FanHouse Babe Ruth

New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter has achieved many things since beginning his career in the Big Apple. He's won four World Series championships -- and is only a win away from his fifth -- a World Series MVP in 2000, three Gold Gloves and is a 10-time All Star.

He's also a New York institution and Yankee legend with the likes of Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio and Babe Ruth. Except there's one thing Jeter may end up with that none of those other Yankee heroes had. There are plans to have a bridge named after him in New York.

If you could spend eternity with one person, who would it be?

A lot of American males would say Marilyn Monroe. Unfortunately, she's out of the picture unless you happen to have an extra $4.6 million lying around.

That's what the crypt above Monroe's final resting place is going for, pending the next bid on eBay. The widow of the man currently interred there is selling the world's most coveted final resting place.

Apparently, the reason the Padres have won all these games the first two weeks of the season is that they needed the postgame handshakes.

To introduce themselves to one another.

Starting Five is our wrapup of the previous day's baseball action, with a nod to what's ahead.

You Oughta Know ...
That Rangers second baseman Ian Kinsler had a pretty good night, rolling all sorts of rare feats into one ballgame. The headline is that he hit for the cycle, the first Rangers player to do that since Gary Matthews Jr. on Sept. 13, 2006.

He also had six hits, the first Rangers player to do that since Alfonso Soriano on May 8, 2004, but that was a 10-inning game. So Kinsler is the first in team history to have six knocks in a nine-inning game.

Now, the big one: Kinsler is the first player in major league history to have six hits in a game in which he hit for the cycle.

I haven't exactly been shy about my feelings towards MLB commissioner Bud Selig here at FanHouse, but just in case this is your first visit and you don't have time to check the tag, here's a quick summary. I believe that Bud Selig is an incompetent buffoon that has never cared anything for fans and only about the bottom line of owners all across the league. I also believe that for every good idea he's had (like the wild card) he's had 50 bad ideas (the All-Star game deciding home-field advantage).

While Bud Selig was trying to figure out a way to punish Alex Rodriguez without going after the other 103 anonymous/confidential positive testing players from six years ago, he also threw out the notion that he's thinking about doing something else drastic. You see, Barry Bonds is still under fire for using performance-enhancing drugs as well, and he broke Hank Aaron's all-time home run record.

The Daily Jolt is a dose of baseball reality every weekday morning.

Even for baseball, where winter can seem as endless as a trek through the desert with Lawrence of Arabia, this has been a long and cold one. Long before the Alex Rodriguez revelations, the free-agent market slowed to a crawl, bogged down by the economic downturn. Rather than getting treated to the usual flurry of Hot Stove transactions, we got a series of big-money Yankee signings and an endless stream of updates on the on-again, off-again, still-unresolved Manny Ramirez negotiations.

The Daily Jolt is a dose of baseball reality every weekday morning.

It's all too easy in the wake of Alex Rodriguez's admission that he used performance-enhancing drugs to throw up our hands and say the numbers mean nothing. If you listen to the echo chamber of hysterical pundits, this is the dawn of a new age of baseball nihilism.

Just not anything in the past we care to talk about.

Mark McGwire has basically kept himself out of the limelight ever since leaving baseball in 2001, with his infamous appearance at the Congressional hearings on steroids being the lone exception. Well this coming Monday will be the ten year anniversary of the night that Big Mac hit his 62nd home run of the 1998 season, and broke Roger Maris' longstanding home run record.

So, with that in mind, the man who wasn't here to talk about the past talked about the past with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

"That day, Sept. 8," he said, "I had a real calmness about me. It was a very eerie feeling that I didn't ever experience again or hadn't experienced before. I remember driving to the ballpark and, even with all the hoopla going on, it probably was the only day I felt so peaceful. It was a premonition that 'tonight is going to be the night.'

"The whole year was so spiritual, so universal, with so many things that happened," he said. "I don't know if people believe this stuff, but I think that when the stars are aligned right, things happen.

Later today, the Red Sox will stroll out of the visitor's dugout and face the Yankees for the final time at venerable Yankee Stadium. There will be other goodbyes to the House That Ruth Built in the coming weeks, but with the Bronx Bombers a major longshot to play into October, this series seems to have taken on special significance.

Here are a dozen of the finest moments in the best rivalry in American sports, all of which took place at Yankee Stadium. Even Red Sox fans have to be feeling a little nostalgic about their team's final visit. After all, the franchise's finest hour took place there.

1. Oct. 16, 2003: The ghosts strike one last time. After Red Sox manager Grady Little leaves Pedro Martinez in well past the 100-pitch mark with a 5-2 lead in the eighth inning, the Yankees rally to force extra innings. In the 11th, Aaron Boone sends a deep fly into the Bronx night, sending New York to the World Series and crushing Boston's dreams of ending the Curse of the Bambino again.