The Chris Moeller Archives

The kind of winner he is, A St. Valentines poem by Mike Lupica

 
And now for the Derek Jeter victory lap...

Mr. Yankee for near the last two decades has announced that the 2014 baseball season will be his last. He's been everything to everybody, and this without a sliver of personality to his name. The Houston Chronicle's Richard Justice is now telling the world that the prince of corporate cool is "it could be argued... the greatest player ever."

Of course that is stupid. Just a half a decade ago, when he was just past his prime, a researcher at the Wharton School at Penn determined Jeter was the worst defensive player in the game. I will grant you that he is even a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer, whatever that means anymore, but he has never even won an MVP award. So come on. It exhausts the mind to consider that Jeter might be the all-time best ??, or that Justice has a Hall of Fame ballot mailed to him every year. Making this sort of declaration should be considered a professional embarrassment, on par with casting a Hall of Fame vote for Paul Lo Duca, Richie Sexson, or Mike Timlin.

Derek Jeter is Paul Molitor. Nothing more.

But, piling it on, Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci announced that Jeter "represented everything a superstar should be" and declared that "he understood from day one that it was better to be defined by championships than by statistics." Good. That helps when you can prove a baseball player's excellence without resorting to statistics. It's unbelievably cynical to think that Derek Jeter is exceptional or unusual in this regard. It's just empty prattle.

And New York Daily News newsdouche Mike Lupica wrote this week that "there will never be a Yankee that matters more than Derek Jeter." He wrote that Jeter is "as much a star" as any Yankee ever, which is, like Justice's, at its deepest essence, a preposterously ignorant, direct comment regarding and disrespecting Babe Ruth and the entirety of baseball history.

Lupica, in case you don't also know, cashed in big in the afterglow of the Mark McGwire/Sammy Sosa home run race of 1998, offering his insights in a book entitled "Summer of '98," even though he was completely peripheral to the story, witnessing first-hand virtually none of the race. The columnist and ESPN talking-head incidentally now curses the names McGwire and Sosa as frauds, leaves them off his Hall of Fame ballot each year, but-- can you believe it?-- has yet to give back a single dime to any of the suckers that bought his book.

In honor of Grantland Mike, I'd like to now present a list of Derek Jeter teammates that were named in the Mitchell Report:

Ricky Bones 1996
Kevin Brown 2004-05
Jose Canseco 2000
Roger Clemens 1999-2003, 2007
Bobby Estalella 2001
Jason Giambi 2002-08
Jason Grimsley 1999-2000
Glenallen Hill 2000
Darren Holmes 1998
David Justice 2000-01
Chuck Knoblauch 1998-2001
Dan Naulty 1999
Denny Neagle 2000
Andy Pettite 1995-2003, 2007-10, 2012-13
Gary Sheffield 2004-06
Mike Stanton 1997-2002, 2005
Randy Velarde 1987-95, 2001
Ron Villone 2006-07
Rondell White 2002
Todd Williams 2001

By a country mile, there were more Yankees listed in the report than representatives from any other team (and this list of luminaries doesn't even include Jeter's long-time infield mate, Alex Rodriguez, who drove the Yankees' and Jeter's last championship team in 2009 and apparently never met an anti-aging drug he didn't want to inject into either his arm or buttocks). On the Mitchell list alone, there are nine players representing the 2000 World Championship Yankees team. Am I being clear about my point here? There are only 25 players on a baseball team, and that number again from one team in one championship season alone is nine. Good for Derek Baseball for not being on the list. I personally suspect that Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio, for example, are drug cheats despite no evidence whatsoever and only whisper allegations ever against them, but Mr. Yankee-- despite the PED user at the adjoining locker, the two over here, and the three in the corner by the hamper-- I know for sure is clean. Jeets drew his strength instead from fucking actresses and always Helping the Yankees Reach Their Goal of Winning Another Championship.

Yes, Jeter also answers to "Mr. Clutch," but his career batting average and OPS in the postseason (.308/.838) is almost exactly the same as the regular season (.312/.828). In reality, Jeter became "Mr. Clutch" because he played in the only city where a man is allowed to become "Mr. Clutch." He basically beat out Bernie Williams and Ray Knight for the title. Also while playing for one of the home teams in the Big Apple, Reggie Jackson once and forever became known as "Mr. October" after he hit three home runs in a single World Series game, but Cardinal Albert Pujols matched that feat in 2011. That same year, Cardinal David Freese hit a World Series elimination-game-tying ninth-inning, two-out, two-run triple, and a game-winning 11th-inning home run in the same game. Cardinal Lou Brock, for his career, collected 34 hits and a .391 batting average in 21 career World Series games (Reggie: 35 hits and a .357 batting average in 27 W.S. games), and Cardinal Bob Gibson once won seven straight, complete World Series games-- in one of them striking out 17 men.

So now I'm thinking of taking this baseball season off as a fan to avoid the parade. In his retirement statement, Jeter thanked, first, "the Boss," George Steinbrenner, but then he forgot to thank Richard Nixon. That annoyed me. Later this year, during the final lap, the gifts will start rolling in. He'll be given an ugly painting in Detroit, a pair of boots in Dallas, and a hug from Jason Giambi, wherever he plays now. (Quick aside: Seriously, isn't the designated hitter rule a joke?) Commenters at Deadspin, no doubt Yankees fans, are hoping that at least one team will give Jeter a glove that he can actually use in a game, and another reader there has suggested that perhaps the Minnesota Twins will give him a rocking chair made out of the baseballs he didn't get to in the hole.

His last game at Yankee Stadium-- and the last one at Boston's Fenway Park-- will be nationally televised. But that second one's misleading-- all Yankees/Red Sox games are nationally televised. In the Bronx, during that last home series, local fans might even fill the box seats. It's the perfect time for Jeets to go. He presumes to be healthier than he has been for the last two years. He won't have to silently stew over A-Rod's presence during his final summer because Bud Selig has had him chained to a Frigidaire upright freezer in a basement in Miami. (Isn't A-Rod's year-long suspension a lovely coincidence?) Next year, it will be Alex's Yankee team at last.

This year, soak it in. Embrace the grand pronouncements as they flood in, and speaking of floods, don't hold back the tears. Gather ye rosebuds before Brendan Ryan takes over for the Yankees at short.

posted by CM @ 11:31 PM