De-pimped - here’s the entire article:
For most of the last twenty years the rest of the Baseball world watched Derek Jeter and his team play in October. Yes time and the odds finally caught to the Yankees over the past few seasons and on a few occasions the tables have turned, but that was inevitable.
Now Jeter is stepping away from baseball as one of the all-time greats of the game. He doesn’t sit on a tiny plateau at the top of baseball lore by default for being around a long time and being one of those who have besmirched and embarrassed baseball. He’s at the top because he earned it. His steadfast high character has served as a counter balance to those who have cheated and blackened the sport’s reputation. He wasn’t quite Babe Ruth saving baseball after the 1919 “Black Sox” scandal; but Jeter was one of the most consistent “good guys” for Major League Baseball (MLB) to point to in the wake of the recent “juicing scandal.”
MLB owes Jeter a deep debt of gratitude. Along with his team, he made going to the ballpark to see your team play the Yankees – even when you knew they would lose – worth spending your hard earned money. All over MLB’s map fans and owners love to see the Yankees come to town; and there is strong evidence that interleague play was designed to spread the Yankees and Jeter around.
By all outward indications, Derek Jeter is an intelligent man who could have succeeded in most any career he decided to enter. Nevertheless, he has spent the last two decades selling his baseball skills to a grateful Yankee organization. Now that phase of his life is over; and he has a new asset to sell: his name and his personality. That is how he will make his living from now on, it’s an exercise of the free market found in few other countries.
There are those in and out of the sports world who don’t seem to grasp that concept. They are presumptuous enough to believe they have the status to recommend to Jeter how he should have acted during his final season.
That brings to mind the old line, “Those who can; do; those who can’t; write about it…..” There will be no shortage of bile filled articles ripping Derek Jeter. Most will come from J school grads who played JV sports in high school. They will rip Jeter for changing the product he sells from baseball skills to his name. They don’t understand baseball is a business – they can’t – because like their colleagues who write about other subjects they don’t know how America works.
While they beat their breasts, Derek will be quietly living his new life in a same workman-like manner that made him a baseball Hall of Famer. It’s the only way he knows how to work.
Not a Yankees fan but Jeter seems like an all around good guy. Certainly head and shoulders above that other superstar they had for all these years.
I was at Fenway yesterday when the rival Red Sox gave Jeter a very classy send off. Not only did they have all living former Red Sox captains, Yaz, Fred Lynn, Luis Tiant, Jim Rice, Rico Petrocelli, Tim Wakefield and Jason Varitek but team captains for the Bruins’ Bobby Orr, Celtic’s Paul Pierce and Patriot’s Troy Brown were there as well. The manually operated scoreboard spelled out the message “WITH RE2PECT 2 DERECK JETER”. The color guard consisted of the Boston Police and Fire Department as well as the NYC Police and Fire Department.. It was a wonderful and moving ceremony for a very decent man.
he is not the only retiring player, why can’t the sports media seem to cover more than one thing at a time?
Jeter had better be sure he doesn’t want to play any longer.
Everyone who gave him those gifts will want them back if tries to pull a Brett Favre style comeback.
I see Jeter down the road as a team manager, but for certain he will be away from the MLB.
One of the few classy guys around.
I think Coach’s observattion that Jeter gave baseball fans someone to admire, while so many others were wallowing in steroid mud, is spot on.
Rivera and Jeter both received lavish send offs for having played the game right: With dignity, class, and staying with the same team for so long. In essence, they did what lots of players used to do before free agency turned each season into a game of 52-pickup. Jeter’s most amazing stat is that, in 20 seasons, he played about 10 games where his team had been eliminated from the playoffs. He had played two going into this year.