Tonight’s game has been called.

[Picture via Puckbox]

A baseball player’s 3000th hit is often referred to as a milestone, but the plateau is really more of a destination. After all, very few hitters ever reach that level, and of the ones who do, not too many travel on much further.

The real milestones are all the dinks, dunks and drives that add up to a career. Even though the round numbers at the end are what we most remember, the smaller steps along the way can sometimes create our fondest memories. So, instead of looking forward to Derek Jeter’s 3,000th hit, what better way to celebrate his accomplishment than by looking back over the previous 2,998?

What are your favorite Jeter moments? Listed below are some highlights culled from the Captain’s long road to 3,000.

May 30, 1995 (#1): One day after going 0-5 in his major league debut, Derek Jeter recorded his first major league hit on a ground ball pulled through the shortstop hole. The single, which came of the Mariners’ Tim Belcher, was an atypical hit for Jeter, who would quickly establish himself as a prolific opposite field hitter.

Breaking Down the Road to 3,000 Hits (click to enalrge)

Source: Baseball-reference.com

April 2, 1996 (#13): Although Jeter played 12 games in 1995, he truly announced his presence on opening day in 1996. During the spring, an injury to Tony Fernandez thrust him into the role of an everyday shortstop, leading to inevitable questions about whether the 22-year old could handle such a prominent role. By the end of the game, Jeter had provided all the answers. Not only did he make a sensational over the shoulder catch, but the lanky rookie also delivered his first major league home run off Dennis Martinez.

Derek Jeter’s Favorite Victims

Source: Baseball-reference.com

September 21, 1996 (#190): With the score tied 11-11 in the bottom of the 10th inning of a game versus Boston, Jeter singled with the bases loaded to give the Yankees a walk off victory on national TV.  The winning tally was the first of  Jeter’s six game-ending hits to date.

August 20, 1997 (#345 and #347): For the first time in his career, Jeter belted two home runs in a game. The first was a lead off homer off the Angels Mark Langston, while the second (Jeter’s third hit of the game) was a three-run blast off Shigetoshi Hasegawa that helped provide the margin of victory. The Yankees’ shortstop would match the feat on nine other occasions.

May 6, 1998 (#423): Jeter’s ninth inning home run off old teammate John Wetteland gave the shortstop his first of only three games with five RBIs.

September 25, 1998 (#585): Jeter reached the 200-hit plateau for the first time with a first inning single of the Devil Rays’ Dave Eiland. Over the course of his career, he surpassed 200 hits in seven different seasons, the most every by a big league shortstop.

Most 200-Hit Seasons by a Shortstop*

*Based on players with at least 80% of all games played at SS.
Source: Baseball-reference.com

September 26, 1999 (#798): The Devil Rays were the victims of another Jeter milestone when Steve Sparks surrendered a double to Jeter that plated his 100th RBI. That season would be the only time Jeter topped the century mark for RBIs. Also during 1999, Jeter established career highs in just about every major offensive category.

May 23, 2001 (#1060-1064): Jeter’s 5-5 performance against the Red Sox was the first of two times he had at least five hits and the only time he was perfect in doing so. Making the game more memorable was the fact that the first three tallies came off former Yankee David Cone.

May 13, 2003 (#1392): After missing six weeks with a dislocated shoulder suffered on opening day, Jeter returned to the lineup and was greeted by loud ovations before each at bat. Finally, in the bottom of the eighth inning, Jeter rewarded the crowd with a single to left field off the Angels’ Brendan Donnelly. Although inconsequential to the game, Jeter’s ground ball through the third base hole was a comforting sight for the Yankees, who had played without their Captain for almost 40 games.

April 29, 2004 (#1561): Jeter entered the game against the Athletics mired in the worst slump of his career. In addition to a shockingly low average of .161, he was also in the midst of a nightmarish 0-32 stretch, which, for the first time in his career, elicited some boos from the Stadium crowd. However, Jeter’s bat finally awoke with a lead off homerun against Barry Zito. From that point forward, the Captain returned to form by batting .313/.368/.514.

April 5, 2005 (1737): On the heels of their historic collapse against the Red Sox in the 2004 ALCS, the Yankees opened the following the season with Boston on the schedule. In the first game, the Yankees enacted a measure of revenge behind the pinstripe debut of Randy Johnson, but when the Red Sox touched up Mariano Rivera for a blown save in the second, it seemed like the ghosts of the following season might be revisited. Instead, Jeter restored the karma by starting the ninth inning with a walk off home run versus Keith Foulke. To date, that homer remains the only walkoff in Jeter’s regular season career (he also had one in Game 5 of the 2001 World Series). Although mostly symbolic at the time, every victory over Boston proved vital as the division title was decided based on a head-to-head tie breaker.

June 18, 2005 (#1811): By 2005, Derek Jeter had accomplished just about everything. However, despite 155 plate appearances with the bases loaded, he had never hit a grand slam. That string, which at the time was the longest in the majors, was finally snapped when Jeter lined a fastball from the Cubs’ Joe Borowski over the left center field wall for a bases clearing homer.

May 26, 2006 (#2000): Jeter’s infield single off the Royals’ Scott Elarton wasn’t exactly a booming way to reach the 2,000 hit mark, but it counted just the same.

September 16, 2006 (2132): Jeter concluded a 25-game hitting streak, the longest of his career, with a fifth inning single against the Red Sox’ Josh Beckett. Over the span, which encompassed 106 at bats, Jeter batted .377/.432/.538.

Derek Jeter’s Longest Hitting Streaks

Source: Baseball-reference.com

September 16, 2008 (2531): Jeter’s first inning single off the White Sox Gavin Floyd was his 1,270th at Yankees Stadium, passing Lou Gehrig for the most ever by any player at the House that Ruth built. With the Yankees’ scheduled to head across the street in 2009, Jeter entered the final home stand needing 10 hits in 11 games, but after three consecutive games with 3 hits apiece to start the stretch, the record breaker soon became inevitable.

September 11, 2009 (2,722): On the anniversary of 9/11, Jeter provided a reason to celebrate when his third inning single moved him past Gehrig into first place on the Yankees’ all-time hit list.

Reggie Jackson was my idol when I was growing up. He was more than just a Yankee and I stuck with him when he signed with the Angels. My favorite Yankees were Ron Guidry and Willie Randolph. Later on, I loved Dave Winfield and Rickey Henderson but Don Mattingly was my guy. Which is to say that there is something about the quiet guys that I’ve always admired. Derek Jeter is one of those guys.

But Jeter is more than just a Yankee too, he’s Mr. Yankee. You can argue that Mariano Rivera has been the most crucial Yankee of the past generation. He is the best short-closer of ’em all, but he’s not the public face of the franchise. Jeter is and it’s hard to write about him and not stumble into a field of cliches–he’s the modern Joe DiMaggio, polite but removed, guarded, plastic. He hustles, never complains, and “plays the game the right way.”

All of which is true but here’s what I’ll always remember about Jeter: he looks like he is having fun. He’s composed, the good student who knows enough to cut a joke when the teacher isn’t looking, not effusive like Jose Reyes, but I’ve rarely seen Jeter not enjoying himself on the field. The opposing players all seem to like him and he’ll chat with the catcher or the first baseman. He smiles–he’s no DiMaggio, he’s not Garbo–and he loves the competition of the game, the big moment. Here’s Tom Boswell:

Baseball has a name for the player who, in the eyes of his peers, is well attuned to the demands of his discipline; he is called “a gamer.” The gamer does not drool, or pant, before the cry of “Play ball.” Quite the opposite. He is the player, like George Brett or Pete Rose, who is neither too intense, nor too lax, neither lulled into carelessness in a dull August doubleheader nor wired too tight in an October playoff game. The gamer may scream and curse when his mates show the first hints of laziness, but he makes jokes and laughs naturally in the seventh game of the Series.

That’s Jeter. Doug Glanville, a former teammate, offers a sharp appreciation today in the Times:

Jeter’s career has been more like a plateau curve. He came on the scene at 20, made a near-instant impact, then stayed remarkably consistent and virtually injury-free year in and year out, cruising on a plane of excellence. In many respects, he spoiled us. When you progress on a flat line, outside observers are lulled into the tacit expectation that this is how it’s supposed to be. Players like this produce so deceptively that we miss the escalating work ethic required to stave off age, the sheer dominating focus it takes to be so steady at such a high level.

Now we are watching him slow down, finding out that not even Jeter can avoid the human condition. The fact that the Yankees won 14 of 18 games during his recent time on the D.L. is a reminder that even great personal accomplishment stands on shaky ground when it comes to a humming team machine. So Jeter has two ways to go. He could take his foot off the pedal and ride gravity down the gradual curve to the bottom. Or, it could end much as it began for him and he’ll go down as precipitously as he rose in the game, though his superhero status in the eyes of his supporters may grant him a parachute to soften the landing.

I was at the Stadium one day early in Jeter’s rookie year when I heard a girl yell his name: “Deh-rick Gee-dah.” She had a classic New York accent and she screeched his name again and again. I still here that voice in my head when I see him play. I appreciate that he takes his job seriously but  is grounded enough to realize he’s playing a game. He’s never forgotten to enjoy the ride. And we’ve enjoyed it along with him. What more can you ask?

[Photo Credit: N.Y. Daily News]

This has not been a good year for baseball, at least from an historical standpoint. Hall of Famers Harmon Killebrew and Duke Snider have died. Notable players like Jim Northrup and Paul Splittorff have also left us. Gary Carter is battling an aggressive form of brain cancer. And now we have lost one of the most brilliant managerial minds of the expansion era, the great Dick Williams, who died on Thursday at the age of 82.

Dick Williams led three different franchises to the World Series. He might have led a fourth, the New York Yankees, if only Charlie Finley had been a more reasonable man.

Fed up with Finley’s endless meddling and his detestable “firing” of Mike Andrews during the 1973 World Series, Williams announced that he was stepping down as Oakland’s managers only moments after the A’s beat the Mets in the World Series. A few days later, Williams said he would consider any offers from other major league teams, but he clearly had one club in mind. “Sure I’d love to be with the Yankees,” Williams told famed sportswriter Red Foley. “Anyone who says he wouldn’t is crazy.”

As Williams discussed his resignation during the A’s’ victory celebration, Charlie Finley told his manager that he wished he would return. Speaking on national television, Finley added that he would not stand in Williams’ way should he not change his mind about returning to Oakland.

Two days later, Finley decided to change his mind regarding Williams’ future. Oakland farm director John Claiborne had suggested to Finley that he exact some form of compensation in exchange for Williams’ services, since Williams was still officially under contract to the A‘s. Any major league team wishing to hire Williams as manager would have to compensate the A’s—with players and/or cash, but preferably players. When George Steinbrenner asked Finley for permission to contact Williams, he received a blunt response. “Absolutely not,” Finley told the Associated Press. “They [the Yankees] seemed stunned and wanted to know why.” Finley explained that he had recently given Williams a two-year contract extension. If the Yankees did not properly compensate the A’s, “there will be court action,” Finley vowed.

Though Finley was technically correct, Williams felt that Finley’s failure to live up to his initial vow was the larger issue. Williams expressed surprise at Finley’s turnabout in an interview with The Sporting News. “It’s not like Mr. Finley to go back on his word,” said Williams, his words dripping with sarcasm. “But this is an about-face.” In subsequent interviews, Williams went further, stopping just short of directly calling his former boss a liar. “Charlie says one thing and does another.”

Finley responded to Williams’ claims by trying to clarify his initial remarks during the A’s’ post-game celebration. When he said he would not “stand in the way,” he was referring to Williams’ options in the business world, not in the baseball community. Finley said he never intended to allow Williams to walk off to another managerial job, without some sort of compensation coming his way. This was Finley at his best–or his worst, depending on your perspective–playing semantic gymnastics in an effort to stick it to Williams and the Yankees.

Although Finley also claimed that he preferred Williams return as his manager in Oakland, he really did not. In fact, he had already sent out feelers to the Orioles about the availability of their manager, Earl Weaver, during the World Series. Weaver working for Finley, now that would have been interesting. Not surprisingly, Orioles general manager Frank Cashen refused to give Finley permission to talk to Weaver.

Contract legalities prevented the Yankees, or any other team, from negotiating with Williams. Yet, the Yankees made it clear they wanted Williams. Prior to the winter meetings in Houston, the Yankees finally agreed to compensate Finley, offering veteran second baseman Horace Clarke. Finley said no to Clarke, a fair hitter, speedy runner, and a mediocre fielder, but counter-offered by asking for one of three other players: Thurman Munson, Bobby Murcer, or Mel Stottlemyre. In other words, Finley wanted one of the three best players on the New York roster, while the Yankees were offering about their 15th best player.

In stage two of negotiations, Finley met with Yankee general manager Gabe Paul at the winter meetings. Finley backed off on his request for established stars like Munson, Murcer, or Stottlemyre. Instead, he asked for two of the Yankees’ best minor league prospects: first baseman-outfielder Otto Velez and left-handed pitcher Scott McGregor. “Both?” an incredulous Gabe Paul exclaimed to Finley, according to a story by Dick Young of the New York Daily News. “You can’t have either.”

Finley talked further with Paul, asking for either one of the two, Velez or McGregor, plus a sum of cash. Finley then offered to eliminate the cash part of his request, but wanted the Yankees to include one of the following lower-level prospects—outfielders Kerry Dineen and Terry Whitfield, first baseman John Shupe, or third baseman Steve Coulson—along with either McGregor or Velez. Paul’s response was the same as before—no deal. The two sides had reached a stalemate, ending their meeting in Houston.

Finley’s stubborn posture on ample compensation left Williams furious and frustrated. The former A’s’ manager told reporters that he was considering filing a lawsuit against Finley on the grounds that his former employer was running interference on his legitimate efforts to find new work. Williams also mentioned his disappointment with the American League’s failure to intervene in the matter. Why didn’t league president Joe Cronin step in and determine which players the Yankees should surrender to the A’s in a trade for Williams?

“The problem is between New York and Oakland,” claimed a neutral Cronin in an interview with The Sporting News. Perhaps Cronin wanted to steer away from any involvement in the case as he prepared for his own retirement from the American League office.

Williams wanted the Yankees, the Yankees wanted him, Cronin wanted no part of the dispute, and Finley insisted that he wanted Williams to continue managing the A’s. Since Williams still had a signed contract with the A’s for the 1974 season, Finley reasoned, he still considered Williams his manager. In fact, he continued mailing Williams paychecks on the first and 15th day of each month through the end of the calendar year. Williams later revealed that he had received the checks on a timely basis from Finley, but had neglected to cash any of them after his resignation. Williams did not want to feel beholden to Finley, at least not in any financial way.

On December 13, the Yankees, exasperated in their negotiations with Finley and with Cronin’s refusal to intercede, decided to force the issue by making a bold move that was typical Steinbrenner. The Boss announced that he had reached a contractual agreement with Williams to manage in the Bronx. General manager Gabe Paul introduced Williams to the media at a Yankee Stadium press conference. Williams donned a Yankee cap and uniform jersey and smiled widely for reporters. Photographs of Williams wearing Yankee paraphernalia would eventually become collector’s items.

The Yankees’ press conference unveiling Williams infuriated Finley. He placed an immediate protest with Cronin, who was now forced to make a decision. Finley wasted little time in expressing his contempt for the Yankees, who had essentially tried to steal one of his contracted employees. “What if I tried to sign Bobby Murcer?” Finley told a reporter. “Wouldn’t the Yankees be furious with me for trying to sign one of their best players, one who was already under contract to New York?”

On December 20, just one week after the Yankees had signed Williams, Cronin ruled that Finley still held rights to the veteran manager. Without Finley’s approval, the Yankees would not be allowed to employ Williams as their manager in 1974. Given the letter of the law, Finley was clearly in the right–and the Yankees had no argument.

“Dick Williams was my manager yesterday, he’s my manager today, and he’ll be my manager tomorrow,” Finley emphatically told the New York Daily News. He now refused to even negotiate the compensation issue with the hated Yankees. After several last-ditch legal efforts to secure Williams, the Yankees finally surrendered in their pursuit of the World Championship manager. On January 3, 1974, the Yankees introduced former Pittsburgh Pirates skipper Bill Virdon as their new manager. He would remain on the job until midway through the 1975 season, when Billy Martin came on to the scene.

If Williams had been allowed to manage the Yankees, it would have been interesting to observe the managerial machinations. A far more accomplished skipper than Virdon, Williams might have lasted until the 1976 season, when the Yankees won the American League pennant. Though known as a disciplinarian and general hardass, Williams had a better grasp on his personal life than Martin, and might have avoided the kind of behavior that would have given The Boss a reason to fire him. Who knows, Dick Williams might have been the man to lead the Yankees to their two world championships of the late 1970s.

As it turned out, Williams would eventually join the Yankees as a front office advisor, a position that kept him safe from Steinbrenner’s second guesses. He also wouldn’t need those extra championships to make the Hall of Fame. The Hall’s Veterans’ Committee elected Williams to the Cooperstown shrine in 2008, giving him nearly three years to bask in the glory of the game’s highest achievement.

Williams deserves his spot in the Hall of Fame. On a personal note, I had the privilege to meet him and interview him several times, and always came away impressed with his amiable nature, his sense of humor, and his love of the Yankee organization. But part of me still wishes that Dick Williams would have had one shot working the Yankee dugout, right under the thumb of The Boss.

Here are two excellent reasons not to arrive late to the ballpark when a beloved player is chasing a milestone. First, you may miss his only hit of the game. Second, you may miss the announcement of the defensive alignments and spend the entire game yelling at the opposing thirdbaseman by the wrong name.

But my companion to last night’s game got snarled on the 6:15 NJ Transit train and delayed our departure from Penn Station by 45 minutes. We arrived as Derek Jeter advanced to third on Curtis Granderson’s ground out. The buzz over hit 2998, a deep liner to left-center which Jeter hustled into a double, was still ringing as we watched the Yankees squander a run-scoring, game-tying opportunity .

We were bummed, but saw the replay a dozen times. So we were more grateful that the remainder of the game would be drenched in possibility than bummed we missed the hit. The Yankees threatened to tie the game again in the second with one-out hits by Posada and Martin, but whereas Alex struck out in the first, Gardner fouled out in the second to miss the chance.

Jeter got his second at bat in the second and topped it weakly to the thridbaseman. This is the defining contact of Jeter’s last season and a half. The barely grazed topper to third. And then I am always surprised how not-close the play is at firstbase. Still two at bats in two innings was exactly what the doctor ordered. I said, “As long as the Yankees don’t collapse offensively, Jeter is going to get six at bats and they’re score enough to win.”

Then they collapsed offensively. Jeff Niemann was masterful. The only Yankee looking comfortable at the plate was Robinson Cano. He looked like a varsity player suiting up with the freshman. His swing was sweet and pure last night, lacing the ball four times and accounting for the Yankees only run with a long homer to right.

The Rays were all over Bartolo Colon from the start. In the games I’ve seen Colon pitch, he had very good control. Tonight, his strike to ball ratio was terrible, only 59 of 92 pitches were strikes, and he struggled through almost every inning. Ben Zobrist would have gone 20-20 if they just kept sending him up there – he was locked in on Colon like Luke locked on the exhaust port. His quest for the cycle was disturbed only by two walks. It made for a nice duel of rival secondbasemen.

By the time Jeter batted for the third time in the fifth, the Yankees were down 5-0 and the road back seemed difficult to fathom. But the crowd was clearly more concerned with Jeter than with the game itself, and though their recent skid has cost them first place to the Red Sox again, maybe that’s appropriate. It was the only game I’ve ever attended where there was something else besides the outcome on everybody’s agenda. I’ve been to plenty of games where nobody cares about anything including the outcome, but this something else was an interesting vibe.

Jeter rolled one down the line and right off the bat, it looked like a hit just past the thirdbase bag. But the thridbaseman was well positioned and made a nifty stop and a strong throw and it wasn’t close. It was nice hitting by Jeter, who made something useful out of a jam-shot, pulling his hands in quickly. But when a righty gets jammed, it costs him a step or two coming out of the box and hence Jeter was nowhere near the bag when throw nailed him.

I was impressed by the play and began from that point on, extolling the defensive prowess of Evan Longoria for pretty much the rest of the game. The thirdbaseman made eight plays in total, so I had plenty of chances to talk about him, to debate the selection of the all-star thirdbaseman this season, and to predict the course of his career. Unfortunately, Sean Rodriguez was playing thirdbase last night and the upper deck in Yankee Stadium is far enough away, and my glasses could stand an updated prescription. It could have been Ken Keltner out there for all I know.

I was very embarrassed.

Nobody in the stands corrected me, though surely they heard my mistake as I made it repeatedly. I think I would have preferred to be corrected rather than to discover it on my own. So if you’re in the stands and you here some blathering idiot saying something like that and you’re wondering whether or not to correct them, here is my suggestion. Look at his hands and feet. If you do not see beer in hand, and you do not see empty beer cups at feet, go ahead and point him in the right direction. I still would have blushed, but not as deeply.

Jeter came to bat twice more and tried his best. But he grounded out routinely to shortstop in the seventh and the crowd let out a huge sigh of disappointment. Barring something crazy, there would be no 3000 this night. Kyle Farnsworth pitched the ninth, and the Yankees brought Derek Jeter to the on-deck circle. Farnsworth looked very hard to hit, and he struck out Gardner to seemingly end the game, but the slider got loose and Jeter got to bat.

The remaining fans came to attention. If Jeter got 2999, it would bring Granderson to the plate as the tying run. And for some reason, a game-tying homerun just seemed like a sure thing. And then extra innings! And just like that, 3000 was alive again. Jeter battled Farnsworth and fouled off several tough pitches. He expanded the strike zone as well, for which I guess I can’t blame him. Jeter lost and hit one of those weak-ass toppers to third. At this point thirdbasemen from Rodriguez to Longoria to Keltner have to be salivating over this play.

The crowd jumped up, imagining younger legs on a younger player. In 1999, this was a hit. In 2006, this was a hit. In 2011, it wasn’t that close.

The Rays won 5-1. The Yanks are looking up at the Red Sox and the winning streak which they blew versus the Mets seems like a distant memory.

George Kimball, far right, with Mike Tyson and Marvin Hagler, mid-'80s

By John Schulian

George Kimball was blessed with the kind of voluble charm you find in an Irish bar, and, brother, let me tell you he’d been in a few. No amount of drink, however, could rein in his galloping intelligence. It was as pure a part of him as his love of the language and good company, and when he spoke, I did what I’ve always done best in the presence of gold-star raconteurs: I listened. Even when we were on the radio hustling our book of great boxing writing, I did little more than provide grace notes. At least that’s the way it worked in the beginning. And then George’s voice began to turn into a sandpapery whisper. It was the chemo, extracting its price for helping to keep him alive.

Now I was the talker, just me by myself, trying to score points with the strangers on the air at the other end of the line. Again and again, I gravitated to the idea that there is something noble about prizefighters in their willingness to accept the fact that every time they set foot in the ring, they may be carried out on their shield. But it was always George I thought of, the truest nobleman of my lifetime.

The cancer doctors gave him six months to live six years ago, and it was as if he said, with characteristic Anglo-Saxon aplomb, “Fuck you, I’m too busy to die.” He went on to write books, essays, poetry, songs, and even a play. He edited books, too, and worked on a documentary. Somehow he also found time to get out to the theater and concerts and dinners. When we were collaborating long-distance – George in New York, me in L.A. – he surprised me more than once with the news that he had just landed in France or Ireland. He wasn’t simply collecting stickers for his suitcase, either. He was savoring the world that was slipping away from him and looking up writers he had always wanted to meet, like J.P. Donleavy and Bill Barich. And he made a point of staying in touch with them, for once he wrapped his arms around someone, he never let go.

It will be that way even now that he has breathed his last, too soon, at 67. Those of us who knew him–probably even those who have only heard about him–will keep the Kimball legend alive with stories about his wild times and all the nights he dropped his glass eye in a drink someone asked him to keep an eye on. There was a look that George used to get when he was on the loose back then, a look that is probably best understood when I tell you I first saw it in the Lion’s Head as he was trying to set a friend’s sport coat on fire. His friend was wearing it.

I went a long time without seeing George, and when we reconnected, he had changed without sacrificing either his relentless view of the world or his ability to laugh at the hash that mankind has made of things. He was like the record producer in Jennifer Egan’s sublime novel “A Visit from the Goon Squad,” who tells a bewildered young man how he survived the self-destructiveness of the rock and roll business: “You grew up, Alex, just like the rest of us.” So it was that George put booze and drugs behind him and let his work take center stage. His unfiltered Lucky Strikes were the only remnant of his old life. “What are they going to do,” he said, “give me cancer?”

The transformation remained a mystery to me until Bill Nack, as treasured a friend as he is a writer, sent word a few years ago that George had esophageal cancer. I wrote George a note of support and got in return the most startling letter I expect I ever will from a sick man. There were no euphemisms, just pure, raw, unadorned honesty. George was going toe-to-toe with death, and he knew that death would win, but he was damned if he wasn’t going to take the fight the full 12 rounds. Never if my life have I seen a greater example of a fighter’s heart, and that includes Ali and Frazier.

George was fighting for the money he would leave his wife and children, and for a body of work that said he counted for something in the world of sportswriting. He wrote incisively, relentlessly, memorably, and he threw himself into the editing of our Library of America anthology, “At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing,” with the same fervor. Here was a book that would give him the spotlight he yearned for. On that March day in 2010 when the bosses at LoA told us it had passed muster, George was so happy it didn’t matter that he was too sick to swallow his soup. He was a champion.

He wasn’t finished, though. Space limitations–yes, even a 517-page book has them–had confined us to non-fiction, so he tracked down a small press and Lou DiBella, a boxing promoter with a literary bent. Voila! “The Fighter Still Remains: A Celebration of Boxing in Poetry and Song Lyrics from Ali to Zevon” was born.

And still George wasn’t done. We had an abundance of fiction we hadn’t been able to squeeze into “At the Fights,” either, unforgettable work by Hemingway, Nelson Algren and Leonard Gardner, to name but a few, and George wasn’t about to let them lie fallow. Back to work we went, each of us digging up new entries along the way, George zeroing in on Walter Mosley, me on Harry Crews. We didn’t have a publisher, of course, not even a nibble, but we had a title, “Sweet Scientists: A Treasury of American Boxing Fiction,” and that was enough to sustain us for the time being.

I mailed everything I found to George, who promised that he would overcome his Oscar Madison tendencies and send me the manuscript in good shape. I shouldn’t have doubted him, but I did. I read the e-mail he sent to the woman who watches over his web site, the one in which he gave specific instructions about what to do after he was gone, and I knew the final grains of sand were going through the hour glass. But on Wednesday, shortly before noon, Federal Express delivered a box to my door, and inside was the manuscript George had promised, looking neat, even pristine. A few hours later, on the other side of the country, he was dead.

[Editor’s Note: George is remembered by his friends Charlie Pierce and Michael Gee. Here is a lovely piece by Glenn Stout.]

Mr. Jeter approaches a milestone as thunderstorms loom over the Bronx.

The Rays are in town for a four-game series that will end the first half of the season.

Cliff has the preview.

1. Jeter SS
2. Granderson CF
3. Teixeira 1B
4. Rodriguez 3B
5. Cano 2B
6. Swisher RF
7. Posada DH
8. Martin C
9. Gardner LF

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: Liviu Burlea]

Kostya Kennedy is on the Varsity Letters panel tonight. If you are downtown, be sure to fall through and hear him talk some Joe D.

The Enemy Within

By John Schulian 

What a nightmare the Post’s copy desk was, its few capable pros outnumbered by drunks, burnouts, incompetents, and one hostile ex-marine. The worst of all, which is really saying something, was the slot man, who had covered University of Utah basketball for the Salt Lake Tribune during the Billy (the Hill) McGill era. I’d read every word he’d written when I was a kid and I thought he’d be an ally, maybe even a friend. Instead, he spent his time combing his vanishing pompadour and looking down his nose at writers. I don’t know that I ever met a bigger horse’s ass in the business.

One Sunday, after covering a Bullets game I swung by the office just in time to see page proofs. The slot man had rewritten the top of my story. Okay, you don’t like what I write? Fine. I don’t like a lot of what I write, either. But give me a chance to rewrite it in my own words. That’s why I called the office when I finished the piece, to see if there were any problems with it. The slot man hadn’t said a word then, and I wouldn’t have found out until I opened the paper the next morning if I hadn’t got lucky. The first thing I did was make the slot man take my byline off the story. That was my right, according to the Newspaper Guild. Then I sat down and wrote a new top for the story, and I wouldn’t leave until the slot man had signed off on it. Now he was pissed off. But I can tell you for a fact that I was more pissed off.

Things with the copy desk finally got so bad that when I wrote a piece that was supposed to be special in some way, I’d stay at the office until the first edition came up so I could check it. Nuts, huh? But maybe you’ll understand why I did it if I tell you about a long feature I wrote about spending the day of a fight with a heavyweight named Larry Middleton. Went to his pre-fight meal with him, hung around his overheated hotel room with him, watched him warm up in his dressing room, then go out and lose to Duane Bobick in Madison Square Garden. Last scene of the story: he’s out on the street hunting for a pay phone so he can call his wife in Baltimore and tell her what happened. When I dictated the story the next day–it was still the typewriter era at the Post–the girl getting it all down told me it sounded just like a short story. Made my day. But when I came home a couple of days later–-no short road trips when you worked for George Solomon–I discovered that there was an entire section missing from my story. The section about the fight. Call me foolish, but I thought it was critical, seeing as how the fight was the reason for the story’s existence. Maybe it got sacrificed for reasons of page make-up. (Not an acceptable excuse.) Maybe it was incompetence. Maybe it was sabotage. There wasn’t anything I could have done to prevent because I was on the road. But I promised myself that when I was in town, I was going to do some serious lurking in that goddamned office.

George Solomon finally told me I couldn’t talk to the copy editors the way I did. I told him I was going to keep talking to them the way I did as long as they kept screwing things up. Poor George. You have to remember that he was still getting used to being sports editor, and I was one of the first real tests of his patience and managerial skills. I know he liked my writing and I think he liked me as a person-–we still trade e-mails occasionally all these years later-–but I also think I made him uneasy. I was the first writer he ever had who fought back loudly and passionately. You’d think it would have been different on what was considered a writers’ paper. But the Post was also a serious newspaper, a newspaper of record, and when you’re dealing with an animal like that, editors ultimately carry more weight than writers.

My salvation was a copy editor named Angus Phillips, who later turned to writing and did beautiful, even poetic work covering the outdoors. Maybe he was worried that violence would erupt or maybe he actually liked to read what I wrote. Whatever, when a story of mine came in, Angus would raise his hand and ask to handle it. If he had questions about the piece, he’d ask me. If he made changes in my copy, I trusted him enough not to argue. I believe this is known as mutual respect. You’d think someone at the Post would have thought of it before.

Click here for the full “From Ali to Xena” archives.

I remember the day that Derek Jeter was drafted in June of 1992. Those were dark days for the Yankees, and the shortstop position was a revolving door of mediocrity. Andy Stankiewicz played 116 games at short in 1992, and before that we endured three years of Alvaro Espinoza, and two seasons each from Rafael Santana, Wayne Tolleson, Bobby Meacham, and Roy Smalley. When Jeter was drafted, all I hoped for was a serviceable player who might last a while. A Hall of Famer? I didn’t know what that looked like.

What I don’t remember is when he became my favorite player. There was no moment. I was twenty-six years old when the twenty-one year Jeter assumed the starting job at shortstop, but when I looked at him, I saw myself. Just like Jeter, I had been born of a black father and a white mother, I had grown up a Yankee fan in Michigan, and my childhood ambition had been to play shortstop for the New York Yankees. He was I, if my dreams had come true.

You know how it is with your favorite player. His name is the first you find in the morning box score, you feel a strange type of pride when he’s elected to start an All-Star game, and his at bats serve as mileposts during the course of a three-hour ballgame. And so it was for me with Jeter. Even in seasons when the Yankees clinched a playoff position in early September, I still tracked Jeter’s hits as he pushed towards 200, and I probably started thinking about the possibility of 3,000 hits as long as ten years ago.

And with Jeter, I think I’ve finally figured out why it is that old fans always have old players as their favorites. I’m old enough now to realize that I probably will never have another favorite player. There will be guys that I’ll like more than others on the roster — Robinson Canó, for example, or maybe even Jesús Montero if he develops — but that’s all they’ll ever be.

Thirty years from now my granddaughter will be telling about the most recent exploits of her favorite player, and I’ll listen intently before giving my variation of what we’ve all heard before: “You should’ve seen Derek Jeter play; he was something to see.” I’ll probably start with the jump pass from deep in the hole, pantomime the inside-out swing, and explain how he was better with his back to the plate than any shortstop I’d ever seen. I’ll recount the dive into the stands against Boston, the flip to get Giambi in the playoffs, and the World Series home run that earned the Mr. November nickname.

But the memory that I’ll do my best to give her comes from Game 1 of the American League Divisional Series on October 3, 2006. Jeter had singled in the first, doubled in the third, singled in the fourth, and doubled again in the sixth as the Yankees opened a comfortable lead and seemed poised to cruise through the series against the overmatched Detroit Tigers. When Jeter came up in the eighth with the game already in hand, it was a love fest. With fans standing and MVP chants raining down from the upper deck, Jeter took a 1-1 pitch from Jamie Walker and crushed it to center field for a home run, the perfect cap to a perfect five-for-five night. The M-V-P chants quickly gave way to the ubiquitous “De-rek-Jee-ter!” sing-song, which rolled around the Stadium until Jeter came out for a curtain call, then continued through Bobby Abreu’s at bat.

In the clubhouse that night back-up catcher Sal Fasano explained it in words that have stayed with me ever since: “It gives you goose bumps. It’s amazing to see the love the New York fans have for Jeter. It’s like when you were a kid when your favorite player hit a home run and you jumped up and down. Well, here there are 50,000 people, and to all of them Jeter is their favorite player.”

That’s who he’ll always be to me. I’ll do my best to help my granddaughter understand.

[Photo Credit: Tim Farrell/The Star-Ledger]

Our good friend George Kimball died yesterday after a lengthy battle with cancer. He lived longer than anyone expected and there is much to celebrate about his life. But right now I just feel sad.  He will be dearly missed. George was a real Man.

Albert Brooks: Patriot.

Memory Lane…

Let me apologize right up front, because I know this recap is going to irritate some people. On the sixth of July, still four games shy of the All-Star break, I believe that two things happened during Wednesday night’s game that were more important than the final result.

First, there was Phil Hughes. I’m not sure how it happened, but I completely lost sight of how long it had been since we’ve seen Hughes on a mound. I had a vague feeling that he had been awful, so maybe that’s why I had completely washed most of the details from my mind. His best outing was his last, a 4.1 inning performance on April 14th during which he gave up seven hits and five runs and saw his ERA climb to a sparkling 13.94. Soon after he was jettisoned to the 60-day disabled list, mainly because no one seemed to know what the hell was wrong with him.

His return on Wednesday night wasn’t triumphant, but it was significant. As I watched the first inning, though, I wondered if maybe there was something unfixable going on with Hughes. His velocity seemed alright, as his fastball was consistently around 93, occasionally 94, and he appeared to have gotten over his reluctance to go to his other pitches. (He’d mix in curves, sliders, and change-ups throughout the night.) The problem was he wasn’t fooling anyone.

He walked the first batter, but that could’ve been nerves. Asdrubal Cabrera and Travis Hafner followed with singles (both firmly struck) to produce the first run, and Cabrera scored a bit later after a wild pitch and a throwing error by Russell Martin. Even the outs Hughes earned felt like rockets, and it took him thirty-two pitches to escape the inning. Another short outing seemed likely.

But he recovered. Even though he gave up singles in each of the second, third, and fourth innings, he looked much better. Far from dominant, but far from how he looked in April. The fifth inning might’ve been his most important. His control completely deserted him, as he hit A. Cabrera to open things, walked Carlos Santana on four pitches with one out, and hit Orlando Cabrera to load the bases with two outs. Facing what would be his final batter of the night one way or the other, Hughes managed to get Lonnie Chisenhall to fly out to left.

If we chalk up the shaky first inning to nerves, this was definitely a positive outing for Hughes. I’m not sure what we’ll see his next time out or what we might expect to see from him down the stretch, but I think he’s definitely headed in the right direction.

Also headed in the right direction is Derek Jeter. He pounded a double off the wall in right-center field in the eighth inning for his 2,997th career hit, meaning he only needs to come up with three hits during the next four games to get to the milestone at home. Here’s hoping.

The true star of the game, though, was Justin Masterson. He had come into the game with a pedestrian 6-6 record, but he’s secretly been one of the better pitches in the league this season, and he showed it on Wednesday night, as he was almost unhittable all evening. Joe Girardi and a few of the hitters talked after the game about how devastating his stuff had been, and his line bears this out: 8.0/3/0/0/2/6.

The Yankees finally strung together a few hits in the ninth after Masterson had left the game, but because Girardi had foolishly allowed Sergio Mitre to enter a close name and increase the deficit to five runs, that last ditch rally didn’t really matter. Brett Gardner worked a long at bat with two outs and #2998 on deck, but he ended up watching strike three, and the game was over. Indians 5, Yankees 3.

Not to worry. History and the Tampa Bay Rays await this weekend, and the Stadium will surely be as loud as it’s ever been.

Let’s Go Yankees! Let’s Go Jeter!

[Photo Credit: Tony Dejak/AP]

Four more for DJ, oh, and the return of Phil Hughes.

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Jorge Posada DH
Russell Martin C
Brett Gardner LF

Never mind getting sentimental:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Picture by Bags]

Over at Chicago Magazine Jonathan Eig has a piece on Minnie Minoso. Minnie was the first black man to play for either Chicago team in the majors. He is one of the best players not in the Hall of Fame and he’s some kind of treasure. Dig it.

There are several obstacles cluttering unfettered enjoyment of Derek Jeter’s quest for his 3000th hit. The only legitimate one is Derek’s poor statistical season thus far. But that’s easily cancelled out by the Yankees’ overall excellence. The rest are manufactured by either a burgeoning wave of critics feeling the need to diminish the player, question his contract and place in the batting order, or by a thundering chorus of fanboys and girls drooling over every dribbler. Count me with the latter I suppose, if I have to choose sides.

But screw all of that. Just because there is a lot of noise and nonsense surrounding the hit doesn’t mean we can’t find a way to relish the moment on our own terms. For me that means several hours on baseball-reference.com sifting through the leader boards. One of the things you hear about Jeter’s milestone is that it’s surprising that no other Yankee has ever accomplished the feat. And the first few times I heard that, I mindlessly agreed, “Yeah, where’s the Yanks’ 3000 hit guy?”

But upon further review, it’s not that common, or easy, for a franchise to be able to “claim” a 3000th hit. There are 27 players with 3000 hits. Only 14 of them have acquired hits one through 3000 for their original team. And if you want to ease the requirements on the claim to getting your 3000th hit on the same team for which you accumulated the most hits, we can add another five. In all, only 15 franchises can claim a 300oth hit for their ledgers in this way. And that includes franchises like the Giants and the Braves that moved around during their players’ quests (Mays and Aaron).

Four franchises are lucky enough to have two. The Cards (Musial and Brock), the Tigers (Kaline and Cobb), the Pirates (Wagner and Clemente) and Cleveland (Speaker and Lajoie). Only Detroit has two pure claims as both Cobb and Kaline went wire to wire in the Motor City. The Yankees of course did have three players eventually get 3000 hits, but none of Winfield, Henderson nor Boggs achieved the milestone while Yankees. At least Winfield got more hits in a New York uniform than in any others, but that’s not enough to stake any kind of claim.

And obviously, it’s not just that Yankee fans are whining about not getting a fair distribution of the 3000 club. We’re surprised they’ve had such great players, among the best ever, and even still don’t have a clear 3000th hit. But among those titans of the game, they’ve never had the right mixture of health, peace, and free-swinging needed to amass such a huge total.

When Jeter gets number 3000, he’ll be only the 15th player to get his first 3000 hits with the same club. The Yankees are used to draping themselves in banners and tripping over trophies, and yes this has eluded their clutches thus far, but it’s not as surprising as it might seem. It’s really special, and I didn’t appreciate it fully until now.

We can’t ignore the fact Jeter is in the middle of a down year, but does anybody else remember so much scrutiny over other recent fading stars and their victory laps? Craig Biggio hung around until he was 40 and had the worst year of his career. But he came up short, so he returned at 41, had an even more dreadful year before ringing the bell. Winfield was crumbling in the worst season of his career (up to that point) at 41 when he got the big hit. Cal Ripken enjoyed an outlier renaissance the year before his 3000th, but he was crap during and all around the milestone.

All I remember from any of these marches towards history was celebration and adulation. Jeter deserves the same – especially playing for a first place team.

So in that spirit, I tried to come up with a memory of one specific hit. With the help of baseball-reference, this could have been a week-long tumble into the inter-hole. But he’s at 2996 now, so time’s a-wasting.

I was away at college when Jeter became a Yankee. I had come back to the team in earnest in 1993 when they retired Reggie’s number. But I had left New York the following year, so when the Yankees approached the 1996 division crown, I was watching from afar. I knew Derek Jeter was a promising rookie and had hopes, like everybody else, that he’d stick around for a long time and prove to be a good player. But I had no sense of him yet.

College was down in Baltimore’s television market, and I tuned in when the Yanks squared off against the second-place Orioles on September 18th. The Orioles were three games back and this was the last chance they had to catch the Yankees for the division crown. The Orioles led 2-1 in the late innings. Derek Jeter led off the bottom of the eighth and I thought, I really want him to get a hit here, and he lined one to right. The Yanks did not score though.

Bernie tied it in the ninth. Mariano held the O’s scoreless and Derek Jeter led off again in the tenth. I thought, I really want him to get a hit here, but that’s not fair to this rookie. He already came through in the eighth and this is a lot of pressure and all. But Jeter got the hit and scored the run. The Yanks won the game, the division and the series. As the ball squirted between short and third and into left field, I remember it occurring to me, “Maybe the Yanks have found something special here. Maybe this is a guy who is going to come up big when they need it most.”

He didn’t always come through, of course, but he did often enough to make it feel safe to hope for it. Derek Jeter has never been my favorite player. But between Jeter and Mariano, they make the Yankees seem like one epic roster that has stretched from 1995 to today. They are the Yankees of my young adulthood. They bridged the end of my schoolboy playing career to start of my family.

Three thousand is a lot of hits. I am glad I saw so many of them.

[Photo Credit: USA Today]

Lasting Derek Jeter Memories: Hit #2,722

(VOICEOVER)

“When he enters a room, there is always a recording of Bob Sheppard announcing his presence …”

“The Oxford English Dictionary apologized to him for neglecting to include the word ‘Jeterian'”

“He has brought such honor to his uniform number, when little kids have to go to the bathroom, their mothers say ‘do you have to do a number 3?'”

“He is . . . the most interesting shortstop the Yankees have had since Tony Fernandez.”

(CUT TO SHOT OF JETER SEATED AT TABLE SURROUNDED BY MINKA KELLY AND HER EQUALLY-ATTRACTIVE GAL PALS)

“I don’t often drink . . . but when I do, I never drive my new 2011 Ford Edge with the cool Panoramic Vista roof immediately afterwards.”

* * *

Once upon a time, in the days before free agency, “franchise players” were plentiful.  Most of the upper echelon teams had at least one such player.  Even some of the sad sack teams had their icon.

Here’s a list of the “2,000 or more games in career, all for one team” retired players club

Nowadays, the Braves’ Chipper Jones and the Yankees captain are two of the few active “iconic” players in baseball, easily identified by their career-long associations with their respective teams.

With career-long associations with one franchise comes the inevitable march up the team leaderboard for many counting stats, and hits is probably the “showcase” number.  Here are the current franchise leaders for each team (excusing the Yankees for a moment):

Given the Yankees history, its surprising to note that the Bombers have never had a 3,000 hit man.  Though Joltin’ Joe, The Mick and the Iron Horse all eclipsed 2,000 hits in a Yankee uni, Joe DiMaggio lost three prime years to the service and Mickey Mantle and Lou Gehrig saw their productivity diminished due to injury and illness respectively.

So when Derek Sanderson Jeter came upon the scene in 1995, no one could have foreseen that this polite, photogenic and disciplined shortstop would stand upon the precipice of Yankee history on the night of September 11, 2009.  Jeter’s inside-out, line drive to right-center machine of a swing had pumped out 2,721 hits to that point, knotting him with Gehrig.

Despite it being the eighth anniversary of the Taliban attacks that killed nearly 3,000 New Yorkers, and despite a rainshower that delayed the start of the game by nearly 90 minutes, there was electricity and anticipation in the new Stadium that night. A near-capacity crowd of 46,771 braved the elements to cheer on The Captain.

The Yanks faced Chris Tillman of the Orioles.  Tillman was making only his ninth career start in the Majors.  Leading off the bottom of the first, Jeter struck out swinging on a 1-2 pitch, but Alex Rodriguez hit a three-run homer later in the inning, and the Yanks still led 3-1 when Jeter stepped to the plate leading off the third.

He took the first two pitches for balls, then in truly “Jeterian” form, rapped a single between Orioles’ first baseman Luke Scott and the foul line, with Nick Markakis tracking the ball down as it made its way towards the right field corner. Jeter rounded first, clapped his hands and returned to the base.  He shook first base coach Mick Kelleher’s hand, handed him his shin guard, and then, the Yankees filed out of the dugout amidst a thunderous two-minute standing ovation and chants of “Jeter! Jeter!” from the crowd. Jeter’s father could be seen high-fiving anyone and everyone he could up in one of the Yankee suites. In the opposing dugout, the Orioles clapped in appreciation of the achievement.

It was an odd sight, as the Yanks (and Orioles) were all wearing red caps for the memory of “9/11”, but the night belonged to Yankee navy blue and white. Jeter would end up two for four on the night, leaving the game after a second rain delay. The Yanks would end up losing the game 10-4, but with a nine game lead in the division heading into play and only 20 games remaining, the loss was rendered especially insignificant. Derek Jeter had broken the 72-year-old hits record of Lou Gehrig, and the “new” Yankee Stadium had its first truly memorable moment.

I was in Los Angeles last week. Stayed in Hermosa Beach near the PCH. Driving everywhere was hard to get used to, but satisfying in a way. On one of those drives past a strip of indistinguishable donut and taco jernts, I spied CC Donuts. The kids were asleep in the back and otherwise unable to operate cameras, the wife was busy with something or another and I had a choice: whip out the phone and snap a pic while doing 45 in slightly dense traffic or let it go and deprive the Banter readers of the perfect picture for a CC shutdown start. I got that phone in my hands and started to look down away from the road, but then I thought better of it. I put the phone back down and watched the sign trickle past my peripheral vision. Meant to go back but never did.

So of course CC would be balls-out awesome in Cleveland tonight as he blitzed the Indians for seven shutout innings. His fastball was hard and always found uncomfortable locations. And his breaking stuff was filthy. David Cone mentioned in the booth that his sliders that were strikes started out looking like balls and the balls started out looking like strikes. It was a great observation, and it was all set up by the fear of the fastball. It made the hitters twitch early to protect against the heat and left them vulnerable for the slop. How vulnerable? Eleven whiffs, ten swinging. The Indians managed to get two runners on base three times, so CC responded by striking out the side in all three of those innings. That’s not shutting the door; that’s slamming it and breaking all their fingers.

The lineup went nuts tonight, making up for a two-game brown-out. Derek Jeter got two hits in his first two times at bat – a dribbler and a booming double. I became very excited because I am going to the game on Thursday and a big night tonight would make that game very interesting. Jeter got four more shots at making Thursday THE day, but came up empty. I figure he needs at least two more hits tomorrow to give me a chance in Hell.

Curtis Granderson continues his assault on my senses as he lined one homer and launched another and was pretty much running around the bases every time I looked up. He scored three times, the other Yankees scored six other times and strolled into the bottom of the ninth up 9-0. The Indians got a pair of garbage-time goals to make the final score 9-2.

CC Sabathia isn’t on the All Star team, and I guess I don’t really care and I know he wouldn’t pitch anyway. But if he’s not an All Star, what’s the point of the thing? Sure, maybe six other pitchers might have had slightly better starts to 2011, but ask the NL hitters if they’re happy or sad they don’t have to face him. I’d take Verlander, Beckett, Weaver, and CC and be pretty sure I got the best pitchers in the league. Oh well, maybe the Yankees can use his absence from the 2011 All Star team in their negotiations with him when he opts out of his contract. Maybe they can knock five bucks off the billions they’re going to pay him.

Yo, C.C., time to dead this two-game skid with the quickness. Bring the Thunder.

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira DH
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Jorge Posada 1B
Brett Gardner LF
Francisco Cervelli C

Never mind Thomas Wolfe:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!