TYLER KEPNER
The New York Times
Published: August 18, 2006
Derek Jeter was the host of “Saturday Night Live” in 2001, and he was nervous about it all week. He had no acting or comic background, and certainly had never performed on live television at Rockefeller Center.
Jeter thought he might make a fool of himself, but the feeling subsided when he took the stage for his monologue. Everything happened so fast that 90 minutes seemed like 10. The task was remarkably easy.
“They have everything on cue cards for you,” Jeter said. “So as long as you can read, you can do it.”
For all of Jeter’s skills, the most useful is his ability to boil down any job to its essence. In a Yankees season marked by injuries to big hitters and the mystifying mind games of Alex Rodriguez, Jeter’s simple approach has stood out more than ever.
“I think that’s where people get in trouble, when they start complicating things,” Jeter said. “It’s really not that complicated. The more complicated you make it, the more difficult it is on you. You’re playing a game where you fail more than you succeed. You’ve got to try to keep it as simple as possible.”
Jeter has often been hailed for his intangibles, the kind of praise that can come off as a way to excuse his numbers. But this season, especially, Jeter has no need to apologize.
With a .338 average, he is second in the American League to Minnesota’s Joe Mauer. He has the best on-base percentage on the Yankees, at .415, and has a better average with runners in scoring position than Boston’s David Ortiz.
Jeter is hitting .373 with runners in scoring position, compared to .300 for Ortiz, who will try to help the Boston Red Sox wrest first place from the Yankees in this weekend’s five-game series at Fenway Park. Ortiz may be the leading candidate for the A.L.’s Most Valuable Player award, but Jeter is in the discussion.
“He’s definitely been our guy,” said the hitting coach Don Mattingly, who won the award in 1985. “He’s been as consistent as anybody, and he’s done everything you can to win games. So I don’t think there’s any question you can make a case for him.”
Jeter’s home runs are down this season — he has only 10 — but he leads the team in doubles and is on pace for 97 runs batted in. He has 26 steals, 6 shy of his career high. Before his error on Thursday, an ugly one in which he collided with Rodriguez on a pop-up, he had a better fielding percentage (.980) than he did last season, when he won his second Gold Glove at shortstop.
Monday’s game against the Angels was typical for Jeter. In the third inning, with a runner on third and one out, he hit a fly ball to center field. Four innings later, with a runner on first and no outs in a tie game, Jeter bunted the runner over.
In both cases, he got more than he was trying for: the fly ball turned into a homer, and the bunt went for a single. The important thing was that Jeter recognized what each situation demanded, which is easier said than done.
“I wish I could do it a lot more like him,” Johnny Damon said. “I get out of my game sometimes. I’ll go a long time without attempting a bunt, and it’s like, ‘That’s always been part of my game, so why don’t I do it more often?’ ”
Sometimes, Damon admitted, he lets the cozy dimensions of Yankee Stadium seduce him into swinging for homers. Jeter is more disciplined, and it makes him harder to prepare for.
“He may drag bunt one time, and the next time he might try to drive it out of the field on you,” Baltimore Orioles catcher Chris Widger said. “It’s hard, because there’s no one way to pitch him to get him out. He’s one of those rare guys that could bat leadoff or bat third, and he could be very successful anywhere because he’ll adapt his game to whatever the team needs for him to do.”
Jeter had his best statistics in 1999, with a .349 average, 24 homers and 102 runs batted in, all career highs. Asked if this year was his best, Jeter predictably said his best seasons were 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2000 — the years that ended with World Series parades.
Better than any player, perhaps, Jeter lives by the now famous Herman Edwards credo: You play to win the game. That is how he keeps it uncomplicated.
“It’s simple if you look at it as: Try to win,” Jeter said. “That’s the bottom line. If you win, everybody benefits. It’s not like, ‘I won, I lost.’ It’s, ‘We win, we lost.’ That’s the only way I’ve thought about it.”
Jeter talks like this all the time. He says he knows reporters get tired of boring answers, but sometimes there is nothing much to say. He responds politely to questions, but objects to the premise of most.
“People say, ‘Are you more motivated now because you lost?’ ” Jeter said, referring to the Yankees’ years without a title. “How could you be more motivated if you want to win all the time? You’re not extra-motivated. It’s the same thing.”
Widger said he recognized the same attitude in his White Sox teammates last season.
“I just think winning means more to him than all the other stuff does, and if more people did that, your team is better,” Widger said. “In Chicago last year, we had a lot of guys that played the game that way, and that’s why we won. We weren’t the most talented, but everybody played to win.”
Jeter helped create the Yankees’ modern mentality, in which only championship seasons are considered a success. It is an all-or-nothing mind-set that, for some, creates a joyless, pressurized environment.
But for Jeter, it is simply a fact. Every team wants to win as often as possible, so the goal must be a title every season. It is not like this everywhere, but for Jeter, it would be.
“I don’t know what it would be like, but I wouldn’t change,” he said. “Now don’t get me wrong, I do understand it’s a game of numbers and people are going to pay attention to your numbers, say you did this or did that. I would love to hit .400. That would be a lot better than .200. You take pride in how you play. But that shouldn’t be your main focus. Your main focus should be whether you win or lose.”
Closer Mariano Rivera, another straightforward thinker, grew up with Jeter in the Yankees’ organization. Veteran teammates helped form his makeup, Rivera said, and so did early success.
“We won all those championships, and that helps a lot,” Rivera said. “That helps your mental game.”
Jeter has mastered the mental game and continues to make the most of the physical. His skills are exceptional, but a one-dimensional approach controls every move.
“If you constantly sit around worrying about your stats, once you get in a funk, you’ll never get out,” Jeter said. “Because all you’re worried about is yourself. If you’re worried about how we can win today, that’s your only concern.”
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