September 28, 2014: Derek Jeter's Last Major League Game

 

Left to right: Jim Rice, Mookie Betts,

David Ortiz, Derek Jeter and Carl Yastrzemski

September 28, 2014, 10 years ago: The New York Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox, 9-5 at Fenway Park. Michael Pineda outpitches Clay Buchholz. With the game scoreless in the top of the 3rd, Francisco Cervelli leads off with a walk. Chris Young strikes out, but Jose Pirela singles, and Buchholz moves the runners over with a wild pitch. Ichiro Suzuki triples the runners home.

Derek Jeter, the designated hitter on this day -- Stephen Drew is the shortstop -- hits a ground ball to 3rd base. Garin Cecchini fields it, but Jeter beats the throw, and Ichiro scores, to make it 3-0 Yankees.
It is Jeter's 3,465th career hit (which included 544 doubles, 66 triples and 260 home runs), and his 1,311st run batted in. Only Pete Rose, Ty Cobb, Hank Aaron, Stan Musial and Tris Speaker have more -- meaning Jeter had more hits than all but 2 living people (Rose and the since-deceased Aaron), and more hits than anyone born after April 14, 1941 (when Rose was born).

Girardi sends Brian McCann -- perhaps the slowest runner on the team, but whose bat will fill the DH slot -- in to pinch-run, and the Fenway crowd, which despises the Yankees and has long maintained that Jeter and his teammates "suck," gives him a standing ovation as he leaves a major league field for the last time. It is 46 years to the day after Mickey Mantle played his last game for the Yankees, also at Fenway.

Mantle had played in more games, 2,401, and in more seasons, 18, than anyone in Yankee history. Jeter broke both of those records: 2,747 games and 20 seasons. I didn't get to see Mantle play, but I saw Jeter play many times. I even got to see him hit a home run at Fenway Park, in a 13-3 Yankee demolition of the Red Sox on July 30, 1999. Great memory.

My in-person memories of Mantle are limited to Old-Timers Days, and an appearance (in a suit rather than a uniform) on Phil Rizzuto Day. And while I saw Joe DiMaggio a few times at Yankee Stadium, it was only in a suit, never a uniform, although his 1995 Opening Day first ball ceremony meant that, at the least, I got to see Joe DiMaggio throw a baseball. Which is more than I can say for Mantle. And I never got to see Babe Ruth or Lou Gehrig, who died long before I was born.

But I've seen plenty of legends in person, at various ballparks and at the Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony. So I've had some luck -- if not, as Gehrig would say, become the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.

Elsewhere on this day, the Washington Nationals beat the Miami Marlins, 1-0 at Nationals Park in Washington. Jordan Zimmerman pitched a no-hitter, coming within a 5th-inning walk of Justin Bour, and a 7th-inning dropped 3rd strike on a strikeout of Garrett Jones, of pitching a perfect game. He struck out 10.

In the NFL, the Jets lost to the Detroit Lions, 24-17 at MetLife Stadium at the Meadowlands. The preceding Thursday, the Giants beat the Washington Redskins, 45-14 at FedEx Field (now Commanders Field) in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland.