AL East

On Saturday, July 9th, 2011, Yankees star Derek Jeter took Rays pitcher David Price deep into the left field stands, cementing his legacy and etching his name in baseball history.

Jeter became the 28th hitter in history to achieve the monumental accomplishment of 3,000 hits, joining the likes of Roberto Clemente, Ricky Henderson, and Willie Mays.

In the third inning of Saturday's game against the Tampa Bay Rays, Derek Jeter became one of two players to hit a home run on his 3,000th hit. Wade Boggs is the other.

He's the 28th player to reach the elusive 3,000 hit club.

Jeter's the fourth youngest player to reach 3,000 hits. The three ahead of him...Ty Cobb, Hank Aaron and Robin Yount.

Derek Jeter has reached 3,000 hits by blasting a home run over the left field wall, becoming the 28th player to reach the milestone. The impressive fashion of the home run got me thinking: what are the coolest ways players have reached 3,000 hits?

While most players have reached the milestone on a single or double, some players have done so in fashion.

The following eight players have had the coolest ways of reaching 3,000 hits.

Derek Jeter got his 3,000th hit today, a home run in fact, and Christian Lopez was the man who caught it.

Tickets to a potentially historic day at Yankee Stadium came courtesy of Lopez's girlfriend, and both her and his father accompanied the cell phone salesman to the ballpark earlier today not knowing that they'd be the ones with a piece of history in their possession.

When it comes to seizing a moment, it’s hard to beat Derek Jeter.

Criticism was swirling, calls mounting for him to be moved to eighth in the order in the midst of the chase for a historic milestone. But Saturday, Jeter did what he does best, captivate once again.

It wasn’t so much about the game, a July afternoon contest between AL East foes pretty commonplace. This was Derek Jeter’s day.

We knew it was coming soon. Perched upon the precipice of history, on the verge of becoming the 28th player in the annals of Major League Baseball to reach the 3,000-hit milestone, Derek Jeter began the day with 2,998 career base-hits.

With only two hits to go to join the exclusive club of baseball's all-time greats, it seemed a foregone conclusion for the Yankee captain, barring any unforeseen catastrophe that could derail the quest.

Yes, sir, let the praise begin.

Derek Jeter just put every hater to shame. Every person that said for the past three weeks that the New York Yankees would be better off without Jeter was made to look foolish once again as they doubted him.

We all knew the captain was a first-ballot Hall of Famer. It was without question. On July 8, 2011, he cemented his place as the greatest position player to ever grace the hallowed diamond. Period.

As I sit here and write this, Derek Jeter just got another hit, and is 4-for-4 on this memorable day.

Derek Jeter has had a lot of memorable days as a member of the New York Yankees.

From captain of the team to "Captain Clutch," from the regular season to the postseason, the Michigan native has come through with clutch hit after clutch hit.

With 3,004 possibilities, narrowing it down to 10 is no easy task.

But let's take a crack at it, shall we?

More than the Toy Story trilogy, Nickelodeon and perhaps Yankee Stadium itself, Derek Jeter was my childhood.

As a New Yorker growing up in the late '90s and throughout the '00s, my sports fandom and the Yankee captain’s career are inexorably linked. He was my first connection to professional sports, the superhuman shortstop whose face adorned the walls of my bedroom, whose number was displayed on the back of my Little League jersey, whose patented “jump throw” was imitated to minimal degrees of success.

Derek Jeter made history today in the most dramatic fashion possible. He knocked his 3,000th hit over the left-center fence at Yankee Stadium on his way to a 5-for-5 day at the plate. It was a legendary performance by a legendary Yankee.

But it also showed why he's being selfish.

I'm not saying that he is selfish. In fact, I've been as big of a Jeter supporter as a non-Yankee fan can be. But his decline to play in the All-Star Game before his game today was selfish as hell.