Bye Bye Jeter...my favorite Jeter card and in person story

I'm not sad to Derek Jeter retire.  I am sad that I have to hear about it for the next 9 months.  It'll be the most talked about, written about, tweeted about, cried about story in baseball until the Yankees (God willing) don't make it to the World Series.

I do feel bad for the Yankee card bloggers that are a part of this community who will be losing a hero.  They are the only Yankee fans I'll feel bad for because in my experience, they are all good people.  The rest of the Yankees fans can suck it.

See, I can be mature.

I do have a favorite Derek Jeter card.  I received it way back in 2009 as part of a prize package from Bud over at the now deserted First Day Issue.

Bud sent this to me because it was a very rare 1/1 card.

See, just like a lot of Ginter parallels, it's hand numbered.  

I also have a funny story that shows Derek was a classy individual.  I was sitting near the Yankees dugout when they were visiting the Rangers.  As sometimes happens at sporting events, a gentleman jerk right near the railing had a few too many frothy beverages and began to exercise his right as a ticket buying fan to yell at the players.  He was yelling at all the Yankees.  Arod was a blankety blank blank, Jeter was a this and that.  You know, real vile stuff.  I had my oldest son with me and I didn't really need him hearing all this garbage and I know some other fans felt the same way.  Someone complained to an usher and a security guard asked the guy to tone the language down.  It worked for about 2 batters.  

The next inning, Jeter is in the on-deck circle and this guy is going at it again.  Someone ahead of Jeter fouled off a pitch and it rolled near the on-deck circle.  Derek, being a good guy, walked the ball over and handed it to a kid about 5 or 6 years old.  He didn't even give the windbag a second glance even though he never stopped talking.  It couldn't have been more than 30 seconds later and this mountain of a man gets out of his seat and tells the idiot to shut his mouth RIGHT NOW!  The guy turns around to go back to his seat and I realize it must be the dad of the kid who got the ball.  Foul mouthed guy must have sobered up at the sight of the big guy and he did shut up.  

It was the funniest thing.