The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter by Ian O'Connor

Author:Ian O'Connor [O'Connor, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Sports & Recreation, Sports, Baseball, Biography & Autobiography, General, History
ISBN: 9780547747606
Google: jSojYAAACAAJ
Amazon: 0547747608
Publisher: Mariner Books
Published: 2012-04-15T04:00:00+00:00

In the tenth inning of Game 4 of the 2001 World Series, Derek Jeter stepped to the plate with a .067 batting average against the Arizona Diamondbacks. Since the start of the five-game American League Championship Series victory over Seattle, Jeter had gone 3 for 32.

He had taken far more punishment on that Game 5 fall against Oakland than he ever admitted, and so Jeter was a shell of his Division Series self against the Mariners, a team that had won a record 116 games in the Year 1 A.A.—After Alex.

Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson had plenty to do with Jeter’s struggles in the first thirty-six innings of the World Series, but the shortstop’s body ached—his hamstring, his shoulder, and his back. The ice packs strapped about his torso and limbs said it all: this was not Derek Jeter trying to win a fourth consecutive title as much as it was the mummified remains of Derek Jeter trying to win again.

“My whole thing has always been, you either play or you don’t play,” Jeter would say. “If you play, I don’t think people want to hear about what’s bothering you or what’s hurting you. I think that is a built-in excuse. . . . It didn’t feel good, but I was all right to play.”

Jeter’s pain threshold was the Yankees’ best friend, and their longtime trainer, Gene Monahan, ranked the shortstop among the toughest players he had ever treated, right there with Thurman Munson and Graig Nettles.

After his fall into the photographers’ pit in the Game 5 victory over the A’s, Jeter was “hobbling around pretty good,” Monahan said. “He had trouble putting his shoes on. He had trouble getting dressed. You could see the pain, and it was a tough time for him. But he’s never going to entertain any thoughts of not playing. His mindset was, ‘This is only going to hurt me for a couple of hours, and I’ve got the night to feel better tomorrow.’”

Through the Seattle series and the first three games of the World Series, Monahan did everything he could to try to piece Jeter back together. “We used a lot of ice, a lot of contrasting back and forth, hot and cold,” the trainer said, “and pretty much when he was at the ballpark we wouldn’t let him do a lot of work on the side. We just saved every ounce of whatever energy and health we could for the innings of the ball game. We got him off his feet, put him up in the training room, and elevated his legs.”

But Jeter needed an off-season more than he needed a training table or a tub. At the time he stepped to the tenth-inning plate in the final moments of Halloween night, Arizona holding a 2–1 World Series lead, Jeter’s biggest contribution to the Yanks had come in the roles of Game 3 host and adviser to the president of the United States.

George W. Bush landed at John F. Kennedy International and flew to Yankee Stadium by helicopter (he touched down on an adjacent ball field).

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