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Brian H (misunderestimated)... on a team of great players. He may in fact be the 2nd best SS on his own team to the much maligned AROD. AROD lacks Jeter's sterling winner's rep but he is also statistically about 2 standard deviations above Jeter and was a gold glove calliber SS before he switched to 3B when he arrived in the Bronx. By the end of his career, AROD will be recognized as easily the greatest 3b ever. Schmidt will have more gold gloves but Arod will annihiliate him in every offensive category (including HRs)
Historically, I think of Jeter as something of a combination of Rizutto and Yogi Berra, two other big winner's whose greatness extended well-beyond the boxscore.
Berra to me is more valuable, he played the most valuable everyday position and won more than Jeter (so far). Yogi's 10 world series rings is tops of all time. Rizutto was also a winner although I think he was a lesser player than Jeter. Scooter was on the right team at the right time, and benefitted from who he played with: DiMaggio (at first) and then Berra, Mantle, Ford etc., while under the stellar management of Casey Stengel for many of those years. Scooter has 8 rings, twice as many as Jeter.
Jeter has played with many HOFers and solid HOF candidates as well: Clemens, Boggs (on his way out), Rivera, AROD, Soriano (he looks like an eventual HOFer right now), Giambi (I bet the writers who love this guy don't hold his steroids against him), Mussina and Randy Johnson. And there are others. Also, he plays for a pretty good manager too -- future HOFer Joe Torre.
When he finishes Jeter will clearly be the Yankee's greatest SS but he will have trouble cracking the top 3-4 of SS's in general. Statistically, he will never approach Wagner -- who is still regarded by many as the greatest all around player... ever at any position. I'm not certain he will end up better than Arky Vaughan (check the numbers) or 2-time MVPs at SS Ernie Banks and Cal Ripken, either.