If you weigh by media flashbacks, that dive is worth at least +10 wins!

If a video is put together to hightlight a particular play, is it too much to ask to, oh, I don't know. SHOW THE GOD DAMN PLAY?!

And with the way people in the video are going on and on about it, you'd think it was a come from behind win in the playoffs or something, and not some random regular season game.

Bobby Murcer should have caught a pop-up and then dove into the stands on September 22, 1966. Maybe then he never would have been traded.

Jeez Louise, Jeter caught the ball on the run, took a step and a half, then elected to launch himself into the stands, nicking his pretty face. Sure, it was a really good catch but hardly a fantastic play. Compare with this one. (EDIT: Note how far Tejada had to go before making the grab. With Utley at the plate, he had been playing on the other side of second.)

The funniest thing about this is calling it a "dive into the stands," as if he decided to go airborn to catch the ball. He caught the ball in shallow left and basically couldn't apply the brakes in time, so went careening in.

We don't see other SSs do that, which tells me that most of them find a way to make the play without looking like they've gone 3 rounds with Ali.

(And note I'm not saying the play makes Jeter a bad fielder. Just noting that it was odd.)

I was at this game. Probably the most shocking sports moment I've ever experienced live. There was a milisecond after it happened where it was silence because no one knew what to do/how to react and once it was processed it was bedlam. I went home before the game winning hit though...had to hear the crowd roar as the 4 train pulled off.

I remember Pokey Reese making an even more dangerous dive just a week or so earlier.

Ichiro could smash his face in, if he wanted to

We don't see other SSs do that, which tells me that most of them find a way to make the play without looking like they've gone 3 rounds with Ali.

There was basically no foul territory down the line at the old Stadium, and the hit by Nixon was really strange... it was a sliced pop-up, a hanging splitter on the outside corner he kind of cued straight up into the air. But it did not have much hang-time. The play itself was impressive, but I do agree a few other shortstops probably could have made it. One exceptional facet of Jeter's defense is judging, and chasing, fly balls. He could have been a Major League center-fielder.

I remember Pokey Reese making an even more dangerous dive just a week or so earlier.

IIRC, it was earlier in that same game (or at least that series in the Bronx).

I'd like to see a video of the Pokey Reese dive.

It was a great play by Jeter, I don't think there's any sense in denying that, but it shouldn't be a legendary one.

IIRC, it was earlier in that same game (or at least that series in the Bronx).

It was earlier in the game.

And with the way people in the video are going on and on about it, you'd think it was a come from behind win in the playoffs or something, and not some random regular season game.

This was not some "random regular season game". At the time it was played, it was considered a very important game.

This game is also considered by some to be the reason Nomar Garciaparra was traded.

Meh -- Uribe's was better.

IIRC, one major aspect of this catch was the contrast that it showed with Nomar, who was pulling his Achilles act that game. That contrast was stark.

The freakin' video is 7 minutes long and consists mostly of talking heads! And there was a friggin' car commercial in front of it! I couldn't find the actual catch.

Still, it was worth it. Why?

Because I advanced to a portion of the video that featured a woman saying (so help me G-d), "He came so quick!"

Still laughing.

I can't get the video to work, so maybe it's dead and gone, or maybe it's me and my browser... but Reese's catch is the last one listed down on the lefthand side, on this page.

You'd think it was a come from behind win in the playoffs or something, and not some random regular season game.

It was a game where the seventh- or eighth-most interesting angles or events would have gotten poems written about them by Grantland Rice. It was also perfectly placed in between the 2003 ALCS and the 2004 ALCS; if that regular season game had happened to have been a playoff game, the streets would have run ankle-deep in semen and Joe Buck might have cracked a smile.

The Reese video doesn't work for me either.

Man, there was a massive thread re: this catch in 2004. Bodies all over the place.

I believe Jeter played the next day, a day game against the Mets, and received a standing ovation at Shea at the start of the game.

Wonder of wonders, the BTF Search feature hit the bullseye. Here's a thread on it from 2004.

Comment #2:

Pokie Reese seemed to go a lot further to catch the ball he got to. Jeter caught his with room to spare and then dove into the stands. They were both great plays, but Reese had more range and Jeter made an unnecessary (to catch the ball) dive. That pretty much sums up Jeter's defense. Less range, more unnecessary dives.

Meh -- Uribe's was better.

And it was the second-to-last-out of a frickin' World Series! In a one-run game! With a runner on base! Why doesn't this catch get more notoriety!?

I'm comfortable believing that the last four Astro outs in the 2005 World Series represent the greatest four-out stretch by a defensive player in baseball history. Three plays that only Juan Uribe and his opposing SS (one Adam Everett) could have made, among all 2005 SSs.

Why doesn't this catch get more notoriety!?

Coco Crisp's 2007 ALCS sealing catch was one of the greatest catchs in MLB history (no really it was)*. Sure the game was sealed up, but he ran a mile at about 22 mph and just smashs into an ungiving wall at full speed. Imagine that minor league game where the guy goes through the wall...except with concrete and a 1/2 inch of pad.

* and it never makes any greatest catch lists. Coco makes those lists with OTHER catchs even but not that one.

That was definitely in the Top Ten of regular-season baseball games I've ever seen. And it's easily the best Game Chatter I've ever experienced.

Three plays that only Juan Uribe and his opposing SS (one Adam Everett) could have made, among all 2005 SSs.

I was never comfortable with the idea of Uribe as a defensive god. Too ... spherical.

It was a great play by Jeter, I don't think there's any sense in denying that, but it shouldn't be a legendary one.

That is the way I see it. It wasn't the best play of the year, heck generally speaking, it's very unlikely to have been the best play of the week in any given week. It is a testament to Derek Jeter's on field heart and hustle but beyond that most shortstops make that play a little easier, most major league shortstops don't go into the stands because they are already slowing down as they track the ball better, and know where the all is.

#8 made me legitimately LOL, in part because I admire whenever anyone is able to take a tired joke and sneak it in to a seemingly unrelated matter.

It was a great play by Jeter, I don't think there's any sense in denying that, but it shouldn't be a legendary one.

I think it should be legendary, at least to Yankee fans of the Jeter era. That game is the most memorable regular season Yankee game I've ever seen. I remember so much of that incredibly long game so clearly, and it's not like it happened last year. Among great Yankee regular season games I've seen, it tops Cone's perfect game, Jeter's 3000th hit, 5 hit day, Bernie's stretch of 12 straight hits (not really a game, but still an amazing regular season event) and Mussina's 8 & 2/3s perfect in Fenway (against Cone) for me. It had a playoff atmosphere, a national broadcast and Jeter's play was a spectacular play (in a game full of them) that made everyone watching go nuts. Also, for Yankee fans on this site, the game chatter was awesome.

I mean, I understand why any non-Yankee fan wouldn't care, but for Yankee fans it should absolutely be legendary. This article is only linked to the newsblog to stir the ####.

#8 made me legitimately LOL, in part because I admire whenever anyone is able to take a tired joke and sneak it in to a seemingly unrelated matter.

I laughed as well. It was a good one.

I mean, I understand why any non-Yankee fan wouldn't care, but for Yankee fans it should absolutely be legendary. This article is only linked to the newsblog to stir the ####.

That and to point out the absurdity of an above average play being considered on any seasonal list or all time list as one of the greatest of all time. Ozzie did better plays than this on a weekly basis. Heck it wasn't even the best play of that particular game.

I remember that my prediction powers were well-honed. Without descending to Shaughnessy-town, it was a different Red Sox/Yankees tilt while the championship draught in Boston was alive, and I knew that the Yankees would eventually win.

I haven't been correct since then, by the way.

Has anyone else suspected that this one play is the primary culprit for all of Captain Giftbasket's undeserved gold gloves? It can't be a coincidence that he won his first one after this season, right? And then in typical snowball-running-down-a-hill fashion, once a guy wins once, he develops a reputation and the voters just keep giving him more and more. You know, cuz it's easier than actually paying attention during the season and trying to figure out who really deserved it.

The freakin' video is 7 minutes long and consists mostly of talking heads! And there was a friggin' car commercial in front of it! I couldn't find the actual catch.

It's to promote the YES network coverage of the play, not the play itself. So they'll show their replays and let us hear their announcers. Any idiot can point a camera at a play in a baseball game; what YES is showing is what kind of production values they manage to wrap around the action on the field. And personally, I feel that they do an excellent job; I watch a lot of RSNs cover a lot of baseball games at work, and YES is consistently in the top three or four.

That and to point out the absurdity of an above average play being considered on any seasonal list or all time list as one of the greatest of all time.

Well, without getting into whether its merely above average or not, the "all time" list is great Yankee moments that happened while YES was on the air. It absolutely belongs there.

It can't be a coincidence that he won his first one after this season, right?

IIRC, a big reason he won was because he had the longest error-less streak in MLB history in 2004. I think that streak has since been broken, but I'm not sure.

And with the way people in the video are going on and on about it, you'd think it was a come from behind win in the playoffs or something, and not some random regular season game.

That's pretty much always been my opinion about the famous switching hands layup Jordan did against the Lakers in the 1991 Finals (the legendary Marv Albert call, "A spec-TAC-ular play!"). I mean, yeah, it was the Finals, but it wasn't a game changing play or anything. And it was pointless showboating. It's not like Jordan was going up for the layup and someone came up on that side so he had to change hands to make the shot. He had a wide open layup and he switched hands to make a more difficult shot just because he was Michael Jordan and because he could. Showboating annoys me; it doesn't impress me.

(and I'm going off my 11 year old boyhood memory. I apologize if some of the details aren't 100% accurate)

And note I'm not saying the play makes Jeter a bad fielder.

No, it doesn't. But his bad fielding does.

Diver! He should be ashamed! Diving is ruining our fair game!

I think it should be legendary, at least to Yankee fans of the Jeter era. That game is the most memorable regular season Yankee game I've ever seen.

Fair enough.

doubleroosky

The game included:
*Jeter's catch and face-smashy (2 men on, 12th inning);
*Pokey's catch and back-twisty (5th inning);
*Nomar in repose (all innings);
*The great Pedro Martinez vs. the immortal Brad Halsey, making his third career start;
*The immortal Brad Halsey outpitching Martinez in their 5 innings together;
*Pedro hitting Gary Sheffield in the back to get the game started off right;
*Kenny Lofton dropping a fly ball by Dave McCarty in the 7th; McCarty eventually becomes the tying run.
*The Yankees loading the bases in the bottom of the 9th, before Boston gets out of it;
*The Red Sox loading the bases with nobody out in the 10th, before A-Rod makes a diving stop and nearly starts a triple play from his knees, throwing out Gabe Kapler at home;
*A-Rod stealing third in the bottom of the 10th, before Boston gets out of it;
*A leadoff triple for the Yankees in the bottom of the 12th, before Boston gets out of it (all told, the third base runner(s) failed to score five times from the 9th inning on);
*Following Cairo's triple, Jason Giambi and his stomach parasite come off the bench to pinch hit, needing just a sac fly... and strikes out;
*Manny Ramirez hitting two home runs, the first to knock the immortal Brad Halsey out of the game, the second leading off the 13th;
*Gary Sheffield playing third base in the 13th inning, for the first time in over a decade, and immediately making a throwing error;
*Cesar Crespo batting with 2 on and 1 out while Nomar watched... and grounding into an inning-ending double play;
*The winning Yankee rally starting with 2 outs and nobody on in the bottom of the 13th, ultimately featuring tying and game-winning hits by Miguel Cairo and John Flaherty (batting .153).

Entire religions have been based on less.

I think it should be legendary, at least to Yankee fans of the Jeter era. That game is the most memorable regular season Yankee game I've ever seen. I remember so much of that incredibly long game so clearly, and it's not like it happened last year. Among great Yankee regular season games I've seen, it tops Cone's perfect game, Jeter's 3000th hit, 5 hit day, Bernie's stretch of 12 straight hits (not really a game, but still an amazing regular season event) and Mussina's 8 & 2/3s perfect in Fenway (against Cone) for me. It had a playoff atmosphere, a national broadcast and Jeter's play was a spectacular play (in a game full of them) that made everyone watching go nuts. Also, for Yankee fans on this site, the game chatter was awesome.

It's right up there for me with the 2009 game that featured a walkoff homer by A-Rod that broke up a scoreless duel in the 15th inning. But while the Jeter catch was great and the Flaherty denouement was dramatic, my favorite parts of that game were the ongoing camera shots of No-Mas yawning in the dugout. Same reason that Red Sox fans understandably love to replay the A-Rod wrist slap from game 6 of the ALCS. It plays right into their preferred narrative.

I mean, I understand why any non-Yankee fan wouldn't care,

Sure, just like I can understand why a Patriots fan wants to obsess over Eli Manning's passing ratings. You've got to play the hand you're dealt.

#39 is really great. I remember this game, not the details as much as the tension and mood. It was a really great match up that I couldn't appreciate as much until after the Sox finally beat the Yanks.

I am glad that I'm not the only one who finds this "diving" play to be bogus. It was a running catch. That's a play Major Leaguers should make. Losing your balance afterward and falling on your face does not make it great. Good and dramatic for sure, not great.

I did hate what this game did to Nomar's reputation. I still can't believe the way he left. What a tragedy.

my favorite parts of that game were the ongoing camera shots of No-Mas yawning in the dugout. Same reason that Red Sox fans understandably love to replay the A-Rod wrist slap from game 6 of the ALCS. It plays right into their preferred narrative.

It's actually completely different. Nomar was an intense, highly dedicated player who was painted by those shots as a malingerer. A-Rod's wrist slap is remembered fondly because a) justice was served in a case where previously Sox fans would have expected not to be, b) it was consistent with the weirdo/jerk persona that has come to define ARod.

"No-Mas" is very clever though. Did you think of that yourself?

I did hate what this game did to Nomar's reputation. I still can't believe the way he left. What a tragedy.

But was it as tragic as David Wright's exile to CitiField?

It's actually completely different. Nomar was an intense, highly dedicated player who was painted by those shots as a malingerer. A-Rod's wrist slap is remembered fondly because a) justice was served in a case where previously Sox fans would have expected not to be, b) it was consistent with the weirdo/jerk persona that has come to define ARod.

That just shows---and I'm not saying this as a knock---that one's perspectives on players can vary according to one's rooting investment in a team. Nomar got slammed a bit unjustifiably, but OTOH those camera shots did seem to portray a player whose mind was somewhere else in one of the most fiercely contested games of the year. And while A-Rod's wrist slap was almost comically ineffective, if he'd gotten away with it he would have been given the full Jeter treatment for improvisational quick thinking. And if the Yanks had then gone on to win the game and the series, there would have been books written about "The Slap That Sunk The Sox", or something like that.

"No-Mas" is very clever though. Did you think of that yourself?

Yeah, it just came to me when I was about to type "No-Mah". I'm somewhat surprised that one of the NY tabloids hadn't thought of it at the time.

It was a great play by Jeter. It also looks, on replay, overly dramatic because he continued into the stands when it didn't appear 100% unavoidable.

I would be surprised if even Yankee fans argued it was a better pure defensive play than Reese's in the same game, however. Jeter's catch is clearly a more dramatic TV moment, for a host of reasons.

I would be surprised if even Yankee fans argued it was a better pure defensive play than Reese's in the same game, however. Jeter's catch is clearly a more dramatic TV moment, for a host of reasons.

Not to mention A-Rod's spectacular play in the 10th.

(and I'm going off my 11 year old boyhood memory. I apologize if some of the details aren't 100% accurate)

You already wanted Michael Jordan to get off your lawn when you were 11? That's amazing!

It was a great play by Jeter. It also looks, on replay, overly dramatic because he continued into the stands when it didn't appear 100% unavoidable.

Do you seriously think that any player would deliberately run into the stands after a catch was made just to look more heroic on TV? Or are you just saying that his sense of anticipation wasn't fully engaged?

I would be surprised if even Yankee fans argued it was a better pure defensive play than Reese's in the same game,

I think that most non-Jeter haters who watched the game would react to that by saying, "Maybe not, but so what?"

Nomar got slammed a bit unjustifiably, but OTOH those camera shots did seem to portray a player whose mind was somewhere else in one of the most fiercely contested games of the year.

He actually looked very tuned into the game. Nothing about his expression indicated that he was distracted. He simply wasn't up on the dugout steps, which was reason enough for the broadcast team to decide to vilify him.

And while A-Rod's wrist slap was almost comically ineffective, if he'd gotten away with it he would have been given the full Jeter treatment for improvisational quick thinking. And if the Yanks had then gone on to win the game and the series, there would have been books written about "The Slap That Sunk The Sox", or something like that.

Yes, I'm sure that you would have seen it that way just as you see any criticism of Eli is just a case of jealous NE fans venting. But see, that's the difference with the Nomar situation. The portrayal of Nomar was in direct contrast with what the rest of his actions during his career tell us. It's an injustice. The slap was the right call AND it also fit quite well with what else we know about ARod. The two are not at all the same and it doesn't have anything to do with what team you root for.

if he'd gotten away with it he would have been given the full Jeter treatment for improvisational quick thinking

Now if he had gotten away with it and the Yankees won the game, the world would be a better place. But there's no way he would have gotten the Jeter treatment. He's too talented to be allowed credit for improv. It would be like calling for a popup while running the bases.