Mr. 4000?

By
Frank Solares


            As a self appointed Jeter apologist, I have always given him the benefit of the doubt. No one expected the Yankee Captain to continue hitting and even live up to the his latest contract. With two years left, on said contract we expected him to retire as a Yankee in 2014.

Despite that he has continued playing at a Jeter level and even though I disagree with the "EXPERTS" of the 4 letter network that are saying its not typical for a player to play well into his 40's and continue to produce.  I say take a look at history,  Pete Rose  who played 24 years (4256), Ty Cobb who played 24 (4189), Hank Aaron who played 23 (3771), Stan Musial who played 22 (3630), Honus Wagner who played 21years (3420) and Carl Yastrzemski who played 23 years (3419), they all produced even pass the age of 40.

He currently has 3251 hits playing his 18th season and is on pace to finish in 11th place by the end of the year. Passing the GREAT Willie Mays. Lets remember Paul Molitor was 39 when he hit .341 and had a total of 225 hits

Lets say for argument sake, he gets 49 hits for the remainder of the year and put him at 3300 and if he plays another 4 years and he averages 150 hits a year, that would put him at 3900 hits.

I would never say its impossible for him to get to 4000 let alone 3900 but if we have learned one thing about Derek Sanderson Jeter is, we could never count him out.

In my humble opinion he will end up in 3rd place between Ty Cobb's 4189 and Hank Aaron 3771.

It will be fun seeing where he ends up and how high he will be on the list.