O Captain! "The Captain!"

 

I'm going to take a leap here.

A huge one.

No, not really.

While maligned by many, I loved "The Captain."

I know. The critics said it's a Derek Jeter puff piece. A vanity project. Boring. Bland. Not very interesting.

I don't agree but, then again, I lived all of it.

"The Captain" tells Jeter's story from his youth in Michigan to walking away from the Miami Marlins in early 2022.

I found it to be anything but bland.

I felt like I learned some stuff. I learned about Hannah Jeter's health scare. I learned that Jeter loves being a father and how he was too self-involved regarding his career to become a father.

I learned about his battles with Alex Rodriguez and Brian Cashman.

I learned how he didn't really pause and enjoy the ride of his career while it was going on.

I felt like it dealt with everything.

The gift baskets.

The issues with his defense.

And everything else.

I enjoyed the insight from everyone, like A-Rod and Cashman and Mariano Rivera and Reggie Jackson and Joe Torre and Michael Jordan and so many others. 

But, for someone like me, it was a joyous ride remembering those halcyon nights of the late 90s all the way until Jeter's retirement in 2014.

It was back to "The Flip Play" and the Jeffrey Maier home run and the dive into the stands against the Red Sox and the home run to lead off Game 4 of the 2000 World Series.

But it was the joy of the detail of all of it. It was also the blunt honesty of Jeter himself, including language that we'd never heard from him.

Jeter loved being the underdog. He loved the doubters and proving them wrong. He'd take any opportunity for being slighted and use it to the advantage of the Yankees.

Some of the painful details were those awful, brutal nights in 2001 and 2004. The documentary -- directed by Randy Wilkins -- broke all of it down.

Oh, the agony of it all.

Ah, but the glory.

Of 1996 and 1998 and 1999 and 2000 and 2009.

Of 3,465 hits -- still sixth all-time.

Of the 200 postseason hits.

Of the winning.

Of the last game at Yankee Stadium, the clutch hits, the winning, the leadership, and (sorry, haters) the intangibles.

He's an all-time great, no matter how many ways you slice it.

Now, you'd like to see Jeter embrace his post-baseball life and get back to being part of the Yankees family somehow.

The critics thought seven parts were too many.

Whatever.

I loved it.