• by Thom Forbes , July 11, 2011

There was a huge hit in New York over the weekend and it wasn't on Broadway. It was in the Big Ball Orchard in the South Bronx (v. 2.0), as Art Rust Jr. used to call it. When Derek Jeter smacked his 3,000th career regular season hit (he also has a record 185 post-season hits), you could almost hear the ring of PayPal accounts miles north in Westchester.

In true Jeterian fashion, the ball landed in the seats -- only the third home run the Yankee captain has hit in 2011 and his first at Yankee Stadium in more than a year. The young man who caught it, 23-year-old Christian Lopez, decided to return it to Jeter with no strings attached, unleashing comment about his fine upbringing.

"Lopez showed the type of class that New Yorkers are sometimes capable of, and taught a lesson to young people everywhere, more than any lecture from a parent ever could," writes Paul LaRosa in his "Here Is New York" blog. "Selflessness is its own reward ..."

Estimates had been that the ball would bring upwards of a quarter million dollars in open bidding. You might be thinking that selflessness and a subway token will get you to Yankee Stadium from Times Square, but as the ever-perceptive LaRosa points out: "And by the way, as a customer service representative for Verizon, he also made his company look good!"

Verizon can use all the good will it can muster. Give that lad a raise!

But what kind of lesson is "selflessness" in this ruthless world of ours, anyway? Well, Jeter has made a brand of it, it seems. No interview or profile goes by without mention of how he does his darnest to deflect attention from himself despite certifiable attention-grabbers like girlfriend Minka Kelly and a 31,000-square-foot manse on an island off Tampa known as St. Jetersburg. In a walk-up to the inevitable milestone being reached, Richard Sandomir chronicled how "everything Jeter touches or wears as he pursues his 3,000th hit carries value." That includes the dirt around home plate.

Howard Smith, the svp for licensing of Major League Baseball, told Sandomir that Jeter "approached the marketing with some trepidation, fearing that it might seem all too much." But during a meeting with Jeter and his agent, Smith "explained how appropriate it was for us to market these products. And Derek is like, 'I don't want to take the limelight'; he felt weird about it. I said, 'It's appropriate to be recognized; you're a generational athlete.' "

It's not that Jeter is an anti-Babe in the woods or anything. Paul Tharp reported in the New York Post on July 5 that Jeter's agent, Casey Close of Excel Sports Marketing, and his team had been putting pressure on any advertisers "not aligned with Jeter" to refrain from running ads that would celebrate the event.

"Derek has established a number of important partnerships, and these relationships are brand-specific," he said. "And it is Derek's name and his likeness and the exclusivity that make each of the individuals deals special to those companies."

Within minutes of the hit, Yankee announcer John Sterling was informing us that fans were jamming the concession stands in pursuit of the official New Era cap commemorating the event. Oh, and lest we feel left out, we could buy one, too. It's just $39.99 (plus tax and shipping). You could look it up, as Stengel and Thurber used to say).

You could also look up all the other instant memorabilia and outright schlock that's for sale. No need to belabor the obvious.

The guy I really want to talk to is Cosmo Lubrano, the Major League Baseball employee who was assigned the task of authenticating the veracity of the dirt collected around home plate. Anticipating Jeter's imminent return from the injured reserves list in late June when he was six hits shy of the achievement, Lubrano said, "we have to be ready.... He could go 5 for 5."

Well, he didn't back then, but he did Saturday for only the third time in his career. What are the odds of that? I'd love to know who my boy Cosmo, turf expert that he is, is picking in the Breeder's Cup races come November.