Mike Celizic

Alex Rodriguez has undoubtedly had many moments — some of which could be timed with a calendar — during which he wished he were Derek Jeter. This is not one of them.

The Yankee captain and New York’s favorite baseball player since Don Mattingly has been having a rough go of it this year. It’s not so much his hitting, although his average is sinking fast after a torrid start and he’s got just four RBIs in 15 games, but his fielding that’s been a problem.

Jeter has won three Gold Gloves, but he’s not on his way to winning a fourth. Through 15 games, he has six errors, the most in the major leagues.

After his sixth, he told reporters that he’d used up his quota for a while.

The reporters laughed and went back to write about how diligently Jeter is working to turn things around.

That’s the kind of slack you earn when you play 11 years at the level Jeter has made his own and never say or do the wrong thing. Everybody’s writing about his problems catching and throwing, but no one’s trying to run him out of town. Yankee Stadium with him would be like the Sistine Chapel without Michelangelo’s ceiling work.

I’d ask you to imagine A-Rod in the same situation, but you don’t have to, because we’ve seen what would happen. Just last year, when A-Rod was having trouble with the simple act of catching and throwing a baseball, he had the pleasure of picking up the morning tabloids to find that the headline writers had reduced him to "E-Rod." This wasn’t long after his lack of hitting had inspired the same people to dub him "K-Rod."

He was booed at every opportunity and flayed daily by the talk-show guys and the columnists, many of whom suggested the only way for him to fix things was to take the first plane out of town. I was one of them, and I don’t apologize for it. He had come to the Yankees as the best player in baseball.

By last season, he wasn’t even the third best third-baseman.

And the worse it got for A-Rod, the better it got for Jeter. Every bad throw, every late-inning out, every clumsy attempt to explain himself made A-Rod look more misplaced and Jeter more the true Yankee hero.

So this year, A-Rod showed up wearing high stirrups and after a couple of games to warm up started hitting — for average and power, in early innings and late, by day and by night. After three years of waiting for him to do his part, he was suddenly doing everybody’s part.

This is not a bad thing for the Yankees, who are already dipping down into Class AA for pitching. If ever they needed A-Rod to step up, this is as good a time as any.

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But there’s something wrong with this picture — the Captain’s early-season slump, especially in the field. The SABRE folks will tell you that Jeter has never been a particularly good shortstop despite the Gold Gloves, but his teammates, his manager and anybody who watched him every day will differ.

There are some things the stats don’t tell you, and unless you watch the guy every day, there’s no way to tell you about them.

But there’s no denying he’s killing his team in the field right now, and his hitting isn’t that great either. Come to think about it, he’s not even stealing bases with his normal ease — just one-for-three on the season.

It’s as if he and A-Rod are two yo-yos that are out of synch. When A-Rod was down, Jeter was up. And now that A-Rod is tearing the cover off the ball, Jeter is down. It’s a little spooky. It’s as if he thrives on A-Rod’s negative energy and is being sapped by A-Rod’s success.

I’m sure — well, pretty sure, anyway — it’s just an aberration, that Jeter’s problems are just a slump that will pass and not the result of him trying for the first time since A-Rod arrived, to keep up with and outdo his teammate.

You never thought of Jeter as needing to outshine anyone. He’s shared the stage with plenty of great players, and it’s never stopped him. On the other hand, in the three years that A-Rod’s been playing next to him, he’s always been the leader and A-Rod the guy trying to keep up.

The roles are reversed right now. Jeter says it’s just a slump. So do Joe Torre, his manager, and Brian Cashman, the team’s G.M. They’re probably right.

But what if they’re not?

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