Ever since canceling the Old Timers Game last year, the Yankees have been looking for a way to revive this beloved mid-summer ritual. It’s not as easy as it sounds, as insiders say it Derek Jeter, of all people, who nixed the event.
Well, not outright. But the former captain said he wouldn’t show up if the Yankees insisted on a reunion that forced him back to shortstop. Never mind that the game had been played every year in the Bronx since 1947, except during the COVID era.
Jeter nevertheless drew the line.
He didn’t want to be pressured into putting on a uniform, taking a few swings and otherwise letting the world see he’s not 25 anymore.
The Yankees, backed into a corner, surrendered. Instead of a game, they held a ceremony introducing the honored guests, the 2009 world champions.
Each player got a 15-second video tribute as he marched to his assigned seat behind the pitcher’s mound. That was followed by an on-field Q-and-A with the players hosted by Suzyn Waldman and Joe Girardi.
That was it.
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I felt badly for Waldman, who had to somehow pump up the energy while scores of fans voted with their feet: they headed for the concession stands.
“It wasn’t easy,” Waldman recalled, admonishing whoever was responsible for tanking the game.
Without explicitly naming Jeter or anyone else, Waldman said the guilty parties, “Do not understand why fans come to Old Timers Day.”
Fortunately, Yankees’ officials do, as they’ve found a workaround for 2025. For the first time in the game’s history, the old timers will play softball.
First reaction: Please, no.
Second reaction: It’s better than nothing.
Presumably Jeter has agreed to participate. The club sent a questionnaire to the invited guests, asking if they’d be ok with the modified competition.
Enough said yes for the game to proceed.
Hopefully the fans will take in the memories, as watered down as they might be. My hunch is that a softball game will be light on nostalgia but heavy on selfies at home plate and bro hugs between innings.
I bet I’m not alone wishing the traditional game hadn’t been canceled.
If you want to know how much fun a Yankees Old Timers Game use to be, do a Google search on Mickey Mantle’s home run off Whitey Ford in 1973. The video is low-tech and grainy, but trust me, it’s worth the journey.
The Mick was only 41 at the time, just five years into retirement. Ford, the Yankees’ greatest left-hander of the 50s and 60s, was 48. The two legends set up a mock showdown for the raucous Stadium crowd.
Ford served up one meatball after another. Mantle, batting right-handed, kept launching missiles into the upper deck - just foul.
Mel Allen, calling the action on WPIX-TY, treated the moment like it was the seventh game of the World Series.
Which it was to the fans who grew up rooting for these two legends. It didn’t matter that Ford and Mantle, once pillars of the Yankees’ championship machine, were now softer, paunchier middle-aged men.
All that mattered was Mantle hitting one of those bombs fair.
Finally, it happened. Ford lobbed a pitch over the middle of the plate. It was too slow to be called a fastball, but Mantle timed it perfectly.
“It is going…it is going….IT IS GONE!” was Allen’s magical call.
The crowd rose to its feet as Mantle limped around the bases. His knees were shot, but his place atop Mount Olympus was never more secure.
“It was a magical moment,” said Roy White, 81, who played left field for the Yankees from 1965-79. “It was such a thrill to see Mickey do that again. We were all in the dugout watching hoping it would happen. We had so much respect for the old timers.”
Mantle knew he looked like a gimpy old man, but the ticket buyers couldn’t have cared less. It was nostalgia, not vanity, that carried the day. The Mick wasn’t afraid to show his age.
That would’ve been my message to Jeter or any of last year’s holdouts: kindly get over yourself.
No one has to see Jeter, who turned 50 last year, pull off a jump throw to remember it was his signature move. The army of fans who still wear his No. 2 will love him unconditionally – not in spite of his age, but because of it.
Jeter will always represent the greatest era in Yankees’ history. Regardless if he can’t run or throw anymore, Jeter is a time portal for Boomers and Gen-Xers. He has the power to make anyone over 40 feel young again.
All he’d have to do is step into the batter’s box, hold up his right hand to an imaginary umpire and suddenly it’s 1998 again.
“No one’s going to care how Derek looks or how old he is,” Waldman said. “You know who understands that? The guys who show up every year: (Ron) Guidry and (Willie) Randolph. They come to have fun.
“I wish everyone would get that. No one expects you to be young again. That’s not what Old Timers Day is about.”
That goes for David Cone, who’s wise enough to remember that even retired athletes are, “still in the entertainment business.”
“When I pitched to (Hideki) Matsui and Tino (Martinez) and Jesse Barfield, I wanted them to hit home runs off me.
“They all took me deep, because that’s what the fans were there for, so I leaned into it.”
Martinez remembered that home run off Cone and what it represented.
“Hitting it out was a highlight for me, I didn’t care that Coney was just lobbing it in,” Tino said. “It was an honor just to be invited to Old Timers.
“I mean, I’m not sure how it’s going to be playing softball, but whatever the Yankees want to do is fine with me. I’m going to be there to pay the fans back. That’s what matters most.”
Bob Klapisch may be reached at bklapisch@njadvancemedia.com.