NEW YORK — On the last Thursday of the 2014 regular season, scores of reporters made their way to the home clubhouse at Yankee Stadium.

It was Derek Jeter’s final home game, and almost no one found themselves interested in the visitors. Buck Showalter and his division-winning Orioles could prepare for the festivities in peace and quiet seldom found by those who visit the Yankees.

Ultimately, Jeter’s Thursday night glory, which ended with a game-winning hit of such cinematic climax that it led to conspiracy theories, was an ending. Jeter’s career is now over, and after 20 seasons, he was supposed to have left Showalter, his first major league manager, behind. But it’s Showalter and his Orioles who are still alive, Showalter who’s now outlasted Joe Torre, his successor, along with all of the great young players who could have been his legacy team.

Yes, back in 1994, the Montreal Expos, the best team in the National League, were denied a chance at a World Series title — thanks to a strike that ended the baseball season on August 12. The same, though, is true for Showalter’s Yankees, who had the best record that season in the American League. A year later, Showalter’s Yankees couldn’t be denied, marching into the playoffs and coming so close to defeating the Seattle Mariners in the first year of the American League Divisional Series.

You know what followed: World Series titles in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2000. Almost all the key members of those championship teams had played for Showalter. Bernie Williams, Gerald Williams, Scott Kamieniecki and Jim Leyritz even played for him in both the minors and the majors. Once those Yankees started winning World Series titles, though, Showalter wasn’t with them.

The return of George Steinbrenner to everyday Steinbrennering following his suspension for paying a gambler $40,000 to dig up dirt on his own player led to promises to let the baseball ops department do their job.

Instead, Steinbrenner zeroed in on his manager.

“I resigned,” Showalter told me as the two of us sat in his office at Yankee Stadium last Thursday afternoon. “Basically, I was told I [had] to fire four coaches. “That’s all it was. People make it out to be something else. My dad told me, ‘Sooner or later, you’re gonna have to plant your feet and make a stand for what’s right.’ That was tough. That was tough.”

The whole situation was classic Steinbrenner, trying to emasculate his manager who in back-to-back years had the temerity to lead the Yankees to the best record in the AL and then to the ALDS.