Misremembering Mantle’s Final Season

Derek Jeter had a great career. He isn’t great any more. That’s just how it works.

Journal News: Recap of Derek Jeter Retirement Gifts

The big 2nd half issue at BBTF is likely to be the retirement gifts The Captain receives as he completes his Final Journey. To provide perspective, the LoHud Yankee Blog reviews the 1st half:

May 25 — White Sox
Once a powerful hitter for both the Yankees and White Sox, retired slugger Ron Kittle built Jeter’s U.S. Cellular Field retirement gift. Kittle created a bench made of baseball equipment with bases as the seat, bats as the back and arm rests, and baseballs used for decoration and spacing. Long time White Sox first baseman Paul Konerko also presented Jeter with clay removed from the shortstop position at U.S. Cellular, plus a $5,000 donation to Jeter’s Turn 2 Foundation.

Looks like it wouldn’t be difficult for Furtdao to top the Cubs effort on behalf of BBTF.

Michael Jeter?! Twitter goof births All-Star game’s most popular meme

“But what set this apart was how the Internet scooped up Michael Jeter and adopted him as the meme of the night. It was the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter worldwide. A @MichaelJeterNY Twitter account debuted. And the Photostops started to roll in:”

I had a meme…..a meme just for you…..LYDIA!!!!!

Adam Wainwright says he grooved pitch for Derek Jeter to hit in All-Star farewell

Derek Jeter’s final All-Star Game went about as well as possible, even if it included a little help from the opposing pitcher.

Jeter went 2 for 2, including a first-inning double on a 90-mph fastball National League starter Adam Wainwright told a group of reporters he threw over the plate intentionally.

“I was gonna give him a couple pipe shots. He deserved it,” Wainwright said. “I didn’t know he was gonna hit a double or I might have changed my mind.”

Fivethirtyeight: Derek Jeter And the Other Worst All-Star Starters of the Past 40 Years

Wait Mark Loretta was an All-Star? Mark Loretta was an All-Star STARTER?????

Forty-year-old Cal Ripken Jr.’s 2001 All-Star Game start was awarded purely out of legacy, and it’s been frequently compared to Jeter’s this week. Ripken, however, had the worst first half of any All-Star Game starter from the past four decades, having played much worse than Jeter has thus far in 2014. Ripken’s first-half triple-slash line in 2001 was .240/.270/.324 (good for a 56 Weighted Runs Created Plus); Jeter’s 2014 line is .272/.324/.322 (80 wRC+), despite playing in a more difficult offensive environment. Jeter may not be playing like a typical All-Star, but he hasn’t been as bad as Ripken was at the same age.

Perhaps more interesting is the fact not all – or even most — ill-advised All-Star starting picks went to sentimental selections. Of the 50 worst starters listed above, there are more players under age 30 (18) than 35-or-older (16). For most of the prime-aged players who started the All-Star Game despite poor first halves, though, their presence can be explained by a good season the year prior. This phenomenon is fueled by baseball’s long-standing confusion over whether the All-Star Game is supposed to honor the players who played best in the first half of the season in question, those who played best since the previous All-Star Game, or simply the best players in general.

Bleacher Report: Jordan Brand Rolls out Moving ‘RE2PECT’ Tribute for Derek Jeter

Where are his sexual conquests? Didn’t they enjoy the gift baskets?

The best part of this ad might be the grudging acknowledgements of Jeter’s success. Boston bros with no love for the Yankees tip their hats, and Mr. Met might have to go into witness protection after doffing his cap for Jeter.

It’s a moving tribute for a guy who made it through baseball’s most turbulent era without an arrest or a PED scandal. This is Nike’s official salute to Jeter, whose legacy with the company is second only to its titular namesake.

Calcaterra: The first Derek Jeter Publishing title is available for pre-order

Last fall we learned that Derek Jeter was starting his own publishing business in a partnership with Simon & Schuster. The first book is coming out in September. You can pre-order it now. It’s called “The Contract” and it’s for middle school readers. This is the description:

As a young boy, Derek Jeter dreams of begin [sic] the shortstop for the New York Yankees. He even imagines himself in the World Series. So when Derek is chosen for the Little League Tigers, he hopes to play shortstop. But on the day of the assignments, Derek Starts [sic] at second base. Still, he tries his best while he wishes and dreams of that shortstop spot. And to help him stay focused on school, his parents make him a contract: keep up the grades or no baseball. Derek makes sure he always plays his best game—on and off the baseball field!

Good! Kids need to learn that it’s okay to try things and fail, and that it’s natural to have limitations. You can’t necessarily expect to achieve your wildest, most unrealistic dr…

Wait, he ends up playing where?

Poz: Greatest Thing Ever

The Dalai Lama is not amused.

On Twitter, Jesse Lund puts up this amazing — absolutely amazing — screen shot from the Friday night broadcast of the Yankees and Twins. It may be the greatest thing ever produced by man, including Hamlet and The Godfather and chocolate cake with raspberry sauce.

Perfection in Jeteration is when you can so perfectly present over-the-top praise for the Derek Jeter that you would use the exact same graphic or story or take as satire. This is not as easy as it sounds. Many have tried, many have failed. But this is as close to perfection as we mere human beings can achieve. If Saturday Night Live was to do a skit about how absurd people are when it comes to their Derek Jeter love, this would be EXACTLY the graphic they would use, word-for-word.

Rick Reilly: Jeter State of Mind

Holy hagiography! Did I really beat Repoz to this?! Rick Reilly pens one for the ages- a letter to the imaginary future child of Derek Jeter.

How he was loved! In a league full of bloated steroid cheats, he kept the same body, the same weight, the same helmet size. In a game full of bat-flipping prima donnas, he ran out every ground ball, hard. In a world of my-agent-doesn’t-want-me-to-play multimillionaires, he played hurt more than we know. “Most of the time, he wasn’t 100 percent,” Posada said. “He’d come out of spring training and tell me, ‘I’m already hurting,’ but he wouldn’t tell anybody else. He just kept going.”

Your father was everything men wanted to be. The guy with the $15 million Trump Tower penthouse. The dude dating Miss Universe. The man with all of the talent and none of the jerk. He was everything women wanted, too. The elegant athlete who loved books, paid for everything, and had a limo waiting for them when it was time to go.

The stat-heads scoffed at him, but then the stat-heads never figured out a way to measure the things he did. Some guys would lean over the wall in foul territory to make a catch. Jeter would launch himself over it, sometimes two rows deep. He’d come out with a bruised face, a cut chin, and the ball.

 

Avoid running at all times.-S. Paige Posted: May 28, 2014 at 08:43 PM | 80 comment(s)
  Beats: derek jeter, rick reilly

The Poscast Episode 7: Penalties

Joe & Michael discuss the AL East (it’s awful), Derek Jeter (he’s awful), intentional walks (they’re nonsensical), and conclude by having a fantasy draft for penalties.

ESPN: Jeter Passes Molitor For 8th On All-Time Hit List

New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter gained sole possession of eighth place on baseball’s all-time hit list with two hits in the first four innings Sunday against the Blue Jays, giving him 3,320 career hits and moving him one ahead of Hall of Famer Paul Molitor.

That also makes Jeter the leader for career hits by a right-handed American League hitter.

MLB.com: Astros Shower Jeter With Applause & Gifts

First there was the pair of Yankees pinstriped Lucchese cowboy boots, emblazoned with Jeter’s No. 2. Then came the Texas-size Stetson cowboy hat, seemingly a must-have for anyone who passes through Minute Maid Park on his way to the Hall of Fame.

Pettitte, Roger Clemens and Mike Stanton, all former teammates and all Houston residents, joined Jeter on the field to present the gifts, along with longtime Astros radio announcer Milo Hamilton.

The ceremony also involved several big names from the golf world, in conjunction with the Shell Houston Open, which is taking place through April 6. . . . Crane, an accomplished golfer in his own right, owns the Floridian Golf Resort in Palm City, and he presented Jeter with a three-night stay at the resort as well as golf lessons from renowned teaching professional Butch Harmon. On behalf of the PGA, O’Meara, Wagner and Glover, Jeter was also presented a Titleist golf club set.

Nice gesture.

Joe Namath calls Derek Jeter an ‘angel’

Derek Jeter has been described in a variety of ways during his career.

Joe Namath brought something new Monday.

“Knowing the scrutiny that he’s had over the years,” the Jets Hall of Famer said at Yankees camp, “I can’t imagine how the guy could be an angel like this over the years. He’s to be respected for every phase of his life, it seems.” ...

“Over the years, I’ve learned to respect what teammates and coaches have to say about the guys they work with, and I’ve only heard wonderful compliments about him,” Namath said. “And then we get to see him in person or on the television and how he conducts himself away from the game or off the field . . . Many of us fell short with some of that, but you learn to bounce back. It’s human to error, and I know about that. We do our best to come back. Derek hasn’t made many errors that I’ve been able to witness.”

Told of Namath’s “angel” description, Jeter smiled.

“Puts a lot of pressure on me,” he said…

Despite his status as a New York legend, Namath said he cannot relate to Jeter.

“Only if I had a big enough head to try to,” Namath said. “No, he’s special, I can’t relate to him. Some of the things that athletes, people in the public eye [go through], I can relate to a bit. But his career and where he’s been, what he’s done, I can’t relate to all that.

“We accomplished a goal when I was a part of a couple of teams in my career and we won championships. Well, he’s done quite a bit more. So no, I don’t relate to what he’s been able to do.”

Shut up, stats nerds and haters: You’re wrong about Derek Jeter

If one had to synthesize most of the recent Jeter coverage under one headline, it would be: Is Derek Jeter a True Hall of Famer or Is He Overrated?

Let’s deal with the first question. There isn’t any doubt that he is going to get into the Hall of Fame. Only nine players in the history of baseball have more hits than Jeter. He’s a 13-time All-Star with five World Series rings. And he’s tremendously popular. If you put down a deposit on a hotel room in Cooperstown for July 2020, it’s good as gold.

Those who have cast doubts about his HOF worthiness have always stressed the lack of bold numbers on his statistics page on BaseballReference.com. In other words, he never led the league in many offensive categories. This is true. He only led the league in runs scored in 1998 and in hits in 1999 and 2012, and HOFers have usually topped the list in more stats than that.

He was never quite a match for the top superstars of his era. Or as Ted Berg put it in USA Today (in a piece titled “Derek Jeter is the most fervently overrated shoo-in for the Hall of Fame”), “In terms of overall value to his teams, Jeter just doesn’t stack up to recent historic greats like Albert Pujols and Barry Bonds, and can’t quite match great contemporaries like Chipper Jones and Jeff Bagwell either.”

This is also true, but not to the point.

When Hal Newhouser quit his job over Derek Jeter

If anyone knew a top notch baseball prospect when he saw one, Hal Newhouser did. But the Houston Astros, for whom Newhouser was a scout in the early 1990s, ignored what “Prince Hal” told them. He told them to draft Derek Jeter with the #1 pick and pay him whatever he wanted. They didn’t, and instead the young infielder was drafted by the New York Yankees with the sixth pick. Jeter went on to become a superstar in pinstripes, winning five World Series titles.

Newhouser quit the Astros the day after the draft, ending a career of more than 50 years in professional baseball.

Posnanski Top-100 #57: Derek Jeter

Derek Jeter is the most overrated/underrated player of our time. This is in part because he has been a central figure on the essential team of the last 20 or so years, the New York Yankees. This is in part because he is such a charismatic figure and because he has so gracefully (and carefully) managed his image. But perhaps most, this is because Jeter’s value as a player has always felt at least partly unmeasurable. And the arguments about unmeasurable things can rage hot and rage forever.