The Captain of Magic. And Mashed Potatoes.

It’s a pretty good crowd for a Saturday and the manager gives me a smile. Cuz he knows that it’s me they’ve been coming to see to forget about life for awhile. – Billy Joel, Piano Man

It was the first hit of the day that really got me. For some reason, 2,999 was the one that almost knocked me over, just from the sheer energy vibrating through the Stadium, up my feet and out my arms, where I’d erupted into goosebumps despite the 85 degree heat. In that moment, it was like everyone knew: 3,000 is going to happen today. That level of emotion was pretty effing intense.

I think a lot of the feeling for me was all the WORK that went into actually being there. Oh, sure, Derek Jeter did all the physical work over 17 seasons to get there, but for Tonya and myself to actually be at the game? Well, it was a bit of an effort. Like, all the way back to when he broke the Yankees’ hit record in 2009, which the season ticket crew and I had stalked pretty hard, if y’all remember correctly. I remember thinking, “We’ll be stalking 3,000 in a few years if we’re lucky!” And you remember me posting a few weeks ago about how I’d gotten my mitts on tickets to the three games of the homestand in which El Cappy was totally going to get No. 3,000 – until his calf muscle had other plans. What’s more, Tonya had tickets to the first game in Wrigley that week, where it also could’ve happened. We were both kind of, uh, bitter as only we can be but made the most of it.

But then he came off the DL on Monday and it was all timing out so perfectly. In a complete coincidence, Tonya had planned a trip out to see us this weekend back in March. She just wanted to go to a game back then (she hadn’t been to the Stadium in two years), but this? Well, it was like fate… until we were standing on line outside the Stadium on Friday and the gates didn’t open at 5, and it began to pour, and then it was wind-driven and then the lightning started and my feet were getting soppy and all of a sudden this lady cop next to the line was like, “Sorry guys, they called the game.” People start streaming back, muttering the same thing, bitterly noting that the fans at Saturday’s game would now most likely get to see 3,000, and that’s when Tonya and I almost simultaneously started cutting people and burst into tears. I felt bad enough, given my failed history-stalking of late, but for Tonya? She wasn’t even going to get to see a game at her most favoritest place in the world after coming 1,000 miles, let alone a historic moment. In my dripping-wet giant blue poncho and with water squishing out of my shoes, I was suddenly the picture of defiance, and out it came: “We can StubHub tickets for tomorrow” (and you know how huge that is for me) and Tonya, determination replacing defeat, was like, “Yes we are.”

And so we did. When the day dawned bright and sunny and we arrived at the Stadium and our tickets worked (I never do trust them for some reason) and we got inside, Tonya was like “I just want to see a game today. Anything else that happens is just gravy.” To which I added, “Well, 3,000 would be like mashed potatoes.”

Top of the 1st: He’s mixing the potatoes, butter and milk in his mind right here.

To understand why I felt such a need to be there, you have to go back to 1993, when the Yankees were just starting to turn the badness around. It was that April that I got the Yankee yearbook for my birthday, and in the back, in the “down on the farm” section was this small picture of a cute-ish looking guy named Derek Jeter. Now, you know sometimes highly touted prospects end up not panning out (see Brien Taylor), but I felt the need to keep tabs on him. He was only three years older than me, which, at 16, is like “WOW. My peers are starting to become Major Leaguers” (to which my current self wants to slap said 16-year-old self because now I’m at the age where many players are younger and…sigh). Anyway, the two years it took for him to make it to the bigs felt pretty long, but when he finally debuted, it was kind of a tease. He was up for a little bit, then sent back down almost as quickly. Then I went away to college and didn’t get to see him in action again…until Opening Day 1996, when Sports Center aired the highlights of the game, and a kid named Derek Jeter homered in his first at-bat. I knew then there’d be no more “teases.”

Just before 3,000

Anyway, suddenly it’s 15 years and a whole hell of a lot of memories later. I didn’t think 3,000 was going to happen in the very next at bat (it seemed too greedy or something), but I was taking pictures anyway. When he first made contact, I was sure it was somehow going to stretch foul, but then it kept going straight, and Matt Joyce kept running. I was watching the trajectory of the ball, convinced it was going to be caught, yet the whole time I kept saying “oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.”

And then it was gone.

And then the Stadium was one massive wave of arms and fists and flying popcorn. There was this seemingly unstoppable outburst of manic glee. All of a sudden I couldn’t NOT scream, and couldn’t NOT jump up and down and NOT stop laughing. This was SO typical Derek Jeter – making big moments somehow more magical and mythical. I don’t know if I’ve ever – wait, no, I’ve NEVER seen another Yankee do this in person. I tried taking pictures of the action on the field, all the hugs and good feelings, but my hands were shaking, like so:

But then it got a little better (see more photos here):

The extended ovation that followed was filled with such an outpouring of feeling, such love and appreciation.You could see that even Mr. Jeter, the stoic, was touched. Tonya, her journey finally complete, could be found screaming or crying or some combination of both for the rest of the afternoon. She managed to record the whole thing on her phone. We listened to it later and, as she put it (as she was unapologetically tearing up again), “We sound like a bunch of banshees!” And she was right: I had a sore throat the rest of the afternoon – I don’t even know what I was yelling in my delight, just that I felt like I’d had about 10 throat cultures after. I didn’t even care. The only thing that dinged the afternoon a bit was the fact that Steph, Jen and Erica, i.e., the rest of the “Yankee Vixens” weren’t there. I swear to god, if I could bottle up everything of the afternoon and give it to them, I would.

But then, the Captain wasn’t even done after 3,000. Nay, he had to go above and beyond just a milestone hit, adding three more before the day was over, with the go-ahead, eventual game-winning RBI to boot. The ovations and the cheering and the chanting didn’t stop all day, even as he was being interviewed on the field post-game. Everyone lingered in their seats just soaking it all in. It’s like no one really wanted the day to end.

That there is the basic thing: Only 28 people have EVER done this in all of baseball. No Yankees fans, with all the team’s history and beyond-incredible players, had ever seen one of their own do it before yesterday. So the excitement level is already amped because of that. And then you add to it a guy who’s been our guy his entire career, a guy who seems to invent new ways of being unbelievable, nabbing this milestone on a home run (when he hasn’t hit one in Yankee Stadium since last year)… it’s just beyond description, in a way. I know that seems like a cliche or a cop out, but I’m really not sure I can wrap my mind around it all just yet, nor if I really want to. It would probably require coming down from that cloud.

If I’d only known back in 1993 what kind of magic that cute-ish guy in that photo was capable of… wait. No way. I know I wouldn’t have believed it. No one would have.

And that’s what makes it all so ridiculously special.