from the New York Times

March 29, 1998

By BUSTER OLNEY

TAMPA, Fla. -- Don Zimmer's seemingly expandable eyes are widening. In his 50th year of professional baseball, Zimmer is stumped.

"Mazeroski and Groat were pretty good," Zimmer says, but his words ttrail off and his answer lack conviction. The question: name a double-play combination that was comparable to the Yankees' Derek Jeter and Chuck Knoblauch.

Go back in time. Name a combination in which the shortstop has Jeter's speed, his ability to range to his left, his rocket-like throwing arm, his talent. He is 23 years old and has a .306 career average and this spring has learned to hit more doubles and home runs.

Name a combination in which the second baseman can match Knoblauch's range, his exceptional arm, his ability to generate runs at an average of more than 100 a season in his first seven years. He is 29, has averaged nearly 40 steals a year, played on four All-Star teams and won a Gold Glove award.

Knoblauch and Jeter could redefine middle-infield excellence as they play together in the years to come, starting this year for a Yankees team that looks so good "it's sickening," said Andy Pettitte, who pitches the season opener on Wednesday in Anaheim, Calif. The Yankees have good starting pitching, an excellent bullpen, perhaps the best defense in the American League, a deep bench, a wealth of reserves in the minors, and, best of all, a staggering everyday lineup. Knoblauch and Jeter are at the top, No.1 and No.2, second base and shortstop.

Name a comparable combination. "I played with Pee Wee and Jackie," says Zimmer, but he knows Robinson was not Knoblauch's defensive equal. Zimmer's eyes widen some more.

"Joe Morgan and Davey Concepcion," says Zimmer, mentioning the middle infield of the Big Red Machine in the 1970s. Morgan is in the Hall of Fame, Concepcion may be one day. Zimmer is comparing Knoblauch and Jeter to them, which is answer enough to the question.

They played catch in front of the Yankees' dugout here last Wednesday, whipping a ball back and forth, Jeter slowly enunciating Knoblauch's name aloud -- "Kan-nob-block-eh" -- and Knoblauch laughing. They are both young, similar in the way they play, taught by their fathers. Name a comparable double-play combination. Go back in time.

The Yankees' shortstop spent a year playing second. "In Little League," Jeter said.

He was 11 years old and his coach inserted Jeter's best friend, Josh Ewbank, at shortstop and played Jeter at second. Jeter did not care for this, but his coach told him to stop worrying about things he could not control and just enjoy himself. His coach was named Charles Jeter.

Derek Jeter wanted to play shortstop because his father played shortstop, for Fisk University in Nashville. Derek watched his father play softball and was struck by how much fun his father seemed to have. Years later, Jeter would say his father's greatest contribution to his own game is a love for baseball.

When Jeter was 15, he played third base for Rathco, a summer league team sponsored by a company that produces highway safety equipment, road barriers and such. The next season he joined the Kalamazoo Maroons. He already was tall, 6 feet 1 or 6 feet 2, and very skinny, said Dan Hinga, the Maroons' coach. The team played games almost daily, with little time for practice. Michigan's cold climate tightly frames the baseball season, and it was as if Jeter tried to cram a year's worth of baseball into a few months. He would arrive early for games and take grounders, "and after games," Hinga said, "he would stand out there and take grounders as long as there was somebody there to hit balls to him. People say Derek is lucky. Well, Derek is fortunate that he's 6-3 and he's got long arms and legs. But he worked his rear end off."

Jeter had a powerful arm even as a teen-ager. Watching his unusual mechanics -- Jeter throws with his chest puffed out, like a quarterback -- Hinga figured out that Jeter grew up flinging baseballs as far as he could, as part of his normal warm-up routine, building his arm strength and developing the muscles in his upper torso. Most players warm up throwing 60 to 90 feet, Hinga said. Jeter threw much, much farther.

Jeter moved to shortstop for good at 16, making spectacular plays and sometimes fumbling routine grounders. But Hinga knew he would be a special player. Playing a game in Battle Creek, Jeter, thin as he was, smashed two homers in one game out of cavernous Nichols Field, blasts of 400 feet or more. Hinga saw this and peered into the future.

The Yankees' second baseman played shortstop for most of his life, through Little League, high school, college, a year in the minor leagues. Chuck Knoblauch played for his father, Ray, for four years at Bellaire High School in Houston. Ray Knoblauch pitched in the minor leagues, drew on that experience and taught Chuck about the proper approach to playing, maintaining intensity and concentration. Chuck Knoblauch needed no instruction in acquiring a will to win; he smiles sheepishly at the memory of pitching and losing a Little League playoff game to a team called the Astros and bawling his eyes out afterward.

He enrolled at Texas A&M, and Marty Esposito scouted him for the Minnesota Twins, who then drafted and signed Knoblauch in 1989. Esposito recalls Knoblauch's possessing a seething intensity. When he made mistakes, "he would never throw his helmet or anything like that, but you could tell it really bothered him," Esposito said.

How? "Have you ever seen someone and you know they're talking to themselves inside?" Esposito explained. "Clenched mouth. If you said something to him in those moments, you know he'd snap. He zeroed in totally on playing the game."

Following Knoblauch's first year of professional baseball, he attended an instructional league and was told to move to second base. Knoblauch was not sure what to make of this, if the Twins were telling him they did not think he was good enough to play shortstop. Or maybe, Knoblauch thought, they had identified the fastest way for him to make it to the majors. He started focusing on what he could control, learning to turn a double play from a new position; Charles Jeter would have approved.

Two years later, he was the American League rookie of the year, crowding the plate, daring pitchers to throw inside, bruises new and old on his left arm and side, from the times he had been hit with pitches. Knoblauch was part of a team that won the 1991 World Series.

Early in the 1997 season, Knoblauch and Jeter crossed paths on the field, one of those moments around second base when players chat briefly. Knoblauch congratulated Jeter on winning the rookie of the year award in 1996 and winning a World Series. "That happened to me my first year," Knoblauch said, telling Jeter to enjoy it. There was irony in Knoblauch's advice: he had been trying to get back to the World Series ever since his rookie year. His desiree to win would take him out of Minnesota and to the Yankees, to play alongside Jeter.

They have been together all spring. When one played in an exhibition, the other did, too, the plan of Manager Joe Torre for them to get acclimated. The transition has been smooth, and it's only the beginning.

Both have played with numerous double-play partners, and neither is particular in the way the other does his job. To increase his level of comfort on double plays, Knoblauch is learning the angles of Jeter's throws. When there is a play to his right, Jeter will throw "from underneath," Knoblauch said. "When he's moving toward second base, he's going to flip it. When he goes back in the hole, he jumps a lot."

Jeter is learning that when positioning himself, he can take more chances with Knoblauch alongside. "He's got a lot of range," Jeter said. "That's what amazes me, is his range."

Name a comparable double-play combination. Defense, hitting, speed.

They will be good together, Zimmer said. "Some of that stuff about them needing time to get to know each other, that's overrated," he said. "You know, when you've got a good second baseman and you've got a good shortstop and they play together, they're going to be good. And these two guys here -- they're pretty good."