So the finish was even better, pure Jeter, after Showalter chose not to intentionally walk him with a runner at second, one out. Jeter lined Evan Meek’s pitch through the second-base hole, was mobbed by teammates. He jogged out to shortstop — where he had already decided he would not play in Boston, only D.H. — and spent a few seconds in a meditative squat. Soon after, he revealed his goal for the night: “Don’t cry.” At least not in public.

His farewell tour could never reach the emotional highs set last year by Rivera, who didn’t have nine innings daily to obsessively prepare for. Jeter is a very different man, gracious and charitable through his Turn 2 Foundation, but with an almost freakish fixation on the game and — given the corporate orchestration of his farewell — the gifts it provides.

As a nation turned its lonely eyes this week to No. 2, we were reminded that Jeter is not all that unlike No. 23, Jordan, his Nike stablemate. Yes, the crying towel for his grand departure was a souvenir courtesy of a sponsor. But even J. J. Hardy thought it was a keeper because, after all, it was “a Jeter thing.”

Two words to explain such shorthand for storied generational transcendence: Who else?