Mike Lupica
The Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com
Sunday, October 10th 2010, 4:00 AM
NEW YORK - OCTOBER 09: Derek Jeter hits a single in the bottom of the fourth inning against the Minnesota Twins during Game Three of the ALDS part of the 2010 MLB Playoffs at Yankee Stadium on October 9, 2010 in the Bronx borough of New York City. (Getty Images)
Joe Girardi gets a big new contract from the Yankees when the season is over, if Girardi wants to stay. Mariano Rivera will get a new contract for one more year, maybe with an option for one more after that, even though Mo turns 41 in a month. Girardi might be a manager who has just won two World Series in a row. Rivera? He is to closers what Babe Ruth was to hitters.
But the main event will be Derek Jeter's new contract.
Jeter is going for his sixth World Series ring with the Yankees. He has become the iconic Yankee of his time in New York, is regarded as one of the great winners of his time, in any sport. More than that, Jeter is the Yankee brand they sell with both hands - class, history, excellence - and has been since the winning came back to the old Stadium.
Now his contract is up.
His contract is up in a year when he has hit nearly 45 points lower than his career batting average. Next year, in June, he turns 37 and now there are all sorts of questions about whether that will be a young 37 or the opposite.
But he is Derek Jeter, captain of everything the Yankees want to be. Is he looking for three more years when the season is over? Four? How far does he go with this and how far do the Yankees go?
And who looks bad if it isn't easy?
Does he already have a number in mind, money and years? Do they? Who has the leverage here, really? Does the .270 he hit this season, nearly 45 points less than his lifetime average, mean he's slipped badly, or is it just a sub-standard season, and that means by his lofty standards?
The wisdom on this, at least for me, came from Tommy John a long time ago.
"When you're young and you have a bad year, it's just a bad year," John said. "When you're old and you have a bad year, you're old."
Put me down as somebody who thinks he goes back to hitting .300 next season, whether he leads off or not. And put me down as somebody who expects him to have a big postseason. In beating the Twins, he had four hits in 14 at-bats, but I saw him hit the ball in the first two games the way everybody did. And know he started to look like himself again at the end of the regular season, hitting nearly .330 his last 20 games.
Derek Jeter starts a double play on a ball hit by Boston Red Sox Daniel Nava during the second inning of their MLB American League baseball game at Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts October 3, 2010.(Reuters)Of course he isn't going anywhere, both sides know it, he needs them and they need him. If Jeter wants four years he should get them, whether the Yankees think they are wildly overpaying him at $20 million a year or not. You are not required to pay that kind of money for the famous intangibles we always talk about with Jeter, but guess what? You tell me who will be this kind of Yankee - the one everybody still wants the Yankees to be - ever again.
"You hear a lot about substance and style in sports," Orioles manager Buck Showalter says. "Well, with Derek his substance IS his style."
Showalter first saw Jeter when he was a kid in 1995, remembers him on the top step of the dugout watching every move Don Mattingly made, watching the way Mattingly played the game, the way Mattingly represented the Yankees.
Showalter says, "Derek has accepted the covenant that Donnie accepted, the covenant of playing for the Yankees and playing for New York. The covenant of being the face of the Yankees. If you have to explain to people what his presence means on a baseball team, especially THAT team, the comfort level his presence gives to everybody else, then maybe you haven't fully appreciated what you've been seeing."
Showalter is asked if he thinks Jeter has slipped, and laughs.
"We've ALL slipped," he says. "I have to write things down I used to remember in my sleep. But I think anybody who counts him out is making a huge mistake. Don't sell him short. And never sell the heart of a champion short."
A month or so ago, I was having this same conversation with an American League manager who put it this way: "Tell you what: When they decide they don't want him, I'll get in my car and go to New York and pick him up."
Now Buck Showalter, managing against Jeter in the AL East, says, "To this day, Jeter is everything right about competing at the highest level. You look around baseball and you see guys and compare them to other guys." Showalter mentions another young star and says, "I watch him and think, he runs just like Alex (Rodriguez). But who's like Jeter? No one."
Showalter has heard what everybody has heard about Jeter, that he cheats more on the fastball than he used to, that he's lost more range. But then Showalter says that when he manages against him, he still does everything he can not to let Jeter beat him, even if it means walking him in a big spot in a .270 season.
"You wait," Showalter says. "There'll be a moment in the playoffs when there's blood in the water, and he'll get the kind of hit he always has. Other guys have emotional at-bats. He never does. It's why he's been the kind of big-game player he's been."
There is an old line: Pay the man. In Jeter's case, put it another way: Overpay the man. Buck Showalter talks about the covenant Jeter has had with the Yankees. They have the same one with him. People think this is going to be a hard negotiation. It ought to be easy.
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