Fate also kind to one fortunate ump in Jeter's final Bronx magic moment

Adam Hamari is not a full-time major-league umpire. Nor was he originally scheduled to be behind the plate for Derek Jeter’s final home game.

Hamari, 31, worked in Anaheim on Sunday, then took a red-eye flight from Los Angeles to New York to join Jeff Kellogg’s crew for the series between the Orioles and Yankees.

Kellogg, the crew chief, assigned Hamari to third base, the position with the least action, for Monday night’s game. Hamari had landed at 7 a.m., then endured a 2½-hour cab ride from JFK Airport to Manhattan due to traffic from the United Nations General Assembly.

Umpires rotate clockwise, going from third to second to first to home. Kellogg originally was supposed to work the plate for Jeter’s home finale. But one of his regular umpires, Dan Bellino, had to shift crews due to a trickle-down effect from another ump’s injury. Hamari filled in for Bellino, and Kellogg -- under the revised rotation -- sacrificed his chance to work the plate.

"A lot of things were going through my head," Kellogg said. "The first thing was, in any other situation, I would have put him at third base. I wouldn’t have felt right putting him anywhere else.

"This," Kellogg continued, referring to the Jeter finale, "was a different issue. But I’ve seen Adam work. I knew what kind of job he would do.

"I did what I thought was right."

Hamari, a native of Marquette, Mich., is in his second year of bouncing between the minors and the majors. Earlier this season, he benefited from a similar form of serendipity, working the plate for Tim Lincecum’s no-hitter shortly after coming up from Triple A.

In this case, he learned that he would be working the plate for the Jeter game only after arriving in New York on Monday.

"Every day in the big leagues is a good day," Hamari said. "But given the situation tonight, it was like icing on the cake."

And as the drama built in the ninth inning of the Yankees' 6-5 victory, Kellogg said he could think only of the relative novice calling balls and strikes.

"We all probably thought to ourselves, 'Man, it would be neat if (Jeter) got a hit,'" Kellogg said. "But we’re here to umpire the game.

"My main thought was with Adam. I just wanted everything to go well for him. And he nailed it."