The amount of hype preceding every All-Star Game
is heavy, but this year the hype was horrendous. It was horrendous because it was
accompanied by the idolization of Derek
Jeter, who is retiring at the end of the current season. Not even the Great Bambino, the Sultan of
Swat, Babe Ruth, was idolized anywhere
near the degree that Jeter has been. The
idolization of Jeter spills over to deification.
For some Americans, he’s Derek Jesus. He did not hit with the power of
Ruth and dozens of other legendary sluggers. He did not play shortstop with the
range and skill of a dozen others who have played that position. He did not
run the bases with the speed of the fastest. He was good, very good, but what
he was great at was being good for so long. For example, he was a good base stealer for so long that he holds the record for most
steals in Yankee history. There were lots of Yankees who were faster than he
was, but nobody ran longer. Except for an off-, injury-plagued year in his mid-thirties,
he was always at the top of his game. It was his longevity that enabled him to
compile the very impressive statistics that he has. Lou Gherig was known as the
Iron Horse because of his durability.
Gehrig played a record seventeen seasons
for the Yankees, but Jeter broke that record and at the end of the 2014 season will have played for
twenty years, three years longer than Gehrig.
Jeter began playing for the Yankees in 1995, about when chemical
cheating began. It was as prevalent as it was because it was profitable.
Baseball was slipping into the doldrums in the latter part of the twentieth
century. It needed a jolt and steroids
juiced it up. It became much more profitable for the players, especially for
the juiced stars, but also for the complicit team owners. Then the pervasiveness
of the chemical cheating was revealed in news reports and in tell-all books
like Jose Canseco’s Juiced (2005),
the subtitle of which was Wild Times,
Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big. Baseball defended
itself by transforming baseball’s Mr.
Clean, Derek Jeter, from the Anti A-Rod into the Shining Knight of Abstinence
in baseball’s scandalous, dark night of steroids. His final transformation was from the Shining
Knight to The Captain, making him the god of baseball. Jeter has been the well-paid poster boy for the most monopolistic team in American sports, a team located in the financial capital of America, where the dress code once called for pinstripes. George Steinbrenner was a stereotypical unscrupulous capitalist, but Jeter's deification has helped rehabilitate The Boss's reputation. The reason for Jeter’s deification was
not just his longevity but also his
reputed integrity. He has put up very
impressive numbers in his long career without apparently committing the cardinal
sin of modern baseball, without using performance
enhancing drugs (PED’s). He apparently achieved greatness without the chemical cheating
that was so prevalent in major league baseball in the last quarter century.
Almost everyone involved in and connected to baseball has
helped glorify Jeter—the fans, the complicit owners, the obliging commissioners;
the adulatory New York sportswriters; and even the professional arbiters of the
sport, the umpires. As reported recently in the New York Times (7 July 2014), a statistical study revealed that umpires, in calling of
balls and strikes in regular games, favor pitchers who have been selected for All-Star Games over
those who have not by a margin of 17 percent. Based on my observation of the electronic
balls and strikes tracking available to
me as a subscriber to MLB.TV, I suspect a study would show umpires in the
calling of balls and strikes similarly favor All-Star hitters. And at no time would umpires be more inclined
to favor the All-Star Jeter than in his farewell year and in his final All Star
Game. But umpires were not the only ones
on the field at the All-Star Game who favored him. The National League starting
All-Star pitcher Adam Wainwright revealed how much even an opposing player could get caught up in the delirium of deifying Jeter. After returning to the dugout, the somewhat giddy
Wainwright admitted to reporters that he
had deliberately grooved a pitch to Jeter in the first inning of the All-Star Game.
Wainwright wanted “The
Captain” to live up to the very high expectations baseball fans have for him. Wainwright subsequently tried to downplay if
not retract his admission, but truth will out. To vary the famous Latin quotation in vino veritas (in wine there is truth), I would say in delirare veritas (in delirium there is truth), as the Oracle at Delphi was believed to have demonstrated.
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Jeter is not only the anti-A-Rod, he is, at a subliminal level
of our national psyche, the anti-Obama. This
does not mean Jeter is anti-Obama or even a
Republican. As close to his black father as he appears to be,
Jeter is not anti-Obama. On the contrary, he admitted voting for Obama in 2012.
Typical of remarks online to this revelation of Jeter’s vote for
Obama were the following three comments on Free
Republic, a conservative chat room: (1)“Normally a guy who plays it close
to the vest and shuns controversy like the plague, Jeter blasts out his
presidential choice. This Yankee fan feels confused, as a hero becomes just
another dumb athlete.” (2) “A great baseball player, an economic moron.
Life goes on.” (3) “Derek Jeter proves he’s on dope.” But contrary to the
claim that Jeter “blasted out” his presidential choice, Jeter usually plays it
close to the vest when it comes to politics and does avoid controversy like the
plague. He’s no dope. He knows it would
be bad for his lucrative endorsement business and Jeter clothing line to offend
either conservatives or liberals.
In the minds of many conservative white baseball fans Jeter
apparently represents the triumph of American
values and the realization of the American
Dream. With no more than a high school education, Jeter mastered his physical
craft and became, if not one of the one
percent, at least extremely wealthy, with a large ocean-front
mansion in Florida. In a poll conducted by Fortune Magazine of who the World’s 50
Greatest Leaders were, Jeter came in at Number 11. President Obama didn’t crack
the top 50. Jeter is not, like
Obama, a liberal Harvard law school graduate
and former community organizer whom many
conservatives feel is, as president, leading the country down the road to socialized
medicine, same sex marriage, and Islam. If
Jeter looked more like his black father maybe there would be less idolization of him, and
perhaps if Obama looked more like his white mother there might be less fear and
hatred of him. But as it stands, the bi-racial Jeter and the bi-racial Obama occupy
important if antithetical niches in the American imagination, the one being deified, the other demonized. A
central figure in the BALCO steroid scandal, Victor Conte, said there was no way
in the world Jeter could have become the ageless athlete he did without PED’s. The same has been said of David Ortiz the
Red Sox slugger whose lackluster, injury-plagued career took off only after he was released by the
Twins after no team was interested in trading
for him. After his release, he was signed by the Red Sox. That may have
been when he began taking a PED, which not only improves a player's performance on the field but speeds up his recovery from injuries and slows down the process of aging off the field Ortiz is widely believed to have been among those
players who tested positive for PEDs in a test in which players were guaranteed anonymity. Was Jeter one of those who tested positive? It seems very unlikely but who knows for sure?
Jeter has been accused not only using PED’s but also of
being gay or at least a switch hitter. He was featured in a cover story, “Jeter’s
Swinging Years,” in GQ (April 2011), a magazine that has been suspected from its
inception of catering to gay readers. The photos of him in that issue are not
only humorous but in light of its reputation, suggestive.
Jeter in GQ. Size does matter.
Good sport that he is, Jeter also appeared in drag as a
player’s wife in a sketch when he hosted Saturday
Night Live in 2001.
Did Jeter discuss drag bunting on Saturday Night Live?
If it should turn out that Jeter is one of those who used some form of PED to achieve his longevity as a baseball player, and if it should turn out that he is not quite as heterosexual as all his gorgeous scantily clad white girlfriends would suggest, and if it is publicized that he voted for that devil Obama for president, his deification might grind to a halt. It might, in other words, be a whole new ballgame.
(For an earlier post on the subject of Viagra and baseball click here.)
