Yankess' Jeter still standing test of times

Column

There's a new sensation in New York, the place where sensations come and go. Legends are trickier. The latest sensation is 23-year-old Jeremy Lin, and he's the New York Knicks' bouncing baby basketball shooting star. Lin has been lighting it up for nearly … two weeks. It hasn't escaped The Captain's notice.

"I've seen some of the highlights," Tampa's Derek Jeter said after a Monday workout at the Yankees minor league complex. "It's always fun any time there's a new athlete, especially in New York. The town gets pretty excited. He's brought some excitement to the mix."

Jeremy Lin is a handful of games. Derek Jeter is a lifetime, 2,578 games counting postseason, and Jeter has always counted in postseason. He is no longer a sensation in New York. Rather, the Yankees shortstop is part of the city, like the subways, and baseball's fabric, invariably the game's most respected figure.

And his internal clock is off and racing. Yankees position players aren't due at spring training until Feb 25, but here is Jeter, 37, already taking batting practice and infield. It's his 20th spring as a Yankee _ 20 years of Jeter ball.

"The older you get, the faster they go," Jeter said with a smile. "Does it feel like it? No. It's gone pretty quickly. In one sense, you feel like you've been here a long time. Twenty years, it's a long time, a real long time. So it's gone by quickly."

He remembers his first day at the Yankees complex, in 1992, after he signed out of high school.

"I was scared to death. I signed late, so when I got here, everybody had already been here, so it was an uncomfortable position, you know. I was completely overmatched in terms of ability in playing out here. It was an uncomfortable beginning."

He owns 3,088 hits and, in Jeter's world, the thing that truly matters, those five world championship rings. The pursuit of a sixth is everything to him.

Oh, and he still likes the job. He overcame a rough, injury-plagued start in 2011 to finish on a tear, throwing in the Jeter Clutch by making his 3,000th hit a home run off Rays pitcher David Price, part of a 5-for-5 afternoon, with the game-winning hit thrown in.

Now it's the hitting cage and grounders, sweat on his brow, next to no one watching. It's time, again.

"If I wasn't excited about it, then I wouldn't do it," Jeter said. "You still have to enjoy playing. Even the guys who aren't playing anymore, they miss competing. If I wasn't excited about it, I wouldn't play. That's the only way you can play well. That's the only way you can play, especially in New York, with all the other things that are going on."

Is there really anything to prove at this point?

"Prove?" Jeter said. "I don't go out there with a sense to prove anything, I go out there to get better, try to im-prove , try to help us win."

There's a young Yankees shortstop named Cito Culver working next to Jeter these days, taking grounders alongside him. Culver was born two months after Jeter signed with the Yankees. The Captain says he enjoys the kids, particularly the ones who want to listen and learn. Still, Jeter has a confession to make:

"In your mind, you're still a kid when you're running out here and playing. But I'm aware of it because a lot of kids ask me a lot of questions, I get an opportunity to get to know them and work with them a little bit, But in my mind, I'm still … I wouldn't say 18, but somewhere between those 20 years, somewhere in between."

His friend and longtime Yankees teammate Jorge Posada just retired.

"It'll probably set in more when the season starts," Jeter said.

He began working out in late November. The workouts start earlier each offseason.

"The working out part, that gets harder and harder, but the actual playing, the excitement of playing, never goes away," Jeter said.

There is the usual threat from Boston. Here's Jeter on the Rays: "They're only going to get better because they have a young group. The more they play together, the better they're going to be. They have a dangerous team."

The Rays began their major-league career two seasons after Jeter did.

Sensations come and go. In New York, people just went ticker-tape crazy over the Giants winning another the Super Bowl. The Rangers are red hot in hockey. And a kid named Jeremy Lin dropped 38 on Kobe and the Lakers last Friday.

Derek Jeter? He took batting practice and grounders at the Yankees complex Monday, just a legend back at work with a smile on his face, 37 going on 18, somewhere in between.