The Major League Baseball playoffs have begun.

The Chicago Cubs are sitting at home…AGAIN. The St. Louis Cardinals are aiming at another world championship…AGAIN. The question is, why can some teams consistently play at a championship level and others struggle to find success in those same critical conditions?

I have spent the last two years interviewing, studying, and researching the habits of Great teams and what they do best in the sports and business worlds–and I have observed long-running cultures and actions that contribute to the success that these organizations have built. One defining, championship-level quality of Great teams is that they know how to win in the fourth quarter, final inning, or those last crucial seconds before the game is over.

As New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter completes his last home game this week, the void that he’ll leave behind will be impossible to fill.

Jeter has embodied Greatness in his poise, leadership and hard work throughout twenty seasons in Major League Baseball, and after his final game, professional sports will have lost an icon.

Jeter’s sendoff is bittersweet. With the sporting world currently saturated with one scandal after another, Jeter is a polar opposite to what we have come to expect from professional athletes. What are the odds that an athlete can play a sport at the highest level, starting at just nineteen years old–in the Greatest media market in the world–and have such a legendary career without scandal?

We can thank his parents for that.