As Aledmys Diaz remembers it, he first saw Derek Jeter “live,” which is not to say in person but on television in real time, in the fall of 2009. He was 19 years old. He’d grown up liking Albert Pujols as a hitter, but loving Jeter, who was a shortstop just like him.
He’d seen a few highlights of Jeter on cassettes he’d fed into a clunky DVD player. He’d read about Jeter when it was possible, which wasn’t often. Otherwise, it was just the stories about the great New York Yankee, and maybe it was the stories he loved as much as he did the ballplayer himself.