When Yankees needed him most, Jeter delivered MVP year
When Yankees needed him most, Jeter delivered MVP year
Updated 9/20/2006 12:20 PM ET
Outside of New York, Derek Jeter is often viewed through a cynic's lens. He plays the biggest position on the biggest team in the biggest market, and so people wonder if he is something of a media fable, the Notre Dame of major league shortstops.
The power numbers don't help, because fans want a mind-blowing sum of homers and RBI, even if their sluggers have stopped frequenting the friendly neighborhood chemist. No, Jeter doesn't give you the long ball. He's an intangible figure in a tangible world.
That makes it easier to embrace the skepticism, to vote with the players who rush to declare the Yankees captain overrated in their anonymous polls. Even after watching Jeter win four World Series titles in his first five seasons, I was swayed by popular outsider thought.
I thought he should move to third base so Alex Rodriguez could play shortstop, and I was as wrong then as those who dismiss Jeter's MVP candidacy are now. Jeter is about to lead his team to its ninth consecutive division title, but this isn't about handing out a sentimental Oscar to a star who's never won for best actor.
This is about putting the value back in valuable, and rewarding a player for preventing his team from falling apart.
There's no point in advancing Jeter's cause by diminishing the performances of Jermaine Dye, Justin Morneau, Johan Santana and David Ortiz, who deserve no such diminishing. Ortiz got jobbed last year, when he deserved the American League award over A-Rod, but this year's Red Sox came undone when it mattered most. And in the wild-card era, if your team isn't at least hot and heavy in the playoff race during September's final hours, you shouldn't be named MVP.
Dye, Morneau and Santana are worthy choices; Jeter just happens to be worthier, as this was the year for the Yankees to finally miss the postseason for the first time since the canceled World Series of '94.
They'd lost Hideki Matsui and Gary Sheffield for the long term, and Robinson Cano went down, too. The A-Rod soap opera was threatening to take down the team, and the Red Sox were threatening to take off with the division.
Through it all, Jeter kept his head down. Kept hitting. Kept running out ground balls. Kept being Derek Jeter.
He's fighting Joe Mauer for a batting title, but victory or defeat there won't define Jeter's season — one at-bat on Aug. 18th will. After the Yanks won the first game of a day-night doubleheader and five-game series in Boston to take a 2½-game lead, the Red Sox were on the verge of knocking it right back to 1½.
They were up 10-8 in the seventh, Mike Timlin pitching to Jeter with the bases loaded and two out. Timlin had owned Jeter, beating him 17 times in 20 attempts. To punctuate this eight-pitch duel, Jeter hit a three-run double, and Boston was never again the same.
Two nights later, after Jonathan Papelbon struck out Bernie Williams and Johnny Damon in the ninth, Jeter blooped home the tying run and, ultimately, allowed for the five-game sweep. A week later, with the Yanks having lost four of five on the West Coast, Jeter personally pulled his team from the brink of another humiliating loss in its house of postseason horrors.
The Angels had won the first two games of the weekend, and people were wondering if the Yanks would ever beat them. They were being Chone Figgins-ed to death, as usual. A-Rod was in the midst of a 1-for-15 series with 10 strikeouts, this in the same building where his playoff misadventures inspired him to confess he'd "played like a dog."
Jeter only smacked two homers, including a two-run tone-setter in the first inning, and made one of his ridiculous, high-hopping throws from the hole to get — you guessed it — Chone Figgins.
These are the snapshots that color the portrait of Derek Jeter. He's best known for his postseason performances, for that option pitch to the plate against the A's, that first-pitch Game 4 homer in the 2000 Subway Series, and that Mr. November homer in the 2001 Series vs. the Diamondbacks.
But this regular season brought out the best in him. Jeter delivered the runs, the hits, the steals, the batting average and the on-base percentage at a time when the Yankees needed all of the above.
He's not the most talented player in the AL. Or the strongest. Or the fastest. Or the most quotable.
Jeter's just the most valuable, and there's nothing for New York myth-makers to exaggerate about that.
Ian O'Connor also writes for The (Westchester County, N.Y.) Journal News
Posted 9/18/2006 10:53 PM ET
Updated 9/20/2006 12:20 PM ET
Copyright 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
Updated 9/20/2006 12:20 PM ET
Outside of New York, Derek Jeter is often viewed through a cynic's lens. He plays the biggest position on the biggest team in the biggest market, and so people wonder if he is something of a media fable, the Notre Dame of major league shortstops.
The power numbers don't help, because fans want a mind-blowing sum of homers and RBI, even if their sluggers have stopped frequenting the friendly neighborhood chemist. No, Jeter doesn't give you the long ball. He's an intangible figure in a tangible world.
That makes it easier to embrace the skepticism, to vote with the players who rush to declare the Yankees captain overrated in their anonymous polls. Even after watching Jeter win four World Series titles in his first five seasons, I was swayed by popular outsider thought.
I thought he should move to third base so Alex Rodriguez could play shortstop, and I was as wrong then as those who dismiss Jeter's MVP candidacy are now. Jeter is about to lead his team to its ninth consecutive division title, but this isn't about handing out a sentimental Oscar to a star who's never won for best actor.
This is about putting the value back in valuable, and rewarding a player for preventing his team from falling apart.
There's no point in advancing Jeter's cause by diminishing the performances of Jermaine Dye, Justin Morneau, Johan Santana and David Ortiz, who deserve no such diminishing. Ortiz got jobbed last year, when he deserved the American League award over A-Rod, but this year's Red Sox came undone when it mattered most. And in the wild-card era, if your team isn't at least hot and heavy in the playoff race during September's final hours, you shouldn't be named MVP.
Dye, Morneau and Santana are worthy choices; Jeter just happens to be worthier, as this was the year for the Yankees to finally miss the postseason for the first time since the canceled World Series of '94.
They'd lost Hideki Matsui and Gary Sheffield for the long term, and Robinson Cano went down, too. The A-Rod soap opera was threatening to take down the team, and the Red Sox were threatening to take off with the division.
Through it all, Jeter kept his head down. Kept hitting. Kept running out ground balls. Kept being Derek Jeter.
He's fighting Joe Mauer for a batting title, but victory or defeat there won't define Jeter's season — one at-bat on Aug. 18th will. After the Yanks won the first game of a day-night doubleheader and five-game series in Boston to take a 2½-game lead, the Red Sox were on the verge of knocking it right back to 1½.
They were up 10-8 in the seventh, Mike Timlin pitching to Jeter with the bases loaded and two out. Timlin had owned Jeter, beating him 17 times in 20 attempts. To punctuate this eight-pitch duel, Jeter hit a three-run double, and Boston was never again the same.
Two nights later, after Jonathan Papelbon struck out Bernie Williams and Johnny Damon in the ninth, Jeter blooped home the tying run and, ultimately, allowed for the five-game sweep. A week later, with the Yanks having lost four of five on the West Coast, Jeter personally pulled his team from the brink of another humiliating loss in its house of postseason horrors.
The Angels had won the first two games of the weekend, and people were wondering if the Yanks would ever beat them. They were being Chone Figgins-ed to death, as usual. A-Rod was in the midst of a 1-for-15 series with 10 strikeouts, this in the same building where his playoff misadventures inspired him to confess he'd "played like a dog."
Jeter only smacked two homers, including a two-run tone-setter in the first inning, and made one of his ridiculous, high-hopping throws from the hole to get — you guessed it — Chone Figgins.
These are the snapshots that color the portrait of Derek Jeter. He's best known for his postseason performances, for that option pitch to the plate against the A's, that first-pitch Game 4 homer in the 2000 Subway Series, and that Mr. November homer in the 2001 Series vs. the Diamondbacks.
But this regular season brought out the best in him. Jeter delivered the runs, the hits, the steals, the batting average and the on-base percentage at a time when the Yankees needed all of the above.
He's not the most talented player in the AL. Or the strongest. Or the fastest. Or the most quotable.
Jeter's just the most valuable, and there's nothing for New York myth-makers to exaggerate about that.
Ian O'Connor also writes for The (Westchester County, N.Y.) Journal News
Posted 9/18/2006 10:53 PM ET
Updated 9/20/2006 12:20 PM ET
Copyright 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
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