Jeter's Yankee Stadium finale stuff of legend

Derek Jeter always talked about the ghosts at the old Yankee Stadium when something magical would happen for him and his teammates on the south side of 161st in the Bronx. Buck Showalter would talk about the baseball gods after Jeter played his last home game at the new Stadium. But they were all there the night of Sept. 25, 2014, ghosts and the gods, Jeter against the Orioles of Buck Showalter, his first manager in the big leagues 20 years earlier.

There has been a Jeter-thon on the MLB Network this weekend, and properly so, to commemorate the anniversary of Jeter’s debut on May 29, 1995. But this is how it ended for Jeter in the Bronx, an ending that none of us saw coming when the Yankees went into the ninth with a 5-2 lead that night against the Orioles and their closer David Robertson -- he was 39-for-44 in save opportunities that season -- on the mound.

“That’s when it started to become one of those baseball gods nights,” Buck said on Friday afternoon, on his way to visit a new grandson, William Nathaniel Showalter V.

• Watch Jeter's Bronx swan song Sunday on MLB Network

We didn’t see the ending coming that night at the Stadium. But we should have. This was Jeter. This was one last chance at a big moment for him, this time on the north side of 161st, on the night when he was saying goodbye. We absolutely should have known that he and the place would not go quietly.

“It didn’t matter what the Yankees needed,” Buck said. “You wanted to keep big moments away from Derek if you were playing against him. He was one of those guys. It didn’t matter whether it was a hit or the home runs he had in the postseason or a play in the field like he made with that flip against the A’s that time. I always thought of it this way: He would dial up whatever was necessary.”

Jeter still should not have gotten anywhere near the bottom of the ninth that night with Robertson on the mound. But then with one out and Nick Markakis on base, Adam Jones hit a two-run homer. Now it was 5-4. There was still the chance, if the Orioles could get at least one more run, that something magical could still happen, and Jeter could get to the plate one more time. In the press box, we all checked the Yankees' batting order again. If the game did go to the bottom of the ninth -- bottom of the last in all ways for Derek Jeter -- then he’d come to the plate one more time, in this place.

“I was very aware of where he was in the order,” Showalter said. He paused and continued, “This is where analytics and sabermetrics can come up short. There are things that are just going to happen in baseball that the numbers don’t cover, and never will. It’s still a beauty of the game. When something isn’t supposed to happen, it does.”

And then with two outs, Steve Pearce, later a World Series MVP for the Red Sox in 2018, hit a home run for the Orioles. Now it was 5-5. The Yankees had been eliminated from the postseason the night before. They hadn’t made it to the postseason the year before that. No one cared now at Yankee Stadium.

Suddenly it sounded like October again.

Jose Pirela singled for the Yankees off Evan Meek. Antoan Richardson ran for him. Brett Gardner sacrificed Richardson to second.

Here came Jeter to the plate. Potential winning run on second. The great Roger Angell would write in The New Yorker that now it felt as if there was a postseason for the 2014 Yankees after all.

There was talk afterward that Showalter should have walked the 40-year old Jeter, who hit .256 with four homers and 50 RBIs in 145 games that season.

“Anybody who thinks that I didn’t walk Derek [with a base open] because I want him to have this moment doesn’t know me very well,” Showalter said.

Everything had come full circle for both of them. Buck on Friday spoke of the “skinny, gangly” kid he’d first met, and how impressed he was with the way the young Jeter interacted with his family and how it made him think that the kid was going to be able to deal with what Buck called “the big league trappings of New York.”

Now here the two of them were.

“As he was leaving the on-deck circle,” Buck said, “we locked eyes for just a moment. I think he was worried that I might walk him. Then he realized he was going to get a chance to hit. And all I was thinking was this: ‘Here’s your moment, go for it.’”

Jeter swung at the first pitch from Meek and hit a sharp grounder into right field. Richardson came flying around third. It looked as if Markakis had a chance to throw him out at the plate. He didn’t. Yankees 6, Orioles 5. Jeter leaped into the air, and there was a celebration on the field, and a sound from the Stadium that Jeter understood better than anyone.

Then you looked over in front of the Yankees' dugout and -- as if by magic -- Joe Torre was there, and Mariano Rivera, and Andy Pettitte and Bernie Williams and Jorge Posada. Jeter went over to them. Before long, he was headed out to shortstop, kneeling down there as the cheers kept coming from everywhere. Mostly the past.

“I wanted to take one last view from there,” Jeter said later about being out there, alone one last time with the ghosts and baseball gods at Yankee Stadium. In addition to everything else, the guy knew how to dial up an exit.