Low & Outside: AL Notes

There's a chance that sometime during the approaching 10-game Yankees homestand, New York icon Derek Jeter will rap out the 3,000th hit of his career.

Jeter, coming off a nine-game West Coast trip in which he went 10 for 35, enters Tuesday with 2,986 hits.

Fittingly, the opponents are the Red Sox, which will prevent the New York press from focusing entirely on Jeter. And while the Red Sox have righted their ship after a 2-10 start, the Yankees enter the series also on a roll, coming in 33-24, winners of 13 of their last 18.

Jeter will become the 28th man to reach 3,000 hits, the seventh since 1999, and the first as a Yankee.

The last to get there was Houston's Craig Biggio, who stroked No. 3,000 on June 28, 2007. Both Tony Gwynn and Wade Boggs joined the club in 1999. Cal Ripken (2000), Rickey Henderson (2001), and Rafael Palmeiro (2005) preceded Biggio.

Barring something extraordinary, Jeter won't get to 3,000 against the Red Sox, so it will be a few games before Major League Baseball gets out the specially marked baseballs.

When Jeter is at 2,999 hits, the special balls will be the only ones used, in the event he hits a home run for No. 3,000 and a fan comes up with it, a league spokesman said.

(Boggs, probably the lightest hitter of the bunch, is the only player ever to reach 3,000 on a dinger.)

Barry Bonds finished the 2007 season with 2,935 hits. Now you know why he wanted to continue playing.

White Sox righthander Jake Peavy is listed as day-to-day with a mild strain of his right groin. Peavy had an MRI exam Monday. . . . Justin Morneau and Denard Span, who both missed the last two games, returned to the Minnesota Twins' lineup against Cleveland. Morneau was out with a sore left wrist, while Span had an injured neck. . . . Oakland activated infielder Adam Rosales from the 60-day disabled list. Rosales, who missed all of spring training with a fractured right foot, batted seventh and started at third on Monday night.

The Tigers reinstated lefthander David Purcey from the paternity list for Monday night's game at Texas. Purcey's wife gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, in Dallas on Saturday night. The Purceys make their offseason home in Dallas, so the pitcher did not have to travel far to rejoin the Tigers.