This week’s New York sports news centers on the most important baseball player the city has seen over the past 15 years. It seems inconceivable, yet the New York Yankees have chosen to play hardball with Derek Jeter in contract negotiations, with the owner even going so far as to warn us all that this could get “messy.”
Hal Steinbrenner and associates are apparently working hard to avoid overpaying the face of the franchise. New York has won five championships during Jeter’s tenure as starting shortstop, captain and overall role model for the pinstriped club. Apparently, Jeter’s clutch play and classy professionalism are not enough to stand in the way of his drop in offensive statistics last season. The Yankees have reviewed the data, and have decided the best way to do business is by making the ultimate stand-up guy sweat.
It’s true that Jeter has earned more money than any of us need in a lifetime, and it hardly seems productive for any of us to worry about the salaries of multimillionaires. But sometimes, we follow these contract talks not out of any concern for the salaries awarded, but more out of a genuine interest in knowing how much loyalty and integrity are worth these days.
I don’t think the Yankees could have ever dreamed they’d have a more impressive team leader in the astounding run of success they’ve experienced in this past decade and a half. When you are running the most profitable franchise in the history of professional team sports, you honor that success by going ahead and paying the man who symbolizes everything there is to like about you. There are some athletes and entertainers who transcend the word “overpaid” – the Jordans, the Ripkens, the Bradys, the Gretzkys. No one cares how much they made – only that they stayed put.
In 21st-century baseball, statistics rule the day. Yesterday, Felix Hernandez of the Seattle Mariners won the American League’s Cy Young Award with just 13 wins – the lowest total in history for a Cy Young-winning starter. While Tampa Bay Rays starter David Price won 19 games for a division-winning team, Hernandez received the award based on his overall numbers. And it’s true that Hernandez gave up fewer runs per game than Price and struck out more batters. But it’s also true that Price won numerous big games in a pennant race, with constant pressure. He was stronger in September than in any month of the year, and he continually found a way to win. Yet that was not enough to make up for the fact that the computer screen tells us Hernandez was better.
Derek Jeter was not the best player on anyone’s fantasy baseball team last year, and he won’t be the best next year, either. But if you think the Yankees will be a better team without him next year, or the year after that, then you aren’t watching the game – you’re just looking at statistics. There is a lot more to a great athlete than numbers. And if you’re going to use the numbers as the foundation for your negotiations, then you can assure yourself that you’ll build a team with no chemistry and no intangibles. Just a half-decade ago, the Yankees gave Jeter supremely talented teammates such as Randy Johnson, Gary Sheffield, Alex Rodriguez and Jason Giambi – only to see those players bring New York no further than the first round of the playoffs in their time together.
There is something more to life than mere numbers. If stats were everything, then colleges would ask only for students’ SATs, discarding all those essays and recommendations that give us a much closer look into the minds and hearts of these kids. Data assessment may drive the working world of 2010, but if you don’t look up from your spreadsheet once in awhile, you can miss some pretty amazing things.
Like Derek Jeter singling to the opposite field on a 3-2 count in the late innings of a playoff game. Or Jeter knowing just what to say to calm a rookie starter before a game against the Red Sox in Fenway Park. Or Jeter taking the time to work with children in need on an off-day. Or Jeter nodding his head to the young fan who calls out his name as he jogs back to the dugout.
The Yankees are crunching numbers and eyeing the bottom line. In so doing, they’re trying to reduce the price of true professionalism. If you can glance away from the data for a moment and look more deeply into the value of the man, you’ll see that this is one mistake that no one should even consider making. You can’t get a class act like Derek Jeter on clearance. And you really shouldn’t be trying.
Showing posts with label Fenway Park. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fenway Park. Show all posts
Friday, November 19, 2010
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Welcome to Boston (One Sixty-Two: Day 16)
Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.
Day Sixteen: Victor Martinez, Boston Red Sox
There were days, Victor, when a 15-16 start was met with shrugs. Never acceptance, but a shrug nonetheless. Maybe a bitter “here we go again” tossed in as well. I know you’re still new to Boston, Victor, having come over from Cleveland at the trading deadline last July. But you missed the eras when 15-16 was met with patience.
There were those 86 years, of course, in between world championships. As generations of Red Sox fans grew up rooting for the team that Babe Ruth had left behind, the Sox had some pretty ugly records at times. For instance, the Sox had a string of 15 straight losing seasons from 1919-1933. They finished 42 games out of first place in 1954, and 40 games back in 1965. And yet, despite those dark years the Red Sox always managed to rise up again and field terrific teams. With players such as Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski, Jim Rice and Wade Boggs, Boston won 85 games or more a total of 30 times between 1938 and 2003 – only to claim not a single championship. In fact, the Sox made the World Series just four times in that span, losing in the deciding seventh game every time. Meanwhile, the Yankees claimed 26 world titles between 1923 and 2000, a record for professional American team sports.
And then, as you know, Victor, things did change. Your current teammate, the big lefty named David Ortiz, turned into the true Babe Ruth of Beantown, leading the Red Sox to their historic wins against the Yankees and Cardinals to claim the 2004 title. Then in 2007, Ortiz and Co. won it all again. Boston has won at least 92 games seven of the last eight seasons, and has become the standard by which 21st-century baseball teams are measured. Fenway Park, always a cinch to draw more than two million fans a year, now pulls in more than three million. Baseball executives study the moves of your general manager, Theo Epstein, as a model of how to build a winning team that also keeps an eye toward the future.
That’s how the Sox got you, Victor. You were smashing balls all over the place in Cleveland, but Epstein wanted your bat enough to give up young players for you. But not his best young players. He held the line, and got you anyhow. Now you’re starting in front of the team’s captain, because the Sox want to win at all costs. So does all of New England, as they tune in each night to listen to your team’s games from the Connecticut coastline all the way up to the tip of Maine.
You’ve finally started hitting the ball in recent days, Victor, just as you’ve done throughout your career. So it’s time you really thought about this – there’s an entire region of the nation about ready to lose their Cracker Jacks if you and your boys don’t start winning games. Embarrassing losses at home to the Yankees are the final straw.
You’re a catcher, Victor, and you’re a great player to boot. So you know what it’s like to carry a team. It’s getting to be mid-May, and the Boston Red Sox are not a 15-16 team. Fenway Park heroes get their numbers retired on the façade beneath the upper deck in right field. Your number 41 would look real nice up there. New England awaits, Victor. Your turn to bat.
Day Sixteen: Victor Martinez, Boston Red Sox
There were days, Victor, when a 15-16 start was met with shrugs. Never acceptance, but a shrug nonetheless. Maybe a bitter “here we go again” tossed in as well. I know you’re still new to Boston, Victor, having come over from Cleveland at the trading deadline last July. But you missed the eras when 15-16 was met with patience.
There were those 86 years, of course, in between world championships. As generations of Red Sox fans grew up rooting for the team that Babe Ruth had left behind, the Sox had some pretty ugly records at times. For instance, the Sox had a string of 15 straight losing seasons from 1919-1933. They finished 42 games out of first place in 1954, and 40 games back in 1965. And yet, despite those dark years the Red Sox always managed to rise up again and field terrific teams. With players such as Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski, Jim Rice and Wade Boggs, Boston won 85 games or more a total of 30 times between 1938 and 2003 – only to claim not a single championship. In fact, the Sox made the World Series just four times in that span, losing in the deciding seventh game every time. Meanwhile, the Yankees claimed 26 world titles between 1923 and 2000, a record for professional American team sports.
And then, as you know, Victor, things did change. Your current teammate, the big lefty named David Ortiz, turned into the true Babe Ruth of Beantown, leading the Red Sox to their historic wins against the Yankees and Cardinals to claim the 2004 title. Then in 2007, Ortiz and Co. won it all again. Boston has won at least 92 games seven of the last eight seasons, and has become the standard by which 21st-century baseball teams are measured. Fenway Park, always a cinch to draw more than two million fans a year, now pulls in more than three million. Baseball executives study the moves of your general manager, Theo Epstein, as a model of how to build a winning team that also keeps an eye toward the future.
That’s how the Sox got you, Victor. You were smashing balls all over the place in Cleveland, but Epstein wanted your bat enough to give up young players for you. But not his best young players. He held the line, and got you anyhow. Now you’re starting in front of the team’s captain, because the Sox want to win at all costs. So does all of New England, as they tune in each night to listen to your team’s games from the Connecticut coastline all the way up to the tip of Maine.
You’ve finally started hitting the ball in recent days, Victor, just as you’ve done throughout your career. So it’s time you really thought about this – there’s an entire region of the nation about ready to lose their Cracker Jacks if you and your boys don’t start winning games. Embarrassing losses at home to the Yankees are the final straw.
You’re a catcher, Victor, and you’re a great player to boot. So you know what it’s like to carry a team. It’s getting to be mid-May, and the Boston Red Sox are not a 15-16 team. Fenway Park heroes get their numbers retired on the façade beneath the upper deck in right field. Your number 41 would look real nice up there. New England awaits, Victor. Your turn to bat.
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