Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Commercial Fitting Way To Say Farewell To Jeter



Tonight is the last All-Star Game for Derek Jeter, the fourteenth of his Hall of Fame career.

With the playoffs unlikely for the Yankees in 2014 and this being likely the last moment of Jeter's career that the nation will be focusing on, Nike's Jordan Brand put out a well done tribute to say good-bye to one of the best that baseball has ever seen.

Jeter is a great player.  The statistics show that.

3408 career hits in 2685 games.  1996's A.L. Rookie of the Year.  A five-time Gold Glove winner.  A five-time World Series winner.  There's no denying his greatness.

Has playing for the Yankees led to Jeter being slightly overrated?  Of course it has.  He has never won an MVP in the regular season, never won a batting title, and his defense was never as good as those Gold Gloves say it was.

However, Jeter is still an all-time great.  He won, and won big, on baseball's biggest stage.  Madison Avenue and the New York newspapers might have helped to add more luster to Jeter's career but playing and winning in the House That Ruth Built with all the retired numbers behind him and a fan base that accepts nothing less than World Series championships every year has to count for something too.

Also, Jeter has remained unscathed in an era in which almost all the other top players were associated with performance-enhancing drugs.  As far as we know it, #2 did it all naturally.

As a Red Sox fan, I once considered Jeter overrated.  Fifteen years ago I was arguing that if Jeter and our guy, Nomar Garciaparra switched teams that the Yanks would still be winners and the Sox would still be losers.  Watching Nomar worry about his impending free agency in 2004 instead of focusing on winning a title not only proved me wrong, it led to the beginning of the end of Nomar's career.

As a baseball fan, I once considered Alex Rodriguez superior to both Jeter and Garciaparra.  It was a golden age for shortstops but the stats said that A-Rod was the best of the best.  However, New York was too much for Rodriguez once he got his chance to be Jeter's teammate and his association with PED's will forever soil his reputation as a player.

Jeter is the reason that I will watch the All-Star Game tonight.  He is why I will fork over a few dollars I don't have to watch one of his final games at Fenway Park later this summer.

He is also the player I will have my son watch highlights of and who I well tell him stories about if he chooses to play baseball.

Derek Jeter is the epitome of a winner and baseball will miss him greatly when his career ends this Fall.

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