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Jim Kaat's memories as a player are plentiful enough. But since he traded his glove for a microphone, his mind has been saturated with enough stories and moments to last a few lifetimes.

Doing play-by-play and analysis for the New York Yankees — especially during their run of four world championships from 1996 to 2000 — has certainly helped. While many love to wax poetic about the magic and aura of Yankee Stadium, Kaat is a believer in it. That's why it's no conincidence his five favorite games he's covered as a broadcaster all took place there. A couple were marathons, but ones he never wanted to end. Others stamped their place in baseball history, while Mother Nature had an influence on the experience.

From Derek Jeter going all out, to Hideki Matsui's flair for the dramatic, from David Wells to Dwight Gooden to Jason Giambi to Andy Pettitte and through rain, cold and snow, Kaat shared his top-five list with YESNetwork.com's Jon Lane three days before working his final game in the booth Friday night as the Yankees host, appropriately, the Boston Red Sox.

Derek Jeter's dive into the stands
July 1, 2004
This is probably atop my list because it's the most recent, and the fact that it was the Red Sox. It was extra innings and it was one of those games, as much as we talk about the length of games, you didn't care how long that one was because it was entertaining. To my memory, it seemed to be pretty compelling the whole game.

I was just concerned that Derek had done tremendous damage to his face and his head. We couldn't see that he could brace himself. That was typical of his style of play.

Hideki Matsui's grand slam on Opening Day at Yankee Stadium
April 8, 2003

I remember the Matsui game because I had just said, "This guy, he's got that rock star persona of doing something big." And then, boom, he hits the grand slam. I think that was made for television. You see some things happen in this stadium that all of a sudden you think there's some kind of divine intervention or something. Even going back to Todd Greene, all these players that aren't big names, their first time up, boom, they hit a home run or do something great."

Jason Giambi's grand slam in the rain
May 17, 2002
Coming out of chute, Jason really hadn't hit up to his expectations yet. That was sort of his coming-out party. There was the drama of it because the Yankees were down three and the Twins had scored three in the top of the 14th inning, so I just think the whole drama of the thing, those kinds of games are fun to be a part of. That one, all the drama came at the end. It looked like the Yankees were down and then you could sort of sense this thing coming on.

That was the year, it was laughable because every Friday night, whenever there was news at 10, we would say, 'Well, you'll get to that news..." Every Friday night it would rain, there'd be a delay and it would go on forever.

David Wells' perfect game
May 17, 1998 (Kaat did play-by-play for this game)
As a player I saw Catfish Hunter (throw a no-hitter). I was on the losing end of that. I did Doc's (Dwight Gooden's) no-hitter (as a color analyst), but the fun about this one was Minnesota didn't have a real experienced lineup — I think they had Paul Molitor in there — but you could almost tell from about the fourth inning on, you almost had that feeling. Unless something freaky happened, like a little fluke or something, there just wasn't any way he'd lose it. It just built from there. That was fun.

Invariably, no matter how many fans might like you as a broadcaster — I get letters — there's one lady who really loves our broadcasts, but then she'll say, "Somebody had a no-hitter for three innings and you jinxed him." You just can't get through their head that you owe it to the fans.

I made that mistake with Gooden's no-hitter. Dave (Cohen) was doing play-by-play. He didn't say anything about it, and I didn't say anything about it. That's one of those ones where later you wish you would have said it. I remember Gerald Williams made a great play on A-Rod in center field.

Right from the fourth inning on, we started talking about Boomer having the perfect game."

Andy Pettitte pitches in the snow
April 9, 1996
Simply put, watching Andy reminded me of some of the days I pitched in Minnesota, those outdoor games.