The Great Joe Posnanski on Jeter...

[beaner]

http://joeposnanski.si.com/2010/11/10/the-jeter-question/

[Frobby]

Let me turn this around for you. It's 1998, and Cal Ripken has just ended his consecutive games streak. The Yankees come to you and say that they are willing to trade their young shorstop, Derek Jeter, for Cal. Would you do it?

[beaner]

Let me turn this around for you. It's 1998, and Cal Ripken has just ended his consecutive games streak. The Yankees come to you and say that they are willing to trade their young shorstop, Derek Jeter, for Cal. Would you do it?

Exactly. I can't imagine many of us would. Some things are sacred.

[Tony-OH]

Very good column although I idsagree with his assertion that Yankees fans are sentimental and don't really enjoy the solider of fortune players. The Yankees do have some lifelong guys on the team in Jeter, Posada and Rivera, but they are also surrounded by a soldier of fortune rotation and 1st and 3rd baseman.

Yankee fans just expect to win, and that's why CC Sabithia gets booed off the mound after his bad starts in NY. Sure, Jeter clrosses these barriers and rightfully should, he's an institution and HoF player by any standards.

[BaltimoreTerp]

Very good column although I idsagree with his assertion that Yankees fans are sentimental and don't really enjoy the solider of fortune players. The Yankees do have some lifelong guys on the team in Jeter, Posada and Rivera, but they are also surrounded by a soldier of fortune rotation and 1st and 3rd baseman.

Yankee fans just expect to win, and that's why CC Sabithia gets booed off the mound after his bad starts in NY. Sure, Jeter clrosses these barriers and rightfully should, he's an institution and HoF player by any standards.

Yes, but I think his point was that this is why they feel so strongly about Jeter, and he brought up Mattingly as evidence.

It isn't that they like those guys, it's that they accept having them on their team. That's why they boo Sabathia after a bad start; because he's only there because of the money whereas Jeter is their guy.

At least the real, longtime Yankee fans. The bandwagoners are their own cesspool

[SrMeowMeow]

Amazing article.

[beaner]

I'm certainly no Yankees fan, but I do like Jeter, though it took me years to appreciate him and jump off the "he's overrated" bandwagon. He's earned that respect around the league and I think fans of other teams will appreciate him more when he's gone.

There are many guys on rival teams that I'd suspect are jerks in real life (Ben Roethlisberger, Jonathan Papelbon, Alex Rodriguez, and Roger Clemens immediately come to mind), but Jeter doesn't and has never struck me that way, even when I was an irrational hater...

That being said, he shouldn't have won the Gold Glove this year.

[Icterus galbula]

This part resonated with me:

I was talking with an editor about how the Gold Glove voting works, and something struck me that I had not thought about before. You probably know that the Gold Gloves are voted for by managers and coaches. And really … this is the only award they’ve got. They don’t vote for the MVP, for Rookie of the Year, for Cy Young, for Manager of the Year, for the Hall of Fame, for almost anything. They vote for the Gold Gloves. That’s it.

And I think that, in many of their minds, the Gold Gloves probably take on a larger meaning. Sure, it’s about defense. But I wonder if for many it really is about rewarding those players who PLAY THE GAME RIGHT. The advanced stats always suggested that Ken Griffey Jr. was overrated defensively, but he won the Gold Glove every year, in part, I think, because the way he played appealed to managers and coaches. There are a lot of guys like that. And if you look at the Gold Gloves that way — not as the best defensive players, exactly, but as the players who most appeal to managers and coaches for the way they play — it starts to make a whole lot more sense.

I was talking to a friend about this and remarked 'they should come up with some award for "mr. intangible" or some :cussing: so people don't feel compelled to give him this award.' I get the feeling that even the misguided who think Jeter is a great defensive SS are voting for much more than just defense.