Derek Jeter’s career coming to a close

The biggest takeaway from this video is that Will Ferrell now looks like if Beck were the main character of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

Also, if you’ve never noticed Will Ferrell’s bottom teeth before: you’re welcome and I’m sorry.

Now that Jeter is done, his statistics accumulated throughout his 20-year Hall of Fame career are finalized. Jeter ended his career hitting .310/.377/.440, and his Yankees teams won 1,627 of his 2,747 games played, a .592 winning percentage.

Here is where Jeter ranks on various baseball all-time lists:

R-E-TWO-P-E-C-T

FIND OUT WHAT IT MEANS S ME

#2elfie

BUT WAIT THERE ARE OTHER BOSTON ATHLETES WHO WANT TO MEET THE CAP’N.

Fenway Park, never a friendly environment for Derek Jeter, paid the retiring Yankee a lovely tribute in his last game ever:

(It’s spelled #RE2PECT, but close enough.) I didn’t even know the Fenway scoreboard could do letters! But now that I do know that ...

The Yankee Stadium “Bleacher Creatures” did an extra loud roll call Thursday night. At the very moment they got to “DER-EK JET-ER,” this happened:

That’s the first batter, Nick Markakis, going yard EXACTLY in line with the Derek Jeter chant, leading to a smattering of boos amid the chanting. The next guy homered, too. Back-2-back homers for #2! Lovely!

After a gloomy, rainy day in New York, it suddenly got weirdly sunny about 15 minutes before first pitch of Derek Jeter’s final game in New York. And then:

WHY NOT A DOUBLE RAINBOW? HAVE YOU NO RE2PECT, MOTHER NATURE!?

Derek Jeter has had a spectacular baseball career. He’s won championships. He’s been a charismatic superstar. He’s played at a high caliber up until the very twilight of his career. For some reason, though, we talk nearly as much about The Myth of Derek Jeter as we do his actual accomplishments.

The dialogue surrounding Jeter in his final season has been tremendously grating and overwrought, to the point where the consideration of a great baseball player has become actively annoying. Here are the primary ways in which Derek Jeter has been discussed in the months leading up to his retirement:

The West Coast has no love for the Captain, but don’t worry, Jeets: you’ll always have Florida.

(h/t Sporting News)

Are you a true Yankees fan? Prove it.

...

I try not to think about the Higgs-Boson particle much, nor the universe expanding to the point that all the heat goes out of it and it dissipates like a cirrus cloud full of cold, dead stars, or the opposite, that at some point it will run out of the energy necessary for its continued expansion and will snap back like God’s yo-yo, collapsing into a super-dense singularity. Mostly, I try not to think about the fact that I won’t be around to see it all.

Lately, though, Higgs-Boson particle has been in the news as a few helpful physicists have speculated as to why it exists, or that it shouldn’t exist, or that maybe at any moment it will stop existing and we’ll all cease to exist. It could happen... now.

Derek Jeter’s career is almost over and one bar in Boston is either honoring his retirement, or celebrating it. We’ll try to hold the cynicism and assume they’re being nice.

The bar is right across the street from Fenway Park and even if Red Sox fans can’t stand the Yankees’ captain any chance to drink $2 shots is a time for a party.

That said, Olbermann ends the whole thing with “YEAH JEETS,” so we’re good.

I wanted to dislike this video. But look at those little guys, all cute and classy. This is the Derek Jeter highlight video we didn’t know we needed.

And I’ll just search for “Lego gift basket” on the Internet and see what ...

Derek Jeter retires this week, as we’ve heard six times per minute for the last seven months via loudspeakers implanted inches away from our eardrums by the New York Yankees. And whenever a sports thing goes away, memorabilia dealers spring to let us know that we can spend our money to own a part of that sports thing.

Case in point: spend $400 on a sock.

Oh, it’s fine, parents. Derek Jeter will be playing for years and y--

Oh. Oh, right.

Here it is, folks. The most quintessentially, hard-boiled, perfectly distilled New York sports story all pressed into an easily digestible clownfraud nugget.

h/t FTW

I don’t know about you, but this home run calls for a Gatorade celebration.

Jeter entered Thursday hitting just .230/.271/.257 in 66 games at home, and .249/.298/.297 with three home runs overall on the season. It was his first long ball at Yankee Stadium since July 28, 2013, with a span of 75 games and 327 plate appearances in between dingers at home.

There have been many Derek Jeter goodbyes this season, but this one might be the best yet. And if the kid at the 0:55 mark freaking out over an autograph doesn’t make you feel all of the feels, then you and your stone-cold heart are hopeless.

The New York Times calculated that between practice and games, Derek Jeter has swung a bat approximately 342,000 times. You did not ask for this information, but someone decided it would be a good idea if you had it. And to reinforce this point, they made the guesstimate into a freaky infographic that made me do this for an hour:

Don’t do that for an hour.

As part of Derek Jeter’s farewell tour, the Orioles gave him crabs. A big ol’ bucket of crabs.

Yeah, Jeets.

We promise, we’re not posting about this just to screw up Google search results for “kiss Derek Jeter.” Your fanfic is safe.*

*By which I mean my fanfic.