It is possible — likely, even — that none of the words that echoed through old Yankee Stadium on the afternoon of Aug. 31, 1997, made any kind of permanent impact on anyone else in the house. But you can bet the mortgage that they filled the heart of one 23-year-old kid looking on from the top step of the first-base dugout, a wide grin splashed on his face the entire time.

Derek Jeter revered Don Mattingly, looked up to him, studied his every move, large and small. Mattingly was the Yankees’ captain when Jeter was drafted in 1992, and when he reported to his first big league camp a few years later. When Jeter made his big league debut May 29, 1995, in Seattle’s Kingdome, hitting ninth and playing shortstop, Mattingly was playing first base, hitting fifth.

There was no passing of the torch that night. It never is that simple, or that obvious.

But 27 months and two days later, so much had changed. Mattingly had retired after getting his one crack at October and hitting .417. Jeter had gone back down to Columbus in ’95, came back up to start the ’96 season, began it with a bang (an Opening Day home run off Dennis Martinez in Cleveland) and ended it with a parade. By Aug. 31, 1997, it already was obvious Jeter was going to be something special, already was something special.

But that was Don Mattingly’s day. It was, quite literally, Don Mattingly Day. The Yankees retired his No. 23. Mattingly himself personally invited Yankees icons such as Moose Skowron and Hank Bauer because nobody respected the pinstriped legacy like Mattingly did. He even tried to coax Yogi Berra there, but Berra still was serving his self-imposed exile.

Jeter was there, and he watched it all before he would play the 305th game of his career. In the clubhouse that day, he was asked about Mattingly and he had given a simple answer: “Donnie is the perfect Yankee.” Then he would listen to Mattingly’s voice bounce all around the ballpark, the way the acoustics at the old place used to.

“I’ve tried to give you all a hundred percent of myself every time I walked out on the field,” Mattingly told his ex-teammates, his family, his friends, and 55,707 people who had jammed the old yard good. “I tried to keep it pure, I tried to keep it simple, and just play great baseball for you over the years. I hope you appreciated it.”

The roars that followed tell you they had. The chants — “Donn-nee Baseball!” — that began, then and lasted throughout the Yankees’ subsequent 3-2 win over the Montreal Expos, backed up the sentiment. And the manner with which Jeter played that day — dashing home on a wild pitch to score the game’s first run — and in each of his 2,442 games thereafter, tells you nobody paid attention more closely than Jeter.

Sunday night, someone will be listening. Aaron Judge? Gary Sanchez? Didi Gregorius? Someone will hear Jeter as he tries to summarize this spectacular baseball life into a five-minute speech, and he will carry it with him. He will learn what it means to be a forever Yankee, maybe create a vision of another night like this one 15, 20 years from now.

Joe DiMaggio was there on July 4, 1939, when Lou Gehrig somehow crafted the most eloquent sentence in baseball history, telling 61,808 people that despite his body betraying him he still considered himself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

DiMaggio kept that day with him, and also Babe Ruth Day, April 27, 1947, when the mighty Bambino, his voice reduced to a rasp, addressed 58,339 in his final public speech.

“The only real game in the world,” he said that day, “is baseball.”

DiMaggio himself was still an active player on Oct. 1, 1949, when the Yankees honored him with a Day before a critical game with the Red Sox. There were 69,551 people there who would thrill to a 5-4 Yankees victory that tied the teams for first place in the American League in the season’s penultimate game — and who would hear DiMaggio open a small peephole into his soul beforehand.

“I’d like to thank the good Lord for making me a Yankee,” he said.

It was Jeter who wound up securing for himself the famous blue placard that greeted all Yankees in the tunnel connecting clubhouse and dugout at the old stadium, the one that altered the quote slightly and incorrectly attributed it to 1941, but still serves as a 12-word valedictory for all who wear the uniform.

That was his parting gift, after taking a microphone following the final game at the old joint, Sept. 21, 2008, and telling 54,610 people, “Although things are going to change next year, we’re going to move across the street, there are a few things with the New York Yankees that never change — it’s pride, it’s tradition, and most of all, we have the greatest fans in the world.”

Sunday, he will return that gift. The official capacity for new Yankee Stadium is 54,251. We’ll call that a good starting point. In time, there will be plenty who will insist they were there, and many more who will take his words away with them. We don’t know what he’ll say. We know we’ll remember them.

It is what the greatest Yankees do on days like this, and Jeter always has done what the greatest Yankees do. Why should he stop now?