Yankees captain Derek Jeter having season for ages at 35

By Mike Lupica
New York Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/
Tuesday, August 25th 2009, 4:00 AM


This was Paul O'Neill, great Yankee, talking about a great Yankee named Derek Jeter Monday, O'Neill talking about a season in which Jeter has done just about everything right and has been as much an MVP for this Yankee team as Mark Teixeira:

"You kind of come into this year thinking, 'Don't let this be the one when Derek starts to slip.' And what you get instead is a year like this, when he's this kind of leader and this kind of player on the best team in baseball. So you didn't want this to be the year when he started going the other way, and now it turns into one of the great years the guy's ever had."

OAKLAND, CA - AUGUST 17: Derek Jeter(notes) #2 of the New York Yankees stands ready at the plate during the first inning against the Oakland Athletics in a Major League Baseball game at the Oakland Coliseum on August 17, 2009 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images)

The game against the Red Sox on Sunday night wasn't one the Yankees needed. The worst they could do was leave Fenway 5-1/2 games ahead of the Red Sox, and still ahead of the Angels for the best record in the league. But the Yankees didn't want to lose two of three to the Red Sox after the way they've been playing since the All-Star break. They didn't want to lose a series in Boston so soon after sweeping the Red Sox at the Stadium. And they had been beaten, 14-1, the day before.

So of course it was 1-0, Yankees, after the first pitch of the game from Josh Beckett. Did the game matter a little more than usual, even with their big lead in the AL East? Sure. But they all matter to Jeter. He showed up Sunday night because he always does. The season that began with people worried more than ever about his range at shortstop has become something quite different, something to remind you just what Jeter has always meant to the Yankees and what he still means now that they have their best chance in years to win it all again.

Paul O'Neill talked with clear admiration Monday about the season Teixeira has had, about numbers from Teixeira that O'Neill described as "gaudy." He talked about how the Yankee batting order has organized around Teixeira, from Jeter and Johnny Damon ahead of him to Alex Rodriguez and the guys behind him.

But then he was back to talking about his old teammate.

"I'm not saying he read all the things people were saying about his defense at the start of the season, because knowing him he didn't," O'Neill said. "But I have a feeling he was aware of them. And you have to know that somebody as good as Jeets has been for this long would take that as a challenge, to show people they're wrong, whether he'd ever admit that or not. Or put it another way: It doesn't take much to light a fire under a guy who's had a fire going every single day of his career anyway."

Again, this is O'Neill talking. O'Neill, who did all that winning once he got here from Cincinnati, who was as tough a player and as much of a pro as anybody else on one of the best Yankee teams of all time, the Yankee teams that won four World Series in five years between 1996 and 2000 and came within a half-inning of making it five of six. He knows what he watched with Jeter then, knows what he is watching now.

SEATTLE - AUGUST 16: Derek Jeter(notes) #2 of the New York Yankees fields a ground ball against the Seattle Mariners on August 16, 2009 at Safeco Field in Seattle, Washington. The Mariners defeated the Yankees 10-3. (Photo by Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images)

"The thing about him," O'Neill said, "is that he's always known exactly who he is. He's never tried to be anybody else, or do things he can't do. He doesn't try to hit home runs the way A-Rod does. He knows he's not going to be the kind of run producer that Teixeira is. He's Derek Jeter. He's going to get hits and score runs, and he's going to be the guy you want up in a big spot as much as anybody the Yankees have.

"The number one part of his game, as far as I'm concerned, is his consistency. He's solid at the plate and in the field every day, and there's no way to put a proper value on that across a season as long as ours is in baseball."

So the captain of the team, the guy who feels like captain of baseball in New York, is on a big rip right now, one so good over the last two weeks you were shocked when he went hitless on Saturday afternoon at Fenway. He is hitting .332 for the season and has 16 home runs and 57 RBI and has scored 86 runs and has nearly a .400 on-base percentage and has made a grand total of six errors.

He even gave you one of those plays in the hole the other night against Victor Martinez, backhanding the ball and spinning and getting airborne and getting the slow Martinez easily at first.

He is having the kind of all-around season for the Yankees that Dustin Pedroia had last season for the Red Sox, when Pedroia ended up MVP. There was nobody on a contending team having enough of a banging offensive season to take it away from Pedroia, the way Teixeira will probably take it from Jeter. But then Justin Morneau beat Jeter out of an MVP a few years ago even though Jeter hit .343.

People will look at the Yankees and see what a game changer Teixeira has been, and you can throw in the way he's played first base. It doesn't change how valuable Jeter has been to the Yankees, in all phases of the game. At the age of 35, he has even stolen 21 bases. He performs at the highest level of his game the way Mo Rivera still does, all this time after 1996.

The last word on this comes from O'Neill.

"The easiest way to describe it is this: Derek Jeter is still great at being Derek Jeter."