Baltimore Fans Overlook Rivalry to Honor Derek Jeter
BALTIMORE - Something felt wrong, very wrong, Friday at Camden Yards as the Orioles and the Yankees opened a weekend series.
When Derek Jeter stepped to the plate Friday night - for one of the final times, after 1,166 at-bats in 284 regular-season games against the Orioles over the past 20 seasons - thousands of Baltimore fans clad in orange cheered and sprang to their feet.
Orioles Manager Buck Showalter was in disbelief.
'Cheer? Why? Anyone who loves the Orioles should be glad he's retiring,' Showalter said. 'It should be more like, good riddance. He has been a thorn for a long, long time.'
Showalter, who was Jeter's first manager in the major leagues, back in 1995, could not have said it better. During most of Jeter's career, Jeter and the Yankees used the Orioles as their personal American League doormat. Example: Game 1 of the 1996 A.L. championship series.
The Orioles led by a run in the eighth inning when Jeter smacked a ball deep to right field of the old Yankee Stadium. The hit was just short of the top of the right-field wall, and it should have fallen into the glove of Orioles right fielder Tony Tarasco.
But, no, the baseball gods - in the form of 12-year-old fan Jeffrey Maier - intervened. Maier reached over the wall and grabbed the ball, and what might have been a long fly ball out was ruled a home run. The Yankees won the game, then the series.
The thorn otherwise known as Derek Jeter would not soon be forgotten in this city.
Some longtime Orioles fans on Friday described Jeter's home run in 1996 as heartbreaking, a killer, devastating, a back-breaker - and also used some colorful adjectives that cannot be printed here.
Larry Beaver, a Baltimore firefighter and lifelong Orioles fan, gave me the stink eye from his seat next to the Yankees dugout when asked about Jeter and his unforgettable home run.
'Jeter gave us that horrible moment,' Beaver, 52, said. 'But the thing about Jeter was, he never rubbed it in. He seemed like a really decent guy.'
He paused to laugh before saying: 'Yep, a really decent guy, unlike most of the other Yankees. I am actually sorry to see him go.'
By the 1998 season, the Orioles had dived headfirst into a 14-season slump. At the same time, about 200 miles northeast, the Yankees and Jeter, their young superstar, were loudly celebrating their successes, about to win their second of four World Series titles in five years.
Again and again, for a little more than a season and a half's worth of games, the Orioles were forced to face Jeter and endure his tough play. Entering this weekend's series, he had put up solid numbers against the Orioles, hitting .299, with 68 doubles, 24 home runs and a .368 on-base percentage.
But Showalter said anyone who 'always knew' that Jeter would become a great player is lying.
'Early on, he made like, 40, 50, 60 errors in one year,' Showalter said of Jeter's 56 errors in 126 games at Class A Greensboro in 1993. 'I knew he was something special, more for the way he acted off the field.'
Showalter saw how well an 18-year-old Jeter treated his parents and his sister and how polite he was to others. He said he also noticed how Jeter always took care to act like a role model.
'He never once embarrassed his family, never once embarrassed his team,' he said. 'That's hard to say about anyone, considering the number of games he's been a part of.'
He added: 'Take a snapshot of that. Because that just doesn't come around very often.'
Yes, let's take a snapshot of that. In fact, let's print it out in poster size and hang it in our living rooms. After a week of headlines that started with the video of Ray Rice slugging his then-fiancée and moved to Oscar Pistorius being convicted of culpable homicide in the shooting death of his girlfriend and ended with Adrian Peterson being charged with child abuse for whipping his 4-year-old son with a small tree branch, we need a reminder that there is still some goodness in sports.
These days, though, that goodness seems more like the exception, not the rule.
Many fans at Camden Yards on Friday said they were cheering for Jeter now as he winds down his career because he always made the game seem fun, just as the Orioles' Cal Ripken Jr. did years ago. Both remained loyal to their franchises. Stayed out of trouble. Understood that actions off the field were just as important as those on it.
Two breaths of fresh air.
'You could easily tell that they weren't like the other players,' said Ed Billings Sr., a security officer who for 10 years has worked the opposing team's dugout at Camden Yards. He recalled the time Jeter gave a bat to a young Yankees fan as he skipped into the clubhouse from the field.
'She was just looking at the bat, in awe, then looked at him, in awe,' Billings said. 'She couldn't believe that he would do such a thing, because a lot of guys just run into the clubhouse without even looking up.'
Jeter was looking up Friday. He scanned Camden Yards for one of the final times when he went out for his warm-ups, while the fans roared. He might have noticed that it's just not the same for him here anymore.
The Orioles are in charge now, headed for a division title. In a 5-0 loss that completed a doubleheader sweep by the Orioles, Jeter struck out once and grounded out three times. With about two weeks left in the regular season, this star is rounding home and fading. The 40-year-old shortstop did not play in the first game.
Other teams have said their goodbyes, like the Houston Astros, which was weird because he faced them only a handful of times.
On Sunday, the Orioles will say their goodbyes. Like it or not, the fans here have watched Jeter grow up, and the team is planning to send him off with a small ceremony. It will be meaningful, even for Orioles fans who will likely continue to applaud Jeter this weekend in what are all but certainly his final games at Camden Yards.
Showalter said in preparing for the event, the Orioles sat down and reminisced about Jeter, coming up with 'a bunch of funny stuff' for the show. So many years of ups and downs against that kid-turned-captain - mostly downs. Yet the Orioles can, evidently, take a joke.
'I was going to give him a big picture of Jeffery Maier,' Showalter said. 'Oops, I'm not sure if I was supposed to tell you that.'
Still, it slipped. Now we know that here, in Baltimore, on some higher plane of baseball appreciation, even thorns will be missed.
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