The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter by Ian O'Connor Read Free Book Online

Derek’s senior season.
    The teams were not the main attraction, as Portage was a suburban power and Kalamazoo the city long shot hoping to win half its games. Instead everyone wanted to see the duel between fast friends, Jeter versus Topham. They played together across three summers, traveled together to tryout camps, stayed over at each other’s homes.
    Jeter entered the double-header with three homers in his first two games, and with the clear understanding that, on this stage, he was the Jordan and Topham was the Pippen.
    Only neither could run anything approaching a fast break in this snowy, dreary, rainy weather. “A typical Michigan baseball day,” said Eric Johnson, a Portage pitcher.
    The teams knew they had to play on a day like this, if only because full-fledged storms usually washed out a third of the area schedule.
    Topham made the first impression. With Kalamazoo holding a 3–1 lead in the opening game, the Portage star ripped a first-inning fastball through the sleet and over the 345-foot sign in right.
    Jeter was moved to answer, and quickly. In the third inning, he lashed at a 3-1, eye-high fastball from Portage’s Chris Quinn and sent it screaming into the pine trees beyond the 385-foot sign in center.
    The shot whistled straight over Topham’s head; the outfielder did not even turn to watch it clear the fence. Johnson, playing shortstop at the time, could not get over the flight path of the ball.
    “If I was on top of second base, I could’ve jumped and caught the thing,” he said. “It was one of those jaw-hitting-the-ground moments, because nobody could believe how hard Derek hit that ball. It was exactly what the crowd had come to see.”
    In the sixth inning, the crowd of fans and scouts saw something it never expected to see—a Derek Jeter strikeout, his first and last of the year. Derek was facing a 2-2 count, two outs, bases loaded, when his summer league teammate, Chad Casserly, fired a slider that caught the outside corner of the plate.
    The umpire gave Jeter the benefit of the doubt, and the Portage side let the man behind the mask hear it. Casserly came back with the same pitch in almost the same location, this time missing the plate by a hair, and Jeter started heading for first base.
    Only Derek was halted by the sickening sound of an umpire calling him out. Jeter spun around with his head tilted, shot the masked man a crooked smile, and headed for the visiting dugout to retrieve his glove.
    Zomer jumped all over the ump. “And I just ran off the field while everybody cheered,” Casserly said.
    Portage won, 12–8, and the scouts milled about before the start of the second game. Some were carrying stopwatches to time Jeter and Topham on their sprints from the batter’s box to first base. Others were carrying radar guns to time Jeter’s throws from shortstop to first, throws clocked at 90 miles per hour.
    Derek was very much aware of the scouts, at least those who were not hiding in their cars or behind trees in order to conceal their interest. Jeter stole glances at them whenever he could, the way a shy teen steals glances at the prettiest girl in his third-period history class.
    Derek was desperate to be noticed, and so when he hit a dribbler toward short in the first inning of the second game, he exploded out of the box and raced hard against all those stopwatches timing him to first.
    Johnson, another friend, was Portage’s starting pitcher, and one who had eagerly anticipated this matchup. He was happy he had gotten Jeter to hit this slow roller, at least until Derek beat out the throw on a bang-bang play.
    But as soon as Jeter crossed the bag it was clear he was in distress. In his zeal to reach base safely and post a blazing time for the scouts, Jeter extended his final stride, caught his spikes on the outfield side of the soaked bag, rolled over his ankle, and began hopping on one leg.
    A hush swept over the entire field, leaving Johnson to think, “Oh, no, what just