from the New Jersey Star-Ledger

05/13/01

BY PAT BORZI STAR-LEDGER STAFF

NEW YORK -- His game-winning home run in the eighth inning yesterday wasn't close to the best thing to happen to Derek Jeter this weekend. What compares to learning your beloved younger sister, after months of chemotherapy for Hodgkin's disease, is cancer-free?

Nothing.

"It's been a good couple of days," said Jeter, whose second homer in three games -- he went his first 38 games without one, remember -- enabled the Yankees to beat the Orioles, 8-5, and spend a second consecutive day in first place in the AL East. Jeter wasn't sure if his sister, Sharlee, a 21-year-old college senior who completed her final chemo session Friday at Sloan-Kettering in Manhattan, watched or listened to the game at their parents' home in West Orange, and certainly wouldn't take it personally if she hadn't. Jeter figured she was watching, "if she wasn't asleep."

On a team experiencing a remarkable amount of health concerns the past five years -- cancer striking manager Joe Torre, pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre and Darryl Strawberry, for starters -- Jeter managed to keep news of his sister's illness quiet, confiding in best friend Jorge Posada and a handful of others. (Posada did the same thing when his infant son was ill.) Only after learning Friday that Sharlee didn't need radiation treatments, the next step if cancer remained, did Jeter tell people.

Jeter dropped the news about his sister on Torre in the dugout Friday night during the Yankees' 14-5 rout of the Orioles. Torre couldn't remember if Jeter had told him after his first or second at-bat, but it stunned him into speechlessness.

"He sat like he does sometimes and started talking," Torre said. "He said, 'It's a good day today.' Saying it's a good day makes you feel good, so I asked him why."

That's when Jeter told him. "I had no clue," Torre said. "Usually you hear rumors. It knocked me back a little bit."

Bernie Williams, whose father has been in and out of hospitals with life-threatening pulmonary fibrosis, never heard a peep before yesterday.

"Really? I didn't know that. Wow," Williams said.

Said Jeter: "I didn't want anyone sitting around worrying about me, because I'm not the one diagnosed with it. That's why I chose not to say anything. She didn't care one way or the other. Now it's a success story, so it's okay to say."

Jeter said Sharlee was diagnosed last fall, when her neck swelled after a fall and doctors found several lumps. Sharlee underwent chemotherapy every two weeks, traveling between Atlanta, where she is a math major at Spelman College, and New York. Jeter said she lost "a little hair, not much," and remained upbeat, even managing a reduced class schedule. Before falling ill, Sharlee expected to graduate this month; Jeter said she will complete her degree this fall.

"For her to go back to school was pretty impressive," Jeter said. "Those treatments aren't easy. I'd talk to her at night and she was in a lot of pain."

Only Jeter knows how much this weighed on him. Bothered early by a right quadriceps strain and lately a sore right shoulder, Jeter is batting a low-for-him .289 and didn't hit his first home run until Thursday night. His seven errors are uncharacteristic, too.

"You're worried, but I wouldn't say that affected anything," said Jeter, who speaks to his sister every day.

"It's tough to go through what he's gone through," Posada said. "He would come to the park and try to put it behind him, but it had to affect him somewhat. It's got to."

But, said Jeter, "Let's not make it out to be difficult for me. It's difficult for her. She's 21 years old, faced with cancer ... someone that young shouldn't have to go through tough stuff like that."

Jeter's homer brought an uplifting ending to a game that had turned troublesome. Rookie starter Ted Lilly couldn't hold a 4-2 lead in the fifth, leaving with two out and a tie score. With Brian Boehringer on, Cal Ripken singled in the go-ahead run, charged to Lilly. But Boehringer, winner Mike Stanton (3-1) and Mariano Rivera (11th save) shut the Orioles down after that and a Williams homer off starter Jason Johnson tied it in the fifth.

Then, with two outs in the eighth, singles by Scott Brosius and Chuck Knoblauch brought up Jeter, who for the last week or so had worked on timing and balance with hitting coach Gary Denbo. It helped: Jeter waited on a changeup and drove it to the right of the 408-foot mark in center. It took Jeter a few moments to acknowledge the crowd with a curtain call, because he said he wasn't sure the ovation was his. "Who else would it be for?" Stanton said, smiling. "I knew it wasn't for me."

On this day, the applause belonged to Jeter's sister just as much.