from the New York Daily News

Sunday, May 27, 2001

By Mike Lupica

This is the morning after Derek Jeter has gone 5-for-5 against the Red Sox, with three singles and a hard double to the base of the wall in right and a home run. It is the morning before a 2-1 game between Mike Mussina and Pedro Martinez, a Yankee victory that somehow looks like all the big games they have won in October since 1996, that first year Jeter went to shortstop at Yankee Stadium, a masterpiece of baseball, and of this team.

Jeter is at his locker, beginning to get dressed for the baseball day. On a chair are some cookies baked for him by 6-year-old Shannon Donohue, daughter of Steve Donohue, one of the Yankee trainers, along with an envelope the girl has sent Jeter, one he discovers contains a single dollar bill.

"Why the dollar?" Jeter asks Donohue.

"Maybe she thinks you need the money."

"She's worried about me," Jeter says, pocketing the money now.

"Yeah," Steve Donohue says, walking away. "We're all worried, nothing good ever happens around you."

Jeter missed most of spring training with a bad leg and even though the leg is better now, you see him walking around after every game, every single one, with big ice attached to his right shoulder. He didn't hit his first home run for a long time and struggled more in the field than we are used to from him, the way the whole Yankee team struggled in April and May. Off the field there was the news that Jeter's younger sister has been treated over the last couple of years for Hodgkin's disease.

All this happened after Jeter got his money this year, more money for just this one year than other famous Yankees made their whole careers. If no one was really worried about Jeter, we watched to see how he would react to it all, the money especially, the added responsibility that always comes with it in sports.

"It isn't always going to be great here," he was told Thursday morning. "The way it's gone for you so far in your career, it can't go on forever."

Jeter, money in his pocket, coming off 5-for-5, said, "Why not?"

Except for 1997, when the Yankees went out in the first round of the playoffs, Jeter has only known winning as a Yankee, the way Joe DiMaggio only knew winning, DiMaggio playing 10 World Series in the 13 years he was in center field for the Yankees, winning nine of them. Jeter has played four World Series and won them all. In the last one, against the Mets, he was MVP. He is still just 26, does not turn 27 until next month. This will probably be another season, from him and his team, where we remember the finish so much better than we do the start. If all this can't go on forever, he certainly believes it will go another year.

"You don't know it can't last indefinitely," Jeter says. "We've had all these great years, and now we're due for one that isn't so great? Why? Maybe other people think that way, but I don't. I don't look at things that way. Let other people worry about the law of averages, say they have to catch up with me, with all of us, eventually. I've been here. I know what we're capable of. It's why I think we're going to do it again."

Alex Rodriguez, another golden-boy shortstop, got more money than Jeter, $252 million to go with a bad Texas Ranger team that never wins. Jeter got $189 million to be a Yankee, to be the star of a Yankee team that tries to win four World Series in a row and five in six years.

I asked him the other day if he thinks anybody in sports, any sport, has a better job than he does, playing the position he does for the team he does, in this city, at this his baseball time.

"No," he said. "Nobody has a better job than me."

He is serious with the answer. He was a serious kid from the start, always acting older than he really was, never scared off by the uniform or the Stadium or the responsibilities, the way he isn't scared off by the responsibilities of the money now.

"Now I'm sure other guys think they have the best job," Jeter said. "Other guys in other sports, other fields. They have a right to think that way. They're living their dreams, I'm living mine. They've got their dream jobs, I've got mine. But do I fantasize about switching places with them? No."

He wants to be the Yankee shortstop. He doesn't want to be Tiger Woods or Kobe Bryant or Shaq or Allen Iverson. Or A-Rod. Michael Jordan's Bulls didn't even start winning until he was the age Jeter is now.

Roger Clemens will go to the Hall of Fame from this team. So will Joe Torre, the manager. Mariano Rivera might be the greatest relief pitcher in history, certainly the greatest postseason relief pitcher in history, and if his arm holds up, Rivera will go to the Hall of Fame. It is easy to see all the talent in the room. Jeter is the star, the face of this team, even if someone like Alex Rodriguez will always have the numbers on him. Jeter is the one the New York kids want to be. Sometimes they even send money.

"My job is to get things started," he said the other day.

You get the idea his season is just starting, that he hasn't even played yet. He had that ninth-inning hit against the Mariners last Sunday, he had 5-for-5. Yesterday, he went 3-for-4 with two RBI and two runs. It is not going to be easy for him this time, the way it won't be easy for his team. He thinks it is the best job even when it feels like work. Jeter thinks this is all supposed to go on forever.