor got out of the seventh and Kyle Farnsworth got through the eighth after walking the leadoff batter. Then Mo Rivera closed things out. This is the way the Yankees used to win all the time. For one night, these were the Yankees Jeter remembers.