Jeter’s jump throw ranks with the basket catch of Willie Mays as one of the signature plays in baseball history. Still, Jeter’s defense, especially his range, has been an object of derision by statistical analysts. “There is no possible way you can measure it,” Jeter says of defensive skill, which he said includes too many variables that cannot be quantified. “There’s just no way. It’s impossible. Everybody is entitled to their opinion, but ... no way.”
After the 2007 season, at 33, Jeter hired a personal trainer, Jason Riley, to improve his leg strength and agility. As a young player Jeter didn’t work out at all in November and December. “What I found out as you get older,” he says, “is it’s a lot easier to stay in shape than get back into shape.” He worked with Riley throughout the winter, waking at 5:30 a.m. to finish by 7:30, even before spring training workouts. He worked with Riley again last winter. The results became obvious this year, when Jeter pleased even the statistical analysts with his improved range and footwork.
And he showed no evidence of decline at the plate. Only three shortstops have hit .300 in the season in which they were 36 or older, but Jeter appears to have the staying power to join them. Indeed, Jeter, with roughly the same number of hits (2,747) as Pete Rose had at 35, could join Rose and Ty Cobb as the only players to reach 4,000 hits if he plays through his early 40s, and perhaps he will even challenge Rose’s record 4,256.
“I want to play as long as I’m having fun,” Jeter says. “If I’m not having fun, I’m not going to be out there just to be out there. Right now I’m having as much fun as I’ve had since Little League. People say, ‘How long do you want to play short?’ I don’t think about where I’ll be playing six years down the road. I don’t see any reason why I can’t play it for a long time.”
happysky
Posted: December 03, 2009 at 03:33 AM |
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1. Blackadder Posted: December 03, 2009 at 07:18 AM (#3401847)And he's had the good sense to stay single, so he can fool around with all the women he wants without getting into an ugly golf club-swinging domestic dispute.
Personally I always swoon over Gary Sheffied's hypnotic bat wiggle.
12 players (including Jeter) had 2700+ hits by age 35. 4 of them failed to get to 3,000, much less 4,000. If you are going to catch Rose, you can't merely be close to his age 35 total, you need to be well past, as you are unlikely to get 204, 198, 208, and 185 hits from ages 36-39, and get 700 hits in your 40's as Rose did. Jeter is 15 hits behind Rose. It is all but impossible to catch Rose from behind. I know James once wrote that vis-a-vis Aaron, but that took an extraordinary confluence of events.
Nah, everybody's too busy for Sportsmaning over the Holidays anyway.
And anyway, where were all the sportsmen who always pulled you though?
As you hint at in your last sentence, it always takes an extraordinary confluence of events to do things like that. See Aaron, see Ripken. Aaron had his best five-year home run run from age 35 through 39. That is most unusual, if not unprecedented. Similarly, Rose was lucky to retain the minnimum batting skills to be able to stay in the game about four years beyond any right to be there once he got within Alpine shouting distance of Cobb. As we know with Rose, once you get within Kissin Cousin distance of a record like that, standards for MLB eligibility change. From there on, he was in MLB through the largesse of the owners the general powers that be. But, mostly he was really lucky that Cobb didn't decide to play until he was fifty and amass five thousand hits.
And that Ichiro didn't bypass NPB and start playing in the majors at age 17 :)
I once posited that if Cobb were healthier in, the Expos would still be in Montreal. The theory went thusly:
Ty Cobb missed a lot of games in his prime. At age 26 he missed 32 games. At age 27 he missed 56. At age 31 he missed 15. At age 32 he missed 16. At age 33 he missed 40. At age 34 he missed 26. Even when he didn't miss large chunks, he usually missed 10-12 games per year. Give Cobb half of the games he missed between 1910 and 1922, and he gets another 200 or so hits, and Rose has little chance to catch him.
After 1983, Rose goes to Cincinnati to get the 10 hits required to break 4,000, and then retires. Out of the game now, Rose is free to legally bet on baseball, and in 1989, Bart Giamatti proudly introduces Pete Rose as the first unanimously elected member of the Hall of Fame.
Not having to deal with the stress of the Rose gambling/banning situation, Giamatti goes on to a successful commissionerhood, the highlight of which is averting a possibly disasterous strike in 1994, a season culminating in the third straight Canadian World series Champion, this time the Expos.
Flush with cash and fans, the Expos hold on to Larry Walker, Ken Hill, John Wetteland, and Marquis Grissom, and with the help of up and comer Pedro Martinez, easily repeat as NL champion, though they are beaten by the 112 win Indians in the WS. Nonetheless, they are finally able to get the new stadium they so desperately need, and become the dominant force in the NL for the next decade.
People have been watching baseball for 150 years, and not one can tell a good defender from a bad defender. In fact, as far as we know, there are no good or bad defenders. We just stick some players on the field in random places, put gloves on them to protect their sensitive areas, and pray like hell that once in a while a ball bounces off them instead of rolling to the wall. A tough sport, this base ball.
1) It's reccommended to plan this stuff BEFORE that age.
2) No team's ever won with a 66 year old ss.
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