Greetings friends, I’m Dan Glickman, and welcome to the Friday Fun-A-Palooza, which I really hope I can come up with a better name for. You may me know from the Baseball Continuum, home of such great features as Bizarre Baseball Culture (where I look at things like baseball comics and Korean movies about baseball-playing gorillas) and other stuff that doesn’t get nearly as many hits, except for when it’s a World Baseball Classic year, since I’m one of approximately nine-and-a-half baseball bloggers who actually focuses much effort upon it. Who’s the half? I’m not telling.
First though, we must discuss the tragedy that has struck the baseball world. I speak, of course, about the premature passing of the “Face of Baseball”, Derek Jeter. Yes, he may seem to still breath and walk among us, but make no mistake: the captain is dead. Why else would the Yankees wear a memorial patch the rest of the year, after all? This isn’t subtle like how the Beatles slowly let the world in on the fact Paul was dead. They are literally wearing the news of Jeter’s passing right on their sleeves.
And so, it is with heavy heart that I must eulogize the dear departed Captain. It is hard to do so, as with all great men, Derek Sanderson Jeter was not so much a man as he was the walking ideal of being a True Yankee, brought to earth to walk beside such lesser True Yankees as Bernie Williams, Andy Pettitte and Jorge Posada. No man, after all, was as successful as the late Captain, no man was as humble, no man was as professional, and no man, of course, was as determined.
Because this was not any ordinary man, but rather the Captain. For him, there was no such thing as enough:
Never enough victory.
Never enough awards.
Never enough applause.
Never enough women.
Wait, did I say “never enough women”? My bad, that part is to be expunged from the great Holy Book of Yankeedom and only be spoken of in non-official sources, sort of like how his home run in the 1996 ALCS should have been disavowed for fan interference. Also, let’s not discuss the whole Ken Huckaby thing, either, okay? He was human, albeit the best of humans, so even the Captain, I guess, had his flaws.
Oh, where was I? Yes, the Captain was forever driven for more. One does not have the career he has without such drive, after all. Yes, throughout his life, the Captain kept moving forward, never stopping, never changing direction. A lesser man would have let Alex Rodriguez become Shortstop, but not the Captain, no, he knew that only be continuing to be shortstop could he achieve his grand goal. A lesser man would have asked to be lowered in the order, to allow for better hitting players to help the team, but not the Captain. He understood that a ship is only truly sailing when it’s Captain is up high on the deck, where everyone can see him.
And Jeter, of course, was the Captain. The 11th Captain of the New York Yankees, even though there is lots of evidence to suggest there have been 15 (quiet, though, the press releases are already printed).
But now, the Yankees are a ship without a master, with nobody commanding them as they navigate the seas of the American League. Instead, they have nothing but things to remember him by, like the patches on their uniforms and the living statue they have erected to field Derek Jeter’s position. At least, I think that’s a statue. It’s hard to tell given how bad the Captain’s defense had been the last few years of his life.
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Now, some cool links:
Eric Malinowski takes a look at baseball treasures that are probably lost forever, prompting me to want to put on a hat, grab a whip and a WWII-era bomber jacket, and start yelling out “IT BELONGS IN THE HALL OF FAME!” to unscrupulous collectors.
Ichiro learned some Spanish simply so that he could trash talk to Latino players, because Ichiro is the best. When Ichiro announces his retirement, can he get a Jeterian tour, simply so we can get more of these great stories?
It turns out there is a informal but always-understood system amongst Dominican players about sharing Dominican cuisine with the visiting team’s Dominicans. Which gets me wondering: How is there not a “taste of your [insert team name here]” stand anywhere in the league where you can have food from the nation and/or state of your favorite ballplayers? Like, “Taste of the Orioles” would have Dominican food items to represent players like Nelson Cruz, some Taiwanese cuisine to represent Wei-Yin Chen’s birthplace, some Texas barbecue for Chris Davis…
Reddit is a place filled with discussions on various things, including baseball. Baseball sometimes makes people swear. Some intrepid soul found out what baseball team areas on Reddit has the highest percentage of swearing. Turns out that Dodgers, Pirates and Red Sox fans say naughty things a lot, while the Brewers have the least amount of swearing, followed by Minnesota and Miami.
Self-Promotion of the Week: My contribution to the great Simpsons Marathon of 2014 was a look at a comic where Bart and Homer fight over who caught a record-breaking baseball.
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In all honesty, despite my sarcastic obituary for the really-not-dead Derek Jeter, I have always respected and appreciated Derek Jeter, even after he taught me that baseball (and life) isn’t fair when he got that Jeffrey Maier-aided home run in the 1996 ALCS. He’s been a great part of the game since the mid-1990s and I (showing my youthful age here) can only barely remember baseball without him in it. Still, we need to remember that Jeter was not the near-Messianic figure of grace and virtue that some make him out to be and what the Yankees marketing department is using to sell more tickets and merchandising. He had- has– flaws, both on the field and off, just like every other ballplayer who has ever lived.
And, paradoxically, that arguably makes Jeter more impressive. To play that long in New York and end up retiring like this, hailed as a quasi-religious figure, is almost impossible to imagine in our modern age. Yes, others like Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle were able to pull it off, despite plenty of problems of their own, but they lived in a different era, where players’ public lives were kept secret, advanced statistics that may have found flaws the naked eye couldn’t see didn’t truly exist, and before the 24-hour news-cycle of ESPN was established.
And he did it as a everyday position player. Mariano Rivera, who left last year under similar quasi-religious veneration, didn’t pitch every day. Some days the Yankees would be winning by seven and he wouldn’t be needed. Other days they’d be losing and he wouldn’t be needed. And still other times he’d had pitched the last three games so the Yankees would take their chances on, I dunno, Ramiro Mendoza or somebody. Jeter though… was there basically all the time, barring injury or the rare day off. That’s a lot more time for people to come up with or notice negative things about him.
And that, in a way, is Jeter’s greatest accomplishment. Not the awards, not the championships, not being one of the greatest shortstops of all time. No, his greatest accomplishment is playing so long in New York City in our current age and coming out of it being as universally hailed as he is.
I don’t know if we’ll ever see something like that again.
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