When will the baseball world stop underestimating Derek Jeter?

That may sound strange considering Jeter is the captain of the Yankees, one of the city’s most eligible bachelors, and gets paid close to $20 million a year to play baseball.

And yet, again and again, it seems as if people forget what this guy is capable of doing. They look at the numbers and say, he’s not A-Rod. They watch him play a competent, if rarely spectacular, shortstop and think, he’s no Ozzie Smith, or even Jose Reyes. There is no single aspect to Derek Jeter’s game that is the best in baseball.

Except for one. No one in the game, not Bonds, not Schilling, not Pujols and certainly not A-Rod, knows how to win the way Derek Jeter knows how to win. How do people keep forgetting about that?

As an all-around player, New York has not seen the likes of a Derek Jeter since a cat named Willie Mays was prowling centerfield in the Polo Grounds a half-century ago. How could so supposedly sophisticated a crowd as the baseball cognoscenti so consistently miss that point?

Add Twins’ right fielder Jacque Jones to the list of people who continue to underestimate Derek Jeter, even after the four World Series rings and the seven consecutive AL East titles on his 10-year watch. When the ball left Hideki Matsui’s bat in the bottom of the 12th inning Wednesday night, Jones had no reason to believe it would be anything more than a routine fly out, even with a runner on third and the score tied at 6.

With most runners, Jones would have been right to hit the cutoff man, Matt LeCroy, instead of firing it home. But there was no more surprised person in Yankee Stadium than Jones when Derek Jeter slid home with the winning run that put the Yankees right back into the thick of the American League Division Series and back on schedule for an October meeting with the Boston Red Sox.

The series resumes tonight in Minneapolis, and a Yankee team that looked dead after its Game 1 defeat now looks like it is going on to the ALCS, all thanks to a routine play executed to such perfection that it caught an excellent outfielder completely off-guard.

If the Yankees recover to defeat the Twins, overcome the Red Sox, and make their way back into the World Series, that shocking tag-up may well be remembered the way Jeter’s shovel pass against Oakland in 2001 is, as the one play that without which it would never have happened.

That night, it was Jeremy Giambi who underestimated Derek Jeter, who thought so little of Jeter’s ability to make the play that he didn’t even bother to slide. But who could really blame Giambi? In essence, he is not different from the Yankee fans, who took to booing Jeter, loud and long, as he struggled through a nightmarish April in which his average hovered around .170.

None of what Jeter had done for this franchise over the previous nine seasons bought him any grace with a fan base that had come to demand perfection on a daily basis.

Cut the fans a break, however, since they take their cue from the top. No less an authority on the value of ballplayers than George M. Steinbrenner III has consistently underestimated the value of Derek Jeter, even as he has watched him lead the Yankees out of disaster again and again.

It was Steinbrenner who chose to embarrass his captain by publicly questioning his private life last season. It was Steinbrenner who chose to bring in Rodriguez, who plays the same position, has gaudier offensive numbers, and draws an even gaudier paycheck. It was Steinbrenner who decided that the 2003 Yankees, who had won 101 regular season games and came within two victories of their 27th world championship, needed to be torn down and rebuilt.

Of the 25 members of last year’s team, only 10 remain. As usual, The Boss thought there was nothing wrong with the Yankees that money couldn’t cure. So he threw truckloads of it at A-Rod and Gary Sheffield and Kevin Brown and Javier Vazquez and Kenny Lofton.

They are all good players but they have yet to prove that they know how to do what Derek Jeter does regularly. For all the glittery and expensive spare parts the Yankees added to their machine this off-season, they still need Derek Jeter to show them how to win in October.

When will the rest of the world finally figure this out?

Mr. Matthews is the host of the “Wally and the Keeg” sports talk show heard Monday-Friday from 4-7 p.m. on 1050 ESPN radio.