Derek Jeter Gets Hit No. 3,000: A Home Run

Dear Captain:

I write you today with a modest proposal: Now that you’ve achieved one of the game’s most treasured milestones in a most spectacular fashion, you have been afforded the perfect opportunity to call it a day and hang up your spikes.

Jeter and Nomar started as full-time players at ages 22 and 23 in 1996 and 1997, respectively. Rodriguez’s first full year was also 1996, but he was a spry 20. By the time he was 23 in 1999, he already had 106 career homers, while Jeter and Nomar were just getting into their peak years.

Jeter won the Rookie of the Year award in 1996 basically on a technicality, as Rodriguez had spent his rookie eligibility in two previous partial seasons. While there was nothing wrong with Jeter’s .314/.370/.430 line -- a fantastic showing from a shortstop, then and now -- Rodriguez hit .358/.414/.631 with 91 extra-base hits. Garciaparra would come up a year later and win his own Jackie Robinson Award, backed by a .306/.342/.534 campaign with 34 homers, 209 hits, 22 steals, and 85 extra-base hits. The league had quickly gone from having an aging Cal Ripken and the oft-injured Barry Larkin leading at short to three players who looked like they were destined to be all-time greats.

It’s an obvious correlation -- you get to 3,000 hits by playing for a long time, and playing for a long time usually means that you get old. Science! But of the 27 hitters who made the club before Jeter, there were a few of them who weren’t necessarily on their way out. Here’s a look at 3,000-hit club, grouped by how they did in the seasons after they joined the club:

And though Roberto Clemente is technically a member of this group, that’s only because of his untimely death. In his age-37 season, Clemente hit .312/.356/.479 to finish with exactly 3,000 hits. If Jon Matlack doesn’t hang a first-inning curve in this game, Clemente might not be in the club at all.

Even with 3,000 hits, Derek Jeter is neither The Greatest Yankee nor The Greatest Shortstop ... But at the same time, he has clearly reached lofty heights among Yankees and among shortstops.

Let’s start with the New York Yankees, the greatest franchise in the history of American professional sports.

The Yankees’ Derek Jeter could not have scripted the day of his 3,000th hit any better than it actually turned out.

Jeter finished the day with the home run for his 3,000th hit, three singles and a double and two runs scored. In doing so, posted only the second five-hit game by a player getting his 3,000th hit; Craig Biggio also got five hits the day he hit No. 3000. However, Biggio went 5-for-6 in that June 28, 2007 game, so Jeter stands alone as the only 3,000-hit player to go 5-for-5 on his milestone day. The only downside of his day — he was caught stealing after that eighth-inning single.

And, Vasquez later updated with more information:

YES Network reported during their telecast of the game that Lopez asked for nothing in return for giving the ball back to Jeter, but the Yankees gave him the following: front-row seats for Sunday’s game, four tickets for every remaining game this season including any Yankees postseason games, and some autographed memorabilia. Nice gestures on both sides.

The home run tied the game 1-1, and in addition, Jeter became only the second player of the previous 28 to hit a home run for his landmark hit -- Wade Boggs, then with the Devil Rays, did that in 1999.

Jeter doesn’t hit that many home runs, according to Darren Rovell:

But now that he’s there, we’ve been given an opportunity to reflect. Jeter has become the 28th player in baseball history to amass 3,000 hits. From an analytical perspective, hits are just a counting stat, and not even a particularly insightful counting stat, but the 3,000 hits milestone is still meaningful. To reach this level requires of a player a certain amount of talent, consistency and durability, and now that we’re done tracking the day-to-day stuff, we can look back on Jeter’s impressive career and try to appreciate what he’s been.

And what he’s been is a hell of a pure hitter. He’s also been so many other things. A shortstop. A captain. A hero. A celebrity. An icon. But for our purposes here, I’m most interested in talking about Jeter at the plate.

But how does Jeter’s milestone hit stack up against the other 27 players to have 3,000 or more hits?

First, we are going to eliminate one player from this discussion: the very first 3,000-hit man, Adrian “Cap” Anson. We do this because there is no complete agreement on exactly how many hits Anson has. Baseball-reference says 3,435, but MLB.com says 3,011, not counting Anson’s time in the primordial National Association, the predecessor to the National League. Then there’s the oddity of walks being counted as hits in 1887, which are listed in his page at the Hall of Fame website with a total of 3,081, but that doesn’t include NA time, either. So there’s no way we can definitively say when Anson got his “3,000th hit”.

Jeter was the second hitter to bat in the bottom of the third inning in Saturday’s game against the Rays; he took a ball, then a called strike, then another ball from Price. After a foul ball, Price threw a pitch outside the zone to run the count to 3-2. Jeter then fouled off two Price offerings before hitting the home run for the milestone hit.

It was the third home run of the season for Jeter and 237th of his career. And, also importantly for Yankee fans, it tied the game 1-1.

We’ll update this StoryStream™ further as Jeter has more at-bats in this afternoon’s contest.

The Yankee captain got this one out of the way early, leading off the bottom of the first inning by crushing a double to center field. With Jeter’s mother and father in the stands, the New York faithful enthusiastically cheered the 37-year old as he rounded the base paths. In his next at-bat, Jeter grounded out to third base to end to second inning.

Following a long New York road trip, both Jeter and Yankee fans were delighted that the shortstop would have an opportunity to break the record within the friendly confines of Yankee Stadium. The Bronx Bombers have a four game home stand against Tampa Bay before heading back out onto the road for another eight game road trip.

Of course, this series isn’t just about Jeter getting to 3,000 hits with the Rays sitting four games back of first place in the division, but the presence of meaningful baseball games won’t keep the media from focusing on one man and his quest for a major milestone. Jeter will be facing some tough pitchers, but he gets off to as easy of a start as possible on Thursday night.

I’ll tell you what we decided, but first, a bit of history. In recent years, baseballs that represent significant events in baseball history have been sold at auction for large amounts of money.

When Bonds launched his 756th home run in 2007 to break Hank Aaron’s career home run mark, the ball also wound up auctioned, this time online; Marc Ecko bought it for $752,467 and then conducted an online poll for fans to decide what he should do with it. The winning choice was “brand it with an asterisk and donate it to the Hall of Fame”, which was done. Bonds called Ecko an “idiot” for doing this.

Derek Jeter went 1-for-3 with a walk in the New York Yankees’ 5-3 loss to the Cleveland Indians on Wednesday, bringing him up to 2,997 hits for his career.

Jeter was one of the few Yankees to get to Indians starter Justin Masterson, who struck out six in eight innings and only allowed Jeter’s eighth-inning double and two other hits. All the Yankees’ damage came against reliever Vinnie Pestano, who faced three batters in the ninth and didn’t record an out. Chris Perez came on for the save.

Derek Jeter will continue his pursuit of the 3,000th hit of his career Wednesday night, and he’ll do it as part of the New York Yankees’ starting lineup, ESPN New York reports. Jeter, who started at shortstop for the Yankees in the second game of their three-game series in Cleveland on Tuesday night, is recovering from an injury that sent him to the minor leagues for rehabilitation, and Yankees manager Joe Girardi was leaning toward sitting Jeter for Wednesday’s game late Tuesday night.

That’s apparently changed, and now Jeter will look to follow up his two-hit performance against the Indians on Tuesday with more climbing toward the 3,000 hit plateau. Jeter currently sits at 2,996 hits in his career.

No, Jeter is a Yankee, and so we shall be treated to this:

That would be all she wrote, however, as the next four at-bats would not be as kind to the pinstriped shortstop. Jeter struck out looking in the third inning, flied out to center in the fifth, grounded out to short in the seventh, and grounded out to third in the ninth. His average after the game raised one point, to .257.

Derek Jeter returned from a calf injury to play his first game since mid-June, but he didn’t move any closer to achieving 3,000 career hits. Jeter remains stuck on 2,994 after going 0-for-4 in the New York Yankees’ 6-3 loss to the Cleveland Indians Sunday.

In the first, Jeter reached on an error by the Indians’ Lonnie Chisenhall. He flied out to center field in the third and grounded out to third in the sixth. He lined out in the eighth inning.

So now it looks like the big moment might be delayed for more than two weeks. If so, we’ll postpone these daily updates until Captain November is back in the lineup.

Obviously, every Yankees fan -- not to mention Jeter himself, no doubt -- is hoping he’ll reach 3,000 against the Rangers. But if not, he’ll likely get there during the Yankees’ weekend visit to Wrigley Field, a fine setting for a historic achievement.

Please watch this space for regular updates. And for much more about Derek Jeter and the Yankees, please visit Pinstripe Alley.