COMMENTARY : At 20, He Gets His Mail at Yankee Stadium

The two stacks of mail on the floor of his locker make it all official, for as long as this all lasts.

Suddenly, the letters are addressed to “Derek Jeter, Yankee Stadium.” Everything is happening fast for him these days, even the mail.

It was not so long ago that his grandmother brought him with her from New Milford, N.J., to the Stadium on summer weekends. Last weekend, the grandmother, Dorothy Connors, was there with a lot of Jeter’s uncles and aunts to watch him play shortstop for the Yankees at the age of 20. He had made the jump over the wall every kid dreams of making.

“They had better seats than we used to get at the stadium,” Jeter said last week, in the locker next to Jimmy Key’s. “But I had a better view.”

He is out of the minors and at the Stadium sooner than anyone expected. Tony Fernandez, who started the season as the Yankee shortstop, is hurt. Pat Kelly, the second baseman, is gone for another month at least because of an injured wrist. Jeter has been the Yankee shortstop for a week. If Fernandez is willing to move over to second base when he is ready to play, Jeter will stay around a while. If Fernandez doesn’t want to play second, it is likely Jeter will go back to the minors.

There never are any guarantees with even the greatest of baseball prospects. There are certainly never guarantees around the Yankees. Jeter has only played a handful of games, and had just six hits in the big leagues going into a midweek game against the Athletics. But he hits the ball hard when he hits it.

He is a big, exciting player at shortstop, even when he makes a mistake. There is a quiet grace about him, a sense that he belongs here. Eventually, Jeter will go out to shortstop at Yankee Stadium and stay there a long time.

There has been so little good news for the Yankees this season. They have only generated headlines because of losing streaks, Darryl Strawberry and a tired windbag owner who seems to be slipping, and slipping badly.

There was so little from the Yankees you wanted to see. But for the past week, it has at least been all right to turn on the television or go to the ballpark and look at the kid at shortstop. Maybe this is a Yankee phenom who finally is the real goods.

“I’ll tell you something about him,” Yankees catcher Mike Stanley said, watching Jeter eat up ground between second and third, finally catching up with a ground ball in the hole. “He doesn’t get rattled by very much that I can see. He’s up there taking his hacks, he’s fouling off good pitches, he’s making plays. There’s not much not to like.”

“Just let him be,” Don Mattingly said from the dugout. “You know how it goes around here. You know what this city and this place can do to young players. Just let him be, and he’s going to be fine.”

There were people who thought the Yankees should have put him out at shortstop this season to see what happened. They went for Tony Fernandez after they lost Mike Gallego. They are paying Fernandez good money. But it seems as if there is something good happening with Jeter every game.

He makes a flashy play in the field. He gets a double to keep a big first inning going against Mark Langston. He has come out of the stands at Yankee Stadium and gone right into the middle of the action.

“Friday night was my first game at the Stadium,” Jeter said. “I went out on the field and looked around and it was like, ‘Am I really here?”’ Jeter smiled. “I keep doing that,” he said.

Mattingly talks about how he has watched him since the Yankees signed him out of Kalamazoo (Mich.) Central, and has seen improvement all along the line. Buck Showalter, the Yankee manager, talks about how easily Jeter has fit in with the Yankees, on the field and in the clubhouse.

“I don’t think you’re going to see this young man force himself on the situation,” Showalter said.

The young man is three years out of Kalamazoo Central. Last year he played in three different levels of minor-league ball. He hit .329 with Tampa of the Florida State League, .377 with Albany of Double-A and then .349 with the Columbus Clippers of Triple-A not too long after his 20th birthday.

Jeter of Yankee Stadium turns 21 in three weeks. The Yankees will be better off if he still is getting his mail at Yankee Stadium then.

“I don’t worry about things that are out of my control,” Jeter said. “I just go from one thing to another, day to day, game to game. First game in Seattle. First hit. First extra-base hit. Right now, I’m just happy to be here, happy to be getting a chance. From the first time I ever came here, I always wanted to be a Yankee.”

He was born in Pequannock, N.J., and then his family lived a short time in New Milford. He did most of his growing up in Kalamazoo. His father is a drug- and alcohol-abuse counselor there. The father also is an old ballplayer out of Fisk College in Tennessee. Derek Jeter’s father put him at shortstop when he was in Little League, and he has been there since. Now he is the shortstop for the Yankees. He is 6-3 and about 180 pounds, but seems to play bigger than that.

Even after the family moved to Kalamazoo, there were always the summer visits to his grandmother. So the summer meant Yankee Stadium, at least a few times a year. He says Dave Winfield was his favorite player. He talks about watching the way Mattingly went about his business at first, Willie Randolph at second. Now he is out there with Mattingly. Injuries gave him a chance. The minor leagues weren’t going to be able to hold him much longer. The other night in Seattle, he threw a ball away at the start of a big inning for the Mariners, but you didn’t remember the throw afterward, you remembered that Derek Jeter dove and put his glove on the ball at all.

“I keep watching him,” Pat Kelly said, “and he doesn’t seem to be in awe of anything.”

Jeter is not the first to make the trip out of the bleachers at the Stadium and onto the field. It still is a real good story when it happens. He left good tickets for his grandparents, and aunts and uncles over the weekend. They had the same view of Yankee Stadium as always. Derek Jeter says it looks better from the inside.