JPMorgan wealth adviser may determine when Derek Jeter gets 3,000th hit

Derek Jeter's 3,000th career hit may come down to a ruling by Jordan Sprechman far uptown from his Park Avenue office as a managing director at JPMorgan Chase & Co. Sprechman, a wealth manager at JPMorgan, and Howie Karpin, an on-air anchor for Sirius Satellite Radio, will moonlight this season as the two primary official scorers for Major League Baseball's New York Yankees and Mets, earning $150 a game and trying to stay unnoticed and free of controversy. Jeter needs 74 hits to become the 28th player to reach 3,000 and the only one to do so entirely in a Yankee uniform. His 2,000th hit, in May 2006, was on a judgment call by Bill Shannon, Sprechman and Karpin's scoring mentor who died on Oct. 26. Whether a milestone moment or a mid-September meeting of last-place clubs, Shannon preached that you can't let the situation dictate the scoring call. “There's no such thing as a big game in baseball,” Sprechman, a 49-year-old wealth adviser from Manhattan, said in an interview. “They all count for 1/162nd of a season.” Baseball's regular season begins today with six games, including the Detroit Tigers' visit to Yankee Stadium, which will be scored by Sprechman. An accredited scorer for New York baseball since 2000, Sprechman was promoted from part-time status to succeed Shannon, who was an official scorer at Yankees and Mets games for 32 seasons before dying at age 69 in a New Jersey house fire, six days after handling the Yankees' final 2010 victory in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series. “He was totally respected by everybody and considered the authority,” said Karpin, 56, a lifelong Bronx resident who has scored New York baseball since 1998. “If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be a scorer.” Scorer's Call Jeter's 2,000th hit came on a slow roller in front of home plate that produced an errant throw by Kansas City Royals catcher Paul Bako. Shannon ruled that Jeter would have beaten the throw. Not unlike umpiring, scoring is a mostly thankless job that draws notice only when someone thinks a ruling is controversial, said Phyllis Merhige, who oversees the accredited scorers in baseball's 30 major-league ballparks. “It does take a special breed, a great passion for the game and a great desire to make a contribution,” Merhige said in a telephone interview from her New York office. “It doesn't pay all that well, it does take a lot of free time and most of these guys have other jobs.” Sharing the Duties Sprechman and Karpin will split 140 New York area contests while giving the rest to backups Billy Altman and David Freeman. The scorer's responsibilities include deciding whether a batted ball is a hit or an error, and whether a pitch that gets by the catcher is a passed ball or a wild pitch, and occasionally, which pitcher gets a victory. “What Bill always said was that the purpose of errors was to protect the pitcher from the malfeasance of his fielders,” Sprechman said. “Errors are not designed to be punitive. They're designed to protect the pitcher's ERA.” When he leaves his office for the press boxes at Citi Field in Queens or Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, Sprechman said, it's most important that he bring along both his judgment and decisiveness. “In what I do here as a wealth adviser, you have to be confident,” he said in the interview at the headquarters of JPMorgan Chase, the second-largest U.S. bank by assets. “You have to do the same thing at the ballpark. Your judgment could be outstanding as a scorer but if you don't present well, your judgment is always going to be suspect.” Historic Call A scoring decision can have historic ramifications. Former Tigers pitcher Virgil Trucks is one of four to throw two no-hitters in a single major-league regular season. The second came amid controversy. In the third inning of a 1952 game at Yankee Stadium, New York's Phil Rizzuto was called safe on a close play at first base after Tigers shortstop Johnny Pesky bobbled a one-hop ground ball. John Drebinger of the New York Times, the game's official scorer, called the play an error, then changed his mind. “When I went in the dugout, there was an error on the wall,” Trucks, now 93, said in a telephone interview. “When I came back out, I saw a hit.” Dugout Call Trucks said Drebinger, under pressure from other reporters, called the Tigers' dugout during the seventh inning to talk to Pesky, who said he had erred. Drebinger then changed his ruling back to an error. Six outs later, the no-hitter was secured, and almost six decades later, Trucks still signs memorabilia with the date -- Aug. 25, 1952. “Nothing could overcome something like pitching a no-hitter in Yankee Stadium,” Trucks, nicknamed “Fire,” said from his Calera, Alabama, home. Sprechman, who also is the public address announcer in the media room at tennis's U.S. Open and a member of the New York Jets' statistics crew, said his most memorable scoring effort was Curt Schilling's “Bloody Sock Game” win over the Yankees for the Boston Red Sox in the 2004 playoffs. Schilling pitched Boston to victory while an incision in his foot from a temporary surgery that allowed him to play bled through his sock. Karpin, the author of the new book “162-0: Imagine a Mets Perfect Season,” is the only scorer in major league history to name a winning pitcher in a no-hitter. He gave the victory to Brad Lidge on June 11, 2003, after six Houston Astros combined to no-hit the Yankees. Clean Play Karpin and Sprechman said they've had confrontations with players angry over their decisions. Both said their biggest hope is that feats such as Jeter's 3,000th hit come on clean plays. If Jeter performs up to his career average, he's poised to get No. 3,000 on June 9 at Yankee Stadium in the finale of a three-game series against Boston. “I've got that Red Sox series,” Karpin said with a laugh. “Oh, boy. That'll be a beauty.” (--Bloomberg News--)