Keidel: Jeter Is An Immortal, But Yankees' Franchise Four Is Filled With Gods
By Jason Keidel
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So an amalgam of age groups, from the media and the masses, voted on the best four players in Yankees history. The results are refreshing, even if expected. But the barking from the periphery is hardly encouraging.
There really are humans, professed baseball fans and historians who think Derek Jeter belongs on that list. Repeat. Jeter is allegedly better than Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Lou Gehrig, and Babe Ruth.
We can't blame Millennials for everything, even if we try. But, as a group, no one is confusing them with Ken Burns. Social networks are bursting with Jeter advocates, who assert the shortstop got shorted, snubbed, dissed, by lagging behind the conga line of luminaries who finished in front of him.
The key demo sees Jeter as the key player of the Joe Torre dynasty. And there's some merit to that. It's hard to envision those four rings in five years without the kid from Kalamazoo. Safe to say he was at least as important as any position player of that era. But it's also interesting, if not instructive, to note that once Jeter became team captain, the Yankees stopped winning World Series.
That's right, once No. 2 became No. 1, the Bronx Bombers lost their ancestral grip on the Fall Classic. Not even Mr. November could own October. Not that the Yankees' newfound fall ineptitude was all on Jeter. Indeed, they lost pitching and position players because of age, injury, and a weakened farm system unable to replace the stalwarts who starred before Y2K. But it does say something that he won just one more ring in the decade-plus as Alpha Male.
There's a natural impulse to say we saw the best ever, to project cherished qualities upon our peers simply because they're ours. Is Jordan really better than LeBron? Or are we so obdurate, so tethered to time, that we refuse to concede the throne to King James no matter what he achieves? Could Mike Tyson beat Muhammad Ali? Is Tiger better than Jack? Is Barry Sanders a better ball carrier than Jim Brown?
The Jeter enthusiasts are clearly projecting. Since he belongs to the under-30 crowd, they want to say they saw the Yankee player nonpareil. But this transcends a simple state of Pollyanna.
To put Jeter in that hallowed quartet is to ignore the 20th Century. The Yankees, particularly between Ruth and Mantle, are a roll call of immortals, a red carpet leading directly to Cooperstown.
It doesn't take a scholar to realize Ruth is better than Jeter. You don't have to be the one who removed Pluto from our solar system to get that Gehrig is better than Jeter. Nor must you be a Nobel Laureate to learn that Joe D and Mickey Mantle, at their best, were eons beyond Jeter at his. Just the numbers alone are laughable.
Of course, whenever you remove someone distinguished from a distinguished list, we presuppose that you're insulting him. We're not. Or, at least, I'm not. Those of us who watched Jeter's career from whistle to gun are acutely aware of his heft. His career was a montage of memories, almost all of them sublime in divine moments. No Yankee, except perhaps Ruth and Reggie, embraced the spotlight like Jeter, who managed to bask in Broadway's glow without burning in its glare.
"He's the only Yankee with 3,000 hits," is the standard retort. It's a lovely, blessed number, but, in this case, wholly misleading, one of those statistical quirks in a game married to statistics. Sandy Koufax didn't win 200 games. Does that mean Tom Glavine is better?
Derek Jeter was always a fine player who had phenomenal moments. I was 10 yards away on that sweaty night when he lunged into the stands, speared that foul ball, and slammed into a sea of chairs and legs. He hit the first homer in November. His 3,000th hit was a homer. Jeter had a penchant for meeting the mega moment. You could not find a better combination of person and player.
But you can find better players -- at least four, to be exact.
Follow Jason on Twitter @JasonKeidel
