The great Derek Jeter’s playing career ended in 2014, after his twentieth season as a Yankee. The Bronx Bomber teams he was a member of made postseason play seventeen times. Jeter played in seven World Series and New York won five of them. He passed Lou Gehrig as the all-time leader in career hits as a Yankee during the 2009 season and in 2011 became the first player in franchise history to reach 3,000 hits while wearing the pinstripes. I consider the five-for-five game he put together to reach and then surpass that magical plateau one of the greatest all-time individual game performances in Yankee franchise history. He is among the top ten Yankees lifetime in just about every offensive category and in most cases among the top five. He finished his illustrious career in sixth place on MLB’s all-time career hit list.

He was an extremely gifted player and team leader who somehow coped perfectly with the stresses of being a star athlete in the Big Apple. There are those who claimed Jeter was over-rated. Those of us who followed the Yankees on a game-by-game and season-by-season basis ignore such ignorance. I’m the first to admit that age impacted Jeter’s overall abilities on the baseball field, especially in his final season. But he was still good enough to lead all of baseball in hits during the 2012 season with 216 and if not for the horrendous ankle injury he suffered in that year’s postseason I believe he might have played another season before retiring. Regardless, this guy is the greatest Yankee shortstop ever and one of the top two or three to ever play the game. Its hard to describe the positive impact this man has had on the game of baseball for the past two decades. He was my favorite player, my children’s favorite player and my grandchildren’s favorite player.

Though his numbers were down significantly during the 2014 season, this remarkable Yankee ended his career on a high note by hitting close to .370 during the last ten games of his career and reminding everyone again why he was nicknamed Captain Clutch, with his poignant game-winning hit in his last ever Yankee Stadium at bat.  No one will ever again wear his number “2” jersey and in 2019, he will be honored with an induction ceremony in Cooperstown. Watching him earn that ceremony has been one of the great pleasures I’ve experienced as a fifty-four-year fan of the Bombers. Thank You 2!

The predictions that Jeter was destined to become a great Yankee that were made at the beginning of his career turned out to be correct. Similar predictions made for this former Yankee outfielder who shares “The Captain’s” June 26th birthday would turn out to be far less accurate. This one-time Yankee LOOGY was also born on this date.