What this world needs is more love letters from sportswriters to Derek Jeter

How many more years will sportswriters sit down at their keyboards, or whatever awesome brain-connected device replaces the keyboard 20 years from now, and decide that the world really desperately needs to read more drivel like this?  Don't get me wrong, I know it'll go on until he dies, so at least another 40ish years, but will it stop at some point after that?  I guess Bob Costas still blabs He Was More Important Than The Game Itself garbage about Mantle to this day, so the answer is probably no.  Christ.  It's excruciating to think about.

THE MAGIC OF baseball will always live in the storytelling --

And this is why a lot of people hate baseball.  For all the shit I shovel on the NFL for being a sport for meatheads, the assface baseball fan equivalent to the NFL fan meathead is the person who thinks the magic of baseball is in the storytelling.  It most certainly does not, not anymore than the magic of any sports is in the storytelling.  The magic of baseball is in the accessibility, the quirkiness, the way it starts with spring and dies with fall every year, and a hundred other things that are not related to constructing obnoxious and often factually incorrect narratives around dreamy-eyed True Yankees.

the grandeur of Ruth, the Midwestern identification with Musial, the unbreakable Robinson and the complex defiance and moral ambiguity of Bonds.

The magic of all those guys were that they were phenomenal players.  Reading about them (and, for example, the fact that Bonds and Ruth dominated the game in very similar ways 70ish years apart) is awesome, but it's not awesome "storytelling."  It's awesome because they were awesome at baseball.

It's what gives life to the statistics.

I'm sure you can see where this is headed.

Unfortunately, in the age of Moneyball and fantasy leagues,

And NERDS who are NERDY STAT NERDS

the numbers have been detached from, and become more important than, the players.

This is about as phenomenal a straw man as you could hope to construct to try to tear down STAT NERDS.  Hey, I'll bet you STAT NERDS think NUMBERS are more important than BASEBALL PLAYERS, don't you?  You'd get rid of the players entirely if you could!  Don't deny it!

All but one.

You guessed it... Frank Stallone.

The Yankees' Derek Jeter has defied the impact of the two most influential elements of his time: the institutional shift toward quantitative analysis and the cynical lust for home runs, fueled by performance-enhancing drugs.

This is pure horseshit.  I'm sure you were thinking the same thing as you were reading it so I'll spare you the paragraph-long response.  Needless to say, there is nothing about a guy with a .382 career OBP and 94 oWAR that "defies" the shift towards quantitative analysis.  If you want to out yourself as a shithead, be sure to say things like YOU STAT NERDS PROBABLY DON'T EVEN THINK DEREK JETER IS GOOD.  Somewhere along the line, shitheads like Bryant have tried to drastically change the message promoted by people who say things like "Jeter is a bad defensive shortstop" and "Jeter is a first ballot HOF guy, but I'm tired of reading love letters to him from people like Howard Bryant" to JETER SUX.  It's embarrassing.  Also, sorry Howard, but it's not 1998 anymore.  No one is "lusting" for home runs.

For now, he's stuck at 3,304 hits, sidelined until after the All-Star break with an ankle injury. But with Jeter, the visual has always been better than the numerical --

Those steely, calm, steel eyes.  They look right through you.  And when Derek says "Sorry guys, no more questions, I've got to shower and go home" the eyes are saying something much naughtier than that.

and there's never been a better time to appreciate that than in his absence,

Or every March through October of every year from 1996 through 2012, which apparently were also great times to appreciate him, according to numerous baseball writers across the country.

which only underscores his longevity.

It certainly underscores that he's old as shit and about to retire.  Not sure if it underscores how long he's been playing.

For years, most stats guys never liked him as much as his All-Star rivals at shortstop: Alex Rodriguez,

They both became regulars in 1996.  Between then and 2004, when A-FRAUD joined the Yankees, there was exactly one season when Jeter was better (1999).  The other eight seasons, PAY-ROD was somewhere between "somewhat better" and "insanely better" than Steely McGiftBasket.  Jeter is one of the 20 best players of the past 20 years.  Rodriguez is one of the 20 best players of all time.

Nomar Garciaparra

He became a regular in 1997.  Between then and 2003, when he finished his run as an impact player thanks to his groin/hamstring exploding like a firework in 2004, Jeter was better in 1999 and 2001 (because NOMAH got hurt and played in only 21 games).

and Miguel Tejada.

Tejada was definitely not as good as Jeter, although I don't remember too many "stat guys" insisting on that, especially considering Tejada's weakness relative to these other three was always OBP.

Jeter, now 38, has outlasted them all at the position

Lol.  Yes, Jeter did a fantastic job of outlasting Rodriguez at the position, mostly by being the world's greatest teammate and forcing the defensively superior Rodriguez to switch positions in order to accommodate Jeter's ego.

and created a more compelling legacy. (Rodriguez and Tejada will always be drug-tainted,

Fortunately, non-idiots will still be able to appreciate how good they were anyways.  Also, $1,000 to the Red Cross if Jeter tests positive before the end of the season.

and Jeter likely will finish with twice as many hits as Garciaparra's 1,747.)

Take that, guy whose career was ended by crippling and unpredictable injuries!

Jeter most clearly defined his essence on separate occasions in the 2001 ALDS against the A's. Moment One was, of course, [LB edit: THE FLIP PLAY OMG NEED TO GO CHANGE MY PANTS]. But while the scorebook registers Jeter's play as simply an out -- albeit one that was 9-to-6-to-2 -- it demoralized the A's.

This is the kind of stuff we're going to be reading from our rocking chairs at the old folks home in 2070, and the person writing it is going to think they're shining light into darkness.

The second defining moment came two nights later, with the A's spent, wondering as the noise cascaded on them just how they were here playing a deciding Game 5 at Yankee Stadium, how they had let the series slip away. Terrence Long hit a foul ball along the third base line that Jeter chased and caught, spilling into the stands. It was, again, just another out, F6, but on the field it was a referendum of championship toughness.

A ball a faster guy might have gotten to without having to sell out and dive into the stands.  But hey, GRIT TOUGH STEELY EYES CLUTCH.  Hard to argue with that.

The Yankees had it. The A's didn't.

The ability to win three out of five games in that particular series: the Yankees had it.

That intangibles notion is murky, of course, and complicated.

Could have ended the article right there.

Jeter played in an era when everyone was suspected of PED use. For those choosing to believe the shortstop that he was, is and always has been a clean ballplayer, the monument to his fidelity and greatness lies in his old-school bona fides.

That's awesome.  "Those who assume he never used credit it to something ill-defined, the existence of which can't be proven or disproven."  And let's also point out that as of June 2011, Jeter was coming off by far his worst offensive season and was hitting .257/.321/.329 with zero home runs in the not-exactly-young season. Then he rebounded nicely to finish 2011 and had a .316/.362/.429 season with fifteen home runs in 2012.  Let's just put that out there.  Something clicked for him.  Did a nagging injury heal?  Did he change his approach?  You know what--it could have been anything.

Jeter, along with possibly Ken Griffey Jr., is the only player in the modern game whose iconic moments were generated by all five tools -- not just by standing in the batter's box and hitting another home run in a game that encouraged nothing but.

Again, if you want to out yourself as a shithead, make sure you tell everyone that Jeter is one of only two players in the last 25ish years to generate "iconic moments" with all five tools.  That will make it very clear to everyone reading your writing that you're a fucking shithead.  It will also require you to ignore the existence of Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Carlos Beltran, and about 200 other position players to play during that time.

Like Jackie Robinson, Jeter is pure baseball.

True Yankee.  Steely Eyes.  Pure Baseball.  Gift Basket.

He will be remembered for his baserunning (the clever beating of the shift by swiping third base that he made routine).

How many players don't capitalize on that?  More importantly, how many teams are like "screw it, ignore than runner on second, we're putting the full shift on?"  My guess is this happened once with Jeter in like 1997 and Bryant now wants to credit him with a) making it routine and b) inventing cars, airplanes, and computers.

He will be equally celebrated for his fielding and throwing.

He will be remembered for being an adequate to good shortstop through his 20s, and then receiving a bunch of Gold Gloves he didn't deserve during his 30s.  Not sure "celebrated" is the right term.

(Even though he doesn't rank anywhere near the top 1,000 in career defensive WAR, you can't deny the Flip, the nailing of Arizona's Danny Bautista at third in the 2001 World Series or the flying leap into the crowd against the Red Sox in the summer of '04.)

That's right.  Those three plays cannot be denied.  They really happened, they were not optical illusions that fooled everyone who saw them.  I will grant that.  He's still been a shitty defensive shortstop for a decade and running.

And his hitting consistency is close to unmatched. (His injury likely will make his quest for 4,000 hits unsuccessful, but he is in range to catch Henry Aaron at 3,771 for third all time.)

I'm not trying to overhate here, but that's not going to happen.

Not that he couldn't power the ball out of the ballpark too -- there was the first-pitch leadoff home run in Game 4 of the 2000 Series when the Mets had won the night before,

"Not that he couldn't power the ball out of the ballpark too -- remember, he hit a home run once."  Take a step back and think about this article.  What the fuck are you getting out of this?  What the fuck could Derek Jeter's closest admirers (other than Howard Bryant and his family) get out this?  Much of this can be summarized as "Jeter was great."  Holy dog balls, this is awful.  Almost over though.

and the two-out, full-count walk-off home run the following year in Game 4 against Arizona.

Why did the Yankees lose that series?  I blame A-Rod, even though he was a Ranger at the time.

As if that wasn't enough, there's also the imprint he's had on the Yankees, the first homegrown star to lead the franchise to the World Series since Mickey Mantle. (1977-78 belonged to Reggie, not Munson.) 

As Chris W put it, what a fun and worthwhile use of our time--let's argue whether Munson really "led" the Yankees to that title.  After that we can go back to debating the existence of Jeter's "old school bona fides."

He became the signature player for the game's signature team when it returned to power, and in an era of drugs and cynicism and ruined reputations, he never embarrassed the sport, his team or,

This describes 99% of all MLB players.  One of the ones it does not describe is Barry Bonds, who was still fucking awesome, way more awesome than Derek Jeter.  Neener neener neener.

most important, his family name.

Most importantly, he never embarrassed the sacred Jeter family name?  What?  Why are we giving him credit for this?  "Most importantly, he never pushed anyone off of the Statue of Liberty.  For this, he deserves a parade."

There is no metric for that. Just a magical story.

It really isn't.  This was a colossal waste of time and I apologize to you for having made you read it.

Questionable Claims from Howard Bryant

The latest from Howard Bryant on the Baseball Hall of Fame's ongoing debate about its induction process. Howard is defending the status quo because, well, because... the sun keeps rising. Most of it is a long explanation, but it breaks down when Howard tries to get specific:

Those results were the break from baseball's history. Instead of horrible injustice or gross negligence, Alomar fared no worse and much better than other great players. Here, for posterity, is a short list of players not elected on the first try: Cy Young (511 wins), Joe DiMaggio, Eddie Collins (3,315 hits), Jimmie Foxx, Whitey Ford, Eddie Mathews, Rogers Hornsby, Robin Roberts and Roy Campanella. Yogi Berra (67.2 percent in 1971) was not a first-ballot inductee.

1. Cy Young did not make the first ballot because HE WAS ON THE FIRST BALLOT. Howard, you can't throw these names in there with no context.

2. It's an absolute crime that, somehow, the 1955 BBWAA elected a man with an 82 OPS+, 28 career home runs and unspectacular fielding stats over Joe Fucking DiMiaggio.

3. Robin Roberts did lose 245 games, including an abysmal 1961 season which MIGHT rank as the worst-ever season by a Hall of Fame pitcher. It's not like his numbers make him some kind of guaranteed first-ballot lock!

Alomar cannot claim superiority over anyone on that list. Each was eventually inducted, and the free world survived.

QED! The status quo should never be changed!

Also, Howard printed this:

During college football's biggest week, the start of the NFL playoffs and the week of the Winter Classic, the hottest topic in sports was the Baseball Hall of Fame and who would be worthy of enshrinement.

Really?

Will People Please Stop Saying Barry Bonds Is Being Treated Unfairly Because of his Blackitude?

Meh. Guess that won't happen. Instead, let's just read more crap about why Mark McGwire is just as bad a dude as Barry Bonds. Take it away, Howard Bryant of ESPN.

Both men are in the position they are today -- Bonds perhaps facing prison, McGwire a fallen legend -- because they looked in the faces of powerful, law-enforcing, law-making bodies (never mind their millions of admirers) and did not convince the public they were telling the truth. Not only did they fail the public with the truth; the public believes they refused to tell it even when each was largely guaranteed that no matter what he said, no harm would come to him.

Well maybe no legal harm. Are we just going to count losing the respect of millions of American citizens and being perpetually labeled as a cheater as "harmless"?

And in the years that have followed, neither has been able to "man up." McGwire ran under the back porch and hid like a child, and he's been hiding ever since. Bonds bullied, went on the offensive to say he was being singled out because of his race, even though it is common knowledge in the game that Bonds is, at best, indifferent to other blacks in baseball.

Now let's pretend that McGwire and Bonds aren't white and black for a second. Let's imagine they're both fucking purple or something, I really don't care. If you have two guys that have been up to anything suspicious in any area of life, who is going to get the brunt of the public attention? The one who quiets down and doesn't say anything, or the one who drones on like a pompous jackass and acts like he's being mistreated? Bonds is an asshole. He's asking for the public eye and getting it. He's singling himself out. That's why he's the proverbial lightning rod of American attention. I'll even go so far as to say it's Bonds's own fault that people stopped giving a shit about Mark McGwire.

A common thread exists for both men; race is a secondary, but still important, spool.

Race is not important at all when it comes to lying under oath, which only one of these two men did.

McGwire did not exactly lie under oath

There you go. This is the primary difference, and the only truly significant one. "McGwire did not exactly lie under oath." We're going to be copying and pasting this line many times to remind Bryant of why Bonds is being remembered and McGwire isn't. Go on...tell us how he "sort of" lied under oath.

but he wasn't forthcoming that cold day in Washington, the day he stood under oath and verged on moral collapse, weighted by his guilt. That day, he grew as defiant as Bonds has ever been, his answers short, his tone quick and arrogant.

What a bastard. He wasn't being forthcoming! Quick, defiant, arrogant responses! None of this is equivalent, however, to: lies.

He looked into the faces of millions of his countrymen and women and under oath refused to defend one day of hard work, or any of his 583 home runs, against steroid allegations. He refused to say that even one single moment of his career came honestly.

So basically...he refused to lie.

He rejected his hero position then as much as he runs from it now. That's why, as a person of public substance, he's been finished for two-and-a-half years, having plummeted mercilessly to earth, a flaming, redheaded Sputnik, unlikely to return.

Bonds effectively dared prosecutors to take him down. He spent the past four years using his wealth, his talent and his position to buttress a defense that has gone no deeper than "because I said so." Exposing him was a challenge federal prosecutors readily accepted and one the public, tired of easy escapes by powerful people, hungrily relished.

Howard....you're writing my point for me! Bonds literally challenged United States judicial officials. The public wanted to see him go down in flames because he's an arrogant asshole! It had nothing to do with him being black and McGwire being "a flaming, redheaded Sputnik". Great phrase there, by the way. Simply awesome. These two paragraphs alone should put any thought aside of the race card even being important.

They also are linked because they provide an unforgiving mirror for the American blemishes that do not fade. One is white, the other is black.

Other mirror. One is an arrogant asshole who committed perjury, the other is a once-respected guy who kept his mouth shut and decided not to make more waves than necessary. America chooses to hate: assholes.

There are many tributaries along this river of disgrace. They range from the thought that the federal government wanted to "get" Bonds more than the rest, to the flimsy notion that neither of them ever failed an official Major League Baseball drug test and so somehow both are $100 million victims, to the idea that Bonds' blackness is the reason he has been hit the hardest, been treated more harshly than McGwire, has received the least amount of public sympathy.

None of these issues lacks merit.

The last idea completely lacks merit becuase it's based on nothing but a wild allegation made by Bonds and the whims of a bunch of people ignoring the timing of the two incidents (one is after the start of steroid investigations) and the fact that Barry Bonds fucking challenged the judicial branch of the government of the United States of America to take him down. Oh, and this little detail.

McGwire did not exactly lie under oath

If you reverse the timing and actions of both men, the public forgets Bonds and zeroes in on McGwire. It's that simple, I swear.

Race plays a factor in every discussion between blacks and whites, whether it's about Friday night poker, Bonds, O.J., Michael Vick, Don Imus or McGwire.

I strongly disagree. Black people and white people can't discuss how Michael Vick was a dog-killing asshole without making a big deal out of the fact that Vick is black?

But it should be remembered that the Steroids Era has had many other faces, many other suspects, at least in public perception.

And it should also be remembered that the "baseball players who lied to a grand jury during the Steroids Era" has exactly one face in public perception.

There was Brady Anderson, who faced questions about his 50 home runs in 1996; and Sammy Sosa, who hit 60 home runs three times and didn't win the National League home run title in any of those years. There was Ken Caminiti, who admitted he won the 1998 NL MVP award on steroids

The 1998 NL MVP award was won on steroids, but by someone not named Ken Caminiti.

and David Wells, who in 2003 -- the old days of resistance -- said half of the game's players were using steroids. The Yankees forced him to retract that statement. There were Jose Canseco, Jason Giambi, Rafael Palmeiro. Bonds has outlived them all as a productive, record-breaking player.

....and perjury-committing douche!

The difference isn't that Bonds has been treated differently because he happens to be black.

Thank you!

The difference is in how McGwire has been treated because he happens to be white

Oh no he di'int!

Let the record show that those two sentences make some level of contradiction, and that they should be thrown into the American Hall of Ignorance for all eternity, along with every fact HatGuy has ever tried to use in a column.

But since the second sentence leaves a little bit of a loophole for me to work with, I'll go with it. Sosa. Sammy Sosa. Sosa isn't white. Sosa essentially got the same treatment as McGwire, and even came back to play baseball again without facing extensive government pursuit or anything. How can you argue McGwire was treated differently because he was white when the guy who will be tied to McGwire's legacy for all eternity isn't white and got the same fucking treatment? If you ask me, he actually got off EASIER than McGwire because he was able to slip into irrelevance earlier.

and it started with the decided lack of bloodlust to pursue him after he folded before Congress

The difference in bloodlust might have had something to do with the fact that he didn't challenge prosecuters to take him down! Oh, and also, there's this....

McGwire did not exactly lie under oath

See how important that detail is?

The inescapable conclusion is that the two are the dominant faces of a disgraced era. Both were at the top of their profession. Both broke records that commanded the respect of the country beyond of the boundaries of their sport. Both had their moment under oath and didn't come clean. Their images define the times and us.

Second to last sentence ignores....

McGwire did not exactly lie under oath

Last sentence is a major exaggeration. I tend not to be defined by the images of Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire.

One is the black Bonds, whose "bad Negro" defiance inspires a certain kind of basic hatred toward him, especially when combined with his enormous wealth and unwillingness to play the hero game, even for the millions of fans who pay to watch him play. Bonds knows that only he stands in the batter's box. For him, his success is not a shared experience.

Is it possible....just MAYBE possible.....that his defiance is not interpreted by people in the "bad Negro" sense, but rather in a "this guy is a complete dickhead, it doesn't matter what the color of his skin is" sense? The "race card" wasn't prevalent until Bonds made it so.

The other is the white McGwire, less confrontational but equally suspect, with one special distinction

McGwire did not exactly lie under oath

I'm just kidding folks. I copied and pasted that second part. Bryant's special distinction is idiotic and stupid.

Too many fans and members of the press, especially, willfully deluded themselves with the McGwire myth, built by them because of their shared whiteness, their belief in his false purity.

This is it people. No white guys ever think other white guys do anything wrong. Every white person sees white skin and thinks, "gee, he/she must be pure!" This is just such fucking bogus bullshit. I don't know any other way to put this.

To turn on McGwire would be to admit he took steroids in '98, that the whole thing was a testosterone-fueled act. Unlike with Bonds, whose record-breaking years of 2001 and 2007 came long after the public had learned the joke was on them, it was too hard for them to outright reject McGwire. The legend became fact, so they printed the legend.

This part is legit. This is a significant distinction between the two situations. It's not as major as

McGwire did not exactly lie under oath

but it's important.

As whites are with McGwire, blacks want to believe in Bonds, to hold on to the different but similarly destructive myth that their shared blackness makes his problems the same as theirs. The racial prism through which the two men are viewed so differently will always say more about us as a whole than it ever could about the two of them.

I'm sorry Howard, but do you think that if a white asshole took the place of Barry Bonds, took steriods, shattered home run records, challenged federal prosecutors to find him guilty, and COMMITTED PERJURY, that he would be treated any different than Bonds? There are plenty of examples of racism in America. I won't deny it exists. It obviously does. But what you are doing is taking two men who have taken vastly different courses of action and complaining, that's right, COMPLAINING, that the lying, confrontational asshole isn't being treated the same as the guy who kept his mouth shut because the former is black. These are two men that have defined themselves and created their own status in the government/public eye by their actions. Plain and fucking simple.

But on this senseless day and the days to come, when Bonds' fate is in the hands of the law and McGwire has lost the only thing worth owning -- a reputation -- they are the same man, disgracing their sport and themselves.

The same. Except for one little detail.

McGwire did not exactly lie under oath