Via the AP -

Jeff Karstens shut down the Houston Astros and pitched the Pittsburgh Pirates into a tie for first place in the NL Central.

Karstens threw a five-hitter and Andrew McCutchen tripled and drove in two runs as the surging Pirates opened the second half of the season with a 4-0 victory over the Astros on Friday night.

With the win, the Pirates moved into a tie for first place with the St. Louis Cardinals, marking the latest in a season the team has been in first place since 1997.

Karstens (8-4) needed just 83 pitches to become the first Pirate to win five straight decisions in a season since Matt Capps in 2006. He has an ERA of 2.34 this year, but has been particularly dominant in his three starts against Houston, going 3-0 with an 0.41 ERA.

“I had an idea it was kind of low, but I didn’t know how low it was,” Karstens said of his pitch count. “It’s just one of those things where I’m just trying to go out there and be efficient and see where it takes me at the end of the night.”

It was the fewest pitches thrown in a complete game this season and just the sixth time since 2002 that a pitcher has thrown a complete game with 83 pitches or less, according to statistics provided by the Pirates from the Elias Sports Bureau.

It was the second career complete game and shutout for Karstens, who last did it in 2008, at Arizona.

“It’s one of the best pitched games I’ve seen,” Pittsburgh manager Clint Hurdle said. “You take into account the pitches thrown, 21 out of 30 first-pitch strikes, and then you get the leadoff hitter six out of nine innings … defense helped him out a couple times, but that was a masterful outing. You talk about throwing strikes, pounding down in the zone, changing speeds, he had it all working tonight.”

McCutchen raved about Karstens.

“He was real efficient and got an easy win, pretty much,” he said. “He made it look easy, anyway.”

“Jeff Karstens, Daniel McCutchen, Ross Ohlendorf and Jose Tabata for Damaso Marte and Xavier Nady” is starting to make “Nick Johnson, Juan Rivera, and Randy Choate for Javier Vazquez” and “Mike Lowell for Mark Johnson, Ed Yarnall, and Todd Noel” look good.

Then again, you could probably say that about “Tyler Clippard for Jonathan Albaladejo” too.

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TNT is making a huge mistake here.  It’s just plan stupid.  No other way to say it.

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I missed this fact last night – per MLB.com:

Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada made a bit of history at Rogers Centre on Thursday night.

When Posada checked in as a pinch-hitter for Andruw Jones in the eighth inning of the Yankees’ eventual 16-7 loss to the Blue Jays, it marked the 1,660th game he and Jeter played together.

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, that’s the most regular-season games two players have ever appeared in together in Yankees history. The previous mark was set by Lou Gehrig and Tony Lazzeri, who had 1,659 instances in which both played in the same game as Yankees.

The only other current big league teammates to even play 1,000 games together are Jeter and Alex Rodriguez (1,050).

I wonder what the big league record is?

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Will Carroll makes a list.

Me?  I still want DiPoto – if only for the “Hey, Jerry, What’s The Story?” headlines.

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Via George King -

The Yankees were one of 17 teams in Denver on Thursday night to watch Ubaldo Jimenez pitch.

According to several talent evaluators, they have a better than average chance to acquire the 27-year-old because they have the top-shelf prospects the Rockies are looking for.

In mid-June the Rockies started getting calls on Jimenez and were told they weren’t actively shopping him, but if teams were willing to talk about moving their best prospects the Rockies would listen.

At 44-48 and 8 ½ games behind the NL West-leading Giants, the Rockies are very close to being sellers in a sellers’ market as the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline approaches.

According to a person familiar with the Rockies’ mindset, they believe Jimenez has pouted this year because Troy Tulowitzki and Carlos Gonzalez received contract extensions and he didn’t.

“They are annoyed at him,’’ the source said of Jimenez, who is 5-8 with a 4.08 ERA but pitching better lately after starting the season 0-5.

The Rockies recently scouted the Yankees’ Triple-A and Double-A teams and like Jesus Montero but not with the idea of using him at catcher. Instead, they view him as a first baseman. They also are high on pitchers Manuel Banuelos and Dellin Betances.

However, the party line other organizations have heard coming from The Bronx is that those three are untouchable.

Yet it’s clear the Yankees need to upgrade their rotation. Bartolo Colon’s past two outings weren’t good and he might be still suffering from a left hamstring injury that forced the 38-year-old onto the disabled list in mid-June. He didn’t get out of the first inning Thursday night when he was sabotaged by shaky defense.

Phil Hughes, who starts tomorrow, struggled in his prior outing which was his first since returning from the DL.

Hence the Yankees sending six scouts to big league parks Thursday night.

Statistically speaking, there’s a lot to like about Jimenez. But, I have no idea where the kid’s head sits. Is he a Carlos Zambrano in the making? Or, would this be like when the Red Sox traded for Pedro Martinez? What do you think?

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Great stats via the Complete Baseball Encyclopedia:

TRAA                           TRAA     RCAA     FRAA
1    Curtis Granderson            25       24        1
2    Brett Gardner                19        2       17
3    Alex Rodriguez               15       14        1
T4   Nick Swisher                 12        7        5
T4   Mark Teixeira                12       15       -3
6    Robinson Cano                11       14       -3
7    Eric Chavez                   4        1        3
8    Russell Martin                1       -6        7
9    Andruw Jones                  0       -1        1
T10  Gustavo Molina               -1       -1        0
T10  Ramiro Pena                  -1       -3        2
12   Chris Dickerson              -2        0       -2
13   Eduardo Nunez                -4       -1       -3
14   Jorge Posada                 -5       -5        0
15   Francisco Cervelli           -6       -5       -1
16   Derek Jeter                 -18       -4      -14

Click here for more on what these stats mean.

Outside of Gardy, and maybe Martin, the Yankees defense is not looking so great, is it?

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Bob Klapisch offers this on Alex Rodriguez today -

While the Yankees were busy celebrating Derek Jeter’s ascension into the 3,000-hit club last weekend, a more sobering reality now confronts them in the second half. The question isn’t will the Bombers still score runs with Alex Rodriguez on the disabled list for four to six weeks — they will — but what kind of production will they get from him in August and beyond?

A-Rod’s latest setback, a torn meniscus in his right knee, is relatively minor as knee injuries go. He’ll recover fully. But it’s one more reminder that the soon-to-be-36-year-old Rodriguez is already in his early decline phase. His slugging percentage has dipped in each of the past four seasons, prompting one talent evaluator to say, “At his age, we’ve probably seen the last of (A-Rod) hitting 50 (homers a season).”

But it’s more than just numbers with Rodriguez — the Yankees are worried about his ability to stay on the field as he gets closer to 40. Ten years ago, A-Rod was practically indestructible, playing in 1,114 games from age 25 through 31, an average of 159 per season.

Since 2008, however, hobbled by hip, knee, shoulder and calf problems, A-Rod’s durability is no longer a given; his average has dipped to 133 games a year. This year Rodriguez is at 80 games, which means he’ll have to play nearly every day down the stretch to make it to 130.

All this does is strengthen the case to convert A-Rod to a full-time DH in 2012, as the Yankees anticipated they someday would have to. But the price of brittle bones and creaking joints is steep, as the Bombers are playing $32 million for a singles hitter.

Rodriguez ended the first half with a streak of 85 at-bats without a home run, the longest of his career. It’s worth noting A-Rod is still a threat with a .295 average, but his new profile is almost unrecognizable: Rodriguez was only fourth among the Yankees in home runs and OPS at the time of his disablement, but he was leading the team in singles.

A-Rod has done well in his career PA as a DH so far. But, can he do it on a full-time basis? Probably…maybe…I dunno?

What I do know is – that’s a helluva lot of money to pay a “one-way” player who is “just a 30-homer” guy. But, I suppose that’s Hank and Hal’s problem…

Related, who plays third for New York if A-Rod does move to DH next season?

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Games since 1919 where the Yankees have allowed 16+ runs in a game of 9 innings or less:

.

I’ll always member the one from 1977 – because that was really embarrassing considering how good the Yankees were then and how bad the Jays were at that time.  And, I remember that 2004 turd against the Tribe because I had tickets for that one, sold them to my friend, and then told him afterwards that I would never sell him tickets again because he, obviously, was a bad luck charm.

How about last night?  What did you think of that game?

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Here’s the team:

C- Jose Molina
1B – Carlos Pena*
2B – Miguel Cairo
3B – Wilson Betemit
SS – Alberto Gonzalez
LF – Johnny Damon
CF – Melky Cabrera
RF – Lance Berkman
DH – Bobby Abreu

SP – Ian Kennedy
SP – Jeff Karstens
SP – Dustin Moseley
SP – Ted Lilly
SP – Carl Pavano

RP – Tyler Clippard
RP – Alfredo Aceves
RP – Daniel McCutchen*
RP – Mark Melancon

* Was with the Yankees as a minor leaguer.

The way these guys are playing in 2011, so far, they’d win a few games as a team, no? Maybe not a first place team. But, they’d win more than they would lose…at least the way some of these guys are playing this year.

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The Yankees have 74 games left this season – and 44 of those 74 are against A.L. East teams.  Should be fun.

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Check out Daniel Barbarisi’s piece in the WSJ: The Yankees on the Yankees

Great stuff in there.  Sergio Mitre as the enforcer?  Who knew!

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Bob Nightengale and Paul White had a great feature yesterday on how George Steinbrenner’s death changes the Yankees.  Note this part:

Although George Steinbrenner, who bought the team in 1973, had gradually stepped away from the heavy lifting of the Yankees in the years before his death, there has been a distinct change in the feel and operation of the franchise in the past year.

“It’s a lot more businesslike today,” says Yankees designated hitter Jorge Posada, who along with Mariano Rivera and Jeter are the last remaining members of the World Series championship run that started in 1996. “I know baseball has changed a lot, but it’s especially changed here.

“I will always remember the way it was here when (Steinbrenner) was alive. The things he did for a lot of the players, the things he did behind closed doors … well, you just don’t see that now.”

Yup.

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Via ESPN -

Forget National League vs. American League. It’s Derek Jeter’s right vs. Jeter’s wrong in Phoenix on Tuesday.

After an unnamed major league official and some players told the New York Daily News that Jeter was wrong to skip Tuesday’s All-Star festivities, players and even commissioner Bud Selig jumped to his defense.

The New York Yankees’ shortstop, who was selected by fans to start for the American League, will not be attending because of “emotional and physical exhaustion” from his pursuit of 3,000 hits, according to a Foxsports.com report.

But an anonymous major league official told the New York Daily News that baseball wanted to celebrate Jeter’s accomplishment and isn’t happy he’s not there.

“Derek Jeter has done everything right during his whole career,” the official said, according to the newspaper. “He was wrong on this one.”

Baseball would have been fine with Jeter appearing on the field for player introductions, tipping his cap and then heading back to New York, the official told the newspaper.

“This could have been a celebration of his 3,000th hit,” the official said. “He didn’t have to play.”

A source familiar with Jeter’s thinking told ESPNNewYork.com’s Andrew Marchand Monday that Jeter “couldn’t win” either way, but he thought it would be best for the second half of the season if he rested during the break. Jeter is coming off a calf injury that landed him on the disabled list.

Selig spoke out later Tuesday.

“There isn’t a player I’m more proud of in the last 15 years than Derek Jeter,” Selig said. “He has played the game the way it should be played, and he’s been a better human being off the field.

“I know why Derek Jeter is not here. I respect that and I must tell you that I think I would have made the same decision.

“Any suggestion that I or anybody else around here is unhappy with him not being here is just false.”

Earlier Tuesday, Yankees president Randy Levine blasted the anonymous official, saying he had spoken with Major League Baseball and it was fine with Jeter’s decision.

“This was Derek Jeter’s decision,” Levine told ESPNNewYork.com. “He was hurt for three weeks. He felt he needed the time off. We respect that. There weren’t any major league officials criticizing him over the weekend. If someone was criticizing him they should have the guts to not do it anonymously.”

I think Jeter has done enough for baseball since 1996 that he can pass on an All-Star now, if he wants – even if it is the year where he reached 3,000 hits.

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Great stuff on these and more via Chris Jaffe.

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Some Q&A from MLB.com -

Q. For Jose, can you just put into words how gratifying that must be to throw, to, do what you did tonight, to throw BP to your son and see him win the Derby like that?

JOSE CANO: That’s what I do all the time at home, just throwing BP. When he called me at home, that he wanted me to come to the United States because he’s going to be in the Home Run Derby, I said, “I’ll be happy to pitch to you, because that’s what I do at home,” you know. Whenever got the season off, we are working on a lot.

So it’s worked today, because sometimes you work and you never know what’s going to happen, when he’s going to need you. It worked. Thank God it worked.

Q. Robinson, was it more special because of your dad being involved with this whole thing?

ROBINSON CANO: Yeah, 100%. First, I want to thank God, and second, my dad, and my mom. Also want to thank my friends and my family that came with me, because when they find out that I’m going to be in the Derby, they say, you are going to win; wow, we have a lot of guys, we have Ortiz, Fielder, Bautista, we have a lot of power. But even my mom said, you never know. You know, I told her I’m going to go out there and do things the best I can, and good thing is it went my way.

Q. You’ve been wanting to compete in one of these for a long time. What was the feeling when you hit that last one to win?

ROBINSON CANO: That was a great, great feeling. I mean, it’s like when you are in the game, last inning to win the game, you get excited.

As a kid, you dream to be up here with a bunch of guys, that you watched back in the day like Sosa, Griffey, McGwire, Giambi, how much fun they have, and it’s the same thing, as a kid, you say, I want to be one day and see how they feel.

So now that I’m here, it’s a great feeling. I also want to thank Major League Baseball, the way they put it together, it was a great job. Everything was good and fine. And now I’m looking forward to tomorrow.

Q. When you are hitting, Gonzalez is hitting first, 11 home runs and you need 12 home runs, what did your father tell you when he went to talk to you?

ROBINSON CANO: First thing that goes through my mind is wow, he got 11.

So I say, “Wow, that’s a lot.” But I was positive. My dad said, “You can do it.” The other thing was, he never get nervous.

Q. Would you talk about your relationship with Jordan the barber from the Bronx who was here and what it meant to have him here?

ROBINSON CANO: He was the first guy that said last night, he said, “Don’t worry, you’re going to win. You’ve got a chance.” I look at him, “A chance?” I said, “I’m going to go out there and have fun, not even try to win it.” And it’s good. It’s always good to have a friend like him that always gives you positive advice, always got you on his side, and he’s always been there for me. And we have been friends now for ten years. He’s a great person, and it’s always great to have a good person around you.

Not bad work for a guy whose lifetime minor league slugging percentage was .425 (in 2,106 PA). And, his dad looked great for 49. Not that far off from his playing days:

I hope Robbie ages as well.

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Here’s one way to look at it:

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And, here’s another way to look at it:

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When I look at this, I see that Alex was at his best when he was in his free agent years (2000 and 2007) and when he was using PEDs while in Texas (2001-02-03). And, then he also had a couple of great seasons while in New York and Seattle. It’s an interesting picture, no?

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Eight in the first round, a dozen in the second…where does Cano stop tonight?

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If you look at the list of Yankees to have a day where “aLI>=1.25, and WPA>=.35 and RE24=2.5″, then, yes, it could be true.

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The story via FOX News Latino -

A cool $50,000. Even $100,000 to $250,000.

Half a million dollars!

Those are some of the estimates for how much Derek Jeter’s 3,000th hit – a home run – might sell for in the collectibles market. But when the ball settled into Christian Lopez’s hands, he didn’t have to think twice about his price.

“I was just happy I caught the ball,” the Highland Mills, New York, native told Fox News Latino.

Lopez, 23, never considered trying to sell the ball in the open market. After he emerged from the scrum, he was whisked away to the bowels of Yankee Stadium, with the head of security in front of him, asking him what he wanted for the ball.

Lopez said he hadn’t thought about that. He turned to his father, Raul Lopez, for guidance.

“You’re a grown man,” his proud father said. “You make your own decisions.”

And the young man – who has Puerto Rican, Dominican, Mexican and Nicaraguan roots – did just that.

He said that it would “be cool to get a jersey or something,” and maybe some bats and balls.

The Yankees decided on Derek Jeter-autographed bats, balls, and jerseys. And they threw in four Champions Suite season tickets for every remaining home game this season, including the playoffs, to go along with his front row seats for Sunday’s game after he caught 3,000.

“The jerseys and balls are going to be the sickest,” Lopez said. “I’ll frame those right away and give one to my girlfriend.

“The president gave me his card,” Lopez added, referring to Yankees President Randy Levine. “I’m going to e-mail him a little later and ask them to make out one of the jerseys to my girlfriend’s family so I can give it to her for her birthday next week.

“She started crying last night, her grandma was a big fan of Derek Jeter,” Lopez continued. “This means a lot to her. I know how much Derek Jeter means to her family.”

When Lopez was interviewed by Michael Kay live on the YES Network after he caught the ball, he said that as a Latino, Jeter means a lot to him.

“I just meant that as a minority, he’s done a lot for our generation,” Lopez said on Monday. “I grew up watching the guy; he’s done a lot for us. As a minority he’s had struggles to go through and he’s overcome a lot. I look up to that in the man. He’s an icon for our generation.”

And for the lifelong Yankee fan, he can’t pick just one memory that stands out as his favorite from the whirlwind game.

“I remember the whole day,” Lopez said. “I got to watch the rest of the game from George Steinbrenner’s suite. I met Reggie Jackson, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, Jay-Z and Derek Jeter.

“I was like a kid in a candy shop.”

Poor kid was getting killed by callers on WFAN this morning for not cashing in on catching the ball.

Sure, and, if he had kept the ball for the dough, people would be on him for that too.

Me? I would have given the ball back to Jeter as well – requesting a photo of Jeter with my kids (who were at the game with me) in exchange. That’s it. Would have used my own camera too.

Maybe that makes me stupid – especially considering that I have so little saved, so far, for the college tuition of those aforementioned kids, now ages seven and nine? But, it just seems like the right thing to do. And, if there’s such a thing as karma, I can’t imagine a better karma thing that someone could do…in a spot like that.

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Via ESPN -

New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez has elected to undergo arthroscopic surgery to repair a slight meniscus tear in his right knee, a team spokesman confirmed Sunday.

He is expected to miss four to six weeks.

Rodriguez met with Dr. Lee Kaplan in Miami on Sunday, and Kaplan recommended that Rodriguez go under the knife. The surgery will be performed by Dr. Kaplan at the University of Miami on Monday.

An MRI on Friday first revealed the tear.

Yankees manager Joe Girardi said on Sunday that, if Rodriguez opted for surgery, undergoing the procedure now would be ideal given the Yankees will have four days off during the All-Star break.

“There’s no doubt we’re going to miss him, but we need to find a way. As I’ve said several times already this year, some people are going to have to step up,” Girardi said. “Up to this point, this team has. We certainly look forward to getting a healthy Alex back into our lineup, because we know what he adds to this team.”

If he hadn’t opted for surgery, Rodriguez could have tried to play through it and have the procedure in the offseason.

But Girardi expressed concern that Rodriguez would be forced to play eight consecutive games on turf after the All-Star break if he decided to forgo surgery. The Yankees open the second half with a four-game series in Toronto and then head to Tampa Bay for a four-game set.

Rodriguez originally suffered the injury on June 19 in Chicago. He thought about scoring on a passed ball, but ultimately decided against it. And in the process of turning back toward third base, Rodriguez tweaked his knee.

“It’s hard to get into missing 20, 30, 40 games when you don’t know, but at the same time you don’t want to limp toward the finish line,” Rodriguez said after not playing in the Yankees’ 5-4 win over the Rays on Saturday afternoon at Yankee Stadium. “The most important games are played at the end.”

So, this will be the 4th year in a row, since he opted out and then resigned, where A-Rod has failed to play in 140 games in a season. And, this is all at age 35 or under. What’s Alex going to be good for in his late 30′s, maybe a 100 games a year?

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You know CC Sabathia is going to opt out of his contract at the end of this season.  And, he’s probably looking for a deal in the ballpark of $160 million.  Can anyone besides the Yankees afford to pay that?  Would the Yankees even pay that?  One thing is for sure…if CC walks after this year and goes somewhere else, the Yankees are in trouble next year.

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As promised, here are some pictures that I took when I was at the game yesterday.

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Great stuff on Derek Jeter from Tom Verducci -

It used to be that athletes could remain iconic because they remained unknown enough. We filled in the vast blank expanses between the highlights and the occasional press conferences with happy characteristics of our choosing, including the most inappropriate of sports clichés, “heroic.”

Now, for many, we know too much. LeBron James is only the latest athlete whose reputation — or as it wrongly is called in the sports’ media version of speed chess, “legacy” — has been sunk by TMI. The Information Age has chewed up and spit out athletes who might have remained false sporting gods in another age: James, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Brett Favre, Michael Vick, Alex Rodriguez, Ben Roethlisberger, Kobe Bryant, Mark McGwire, Tiger Woods, Michael Phelps, Lance Armstrong, et al.

Against this huge cultural shift, Derek Jeter has collected more hits than any of the great icons that ever played for the most famous and most studied franchises in sports, the New York Yankees, and done it with charm and grace that hardly seems possible any more.

Reaching 3,000 hits, as Jeter did Saturday with a third-inning home run against the Rays’ David Price, is in itself an enormous athletic achievement, one that despite great leaps in training, equipment, nutrition and, yes, pharmacological assistance, remains as impressive as when baseball was played with dead balls by out-of-shape men who worked odds jobs in offseasons. From 1989 through 1994, just as ballparks were getting smaller, leagues were expanding and steroids were growing, 990 players debuted in the major leagues — none of whom could parlay this enhanced hitter’s age into 3,000 hits. That six-year gap without the start of a 3,000-hit career is the longest such gap since 1947, when Jackie Robinson integrated the game. And then Jeter came along.

He arrived with that awkward inside-out swing, a high-elbows running style that appeared to be a succession of hinges, and a dancer’s body that never succumbed to the preposterous musculature of his generation. That nothing much changed about Jeter all these years, in style and comportment, is an achievement worth celebrating as much as 3,000 hits.

Think about the arc of his career in terms of how we treat our sports stars and you begin to understand this achievement better. Jeter was drafted in 1992, five years after the birth of local all-sports radio and two years before ESPN radio started taking calls from listeners. Jeter played his first major league game in 1995, the year after the web browser was introduced. He made his first All-Star Game in 1998, the year Google was founded. He hit a career-high .349 in 1999, the year the commercial camera phone was introduced. He reached 2,000 career hits in 2006, the first season after TMZ began. He has made it to 3,000 hits with satellite imagery available on your cell phone of his 31,000-square foot home.

Jeter is steadfast in revealing little about himself personally, steering clear of the look-at-me narcissism of athletes such as James. He also is fierce about filtering negativity from his life, instructing his family and friends not to bring negative media coverage to his attention, a policy challenged in the past two years by his down season last year, the acrimonious contract negotiations with the Yankees, and a season of further erosion this year.

Joe DiMaggio, for instance, somewhat regarded as the Yankee progenitor to the Jeter Way, never played a game broadcast in color or a World Series broadcast coast-to-coast until his final season, 1951. DiMaggio played only 176 night games and only 242 games out of the Eastern time zone in his entire career, the kind of underexposure that made mythology possible, if not necessary.

You could say the same thing about Mariano Rivera. We Yankees fans are blessed to have #2 and #42, together, for as long as we have…

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I didn’t sleep that well on Friday because I was anxious to attend the Yankees game on Saturday – hoping to see Jeter’s #3,000 career hit with my wife and kids.

And, I didn’t sleep hardly at all last night because I was way over-stimulated from the events of the game. After three hours of trying to fall asleep, I gave up and went to go watch SportsCenter at 3 AM. A half hour later, I tried to get back to sleep, with little luck. I finally fell asleep around 4:30 AM and then woke up at 8 AM.

Haven’t been this wired because of attending a Yankees game since Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS. Man, am I going to crash later today.

Damn you, Derek Jeter, for costing my two nights sleep. And, thank you, as well. Thank you, very, very, much!

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Left the house at 10 AM this morning to attend the Yankees game. Decided to set this one up as a “chron job” to publish at 6 PM.

Probably won’t be checking the blog until later tonight. In any event, use this post, if you want, to discuss the events of the day.

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Let’s hope that July 9, 2011 is a special day for this Jeter kid.

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Via Chad Jennings -

The Yankees players voted to play a split double header tomorrow. The Rays voted against it. When there’s no agreement, there are a series of essentially tiebreakers — how many games a team would play in a row, how many double headers are already scheduled, things like that — to determine which team gets its way.

Obviously the Rays choice stood.

Brian Cashman said the Yankees still could have scheduled a regular double header — not a split double header — but the team didn’t want to lose a home game. They would have only gotten one gate tomorrow if they played a regular double header.

“We’re not interested in going from 81 home games to 80,” Cashman said.

While every bone in my body wants Jeter to now get hit #3,000 tomorrow, this could be interesting if the Captain goes hitless tomorrow and Sunday. Then, for sure, Jeter’s milestone will happen on the road. Cashman and the Yankees may be kicking themselves for punting the double-dip to save the gate.

But, again, if Derek gets two hits tomorrow, as I want him to, then all this is moot.

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Back in May, I shared how much I enjoyed reading “The Captain: The Journey Of Derek Jeter.” Related, I’m happy to share that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is now offering a free excerpt from the book. Click here to check it out.

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First Mo Rivera, then A-Rod, and now Jeter have said “No can do” to the All-Star game this year.

Funny, this year marked the first time the Yankees had four All-Star starting players (Robinson Cano, Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Curtis Granderson) since 1987, when Don Mattingly, Willie Randolph, Rickey Henderson and Dave Winfield made the A.L. starting line-up.

So, does this mean the 1987 mark still stands?

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Today, I was thinking back to when I was a kid and my favorite Yankees player, Thurman Munson, would come to the plate in a position to make something happen.  Didn’t even have to be a huge spot – could have just been the first inning of a regular game in the middle of the season, like this one:

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At those times, attending games at the Stadium, my heart would beat so fast that it felt like it was going to jump out of my chest…waiting, hoping, praying that my guy would come through with the hit.

Of course, I was around 14-years old at the time.  Just a lad, etc. 

Now, I’m 48-years old,  and just five months from forty-nine, and I don’t have those types of hero worship moments when it comes to baseball players anymore. 

In any event, thinking back, and remembering those days like they were yesterday, and not more than 30 years ago, I have to wonder how many hearts will be beating out of chests every time Derek Jeter steps to the plate in search of career hit #3,000?

Probably a ton of little hearts in Yankeeland, no doubt.  Shoot, for all I know, there just may be one 48-soon-to-be-49 year old heart cranking it up there too?  Maybe some old habits do die hard?

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