Derek Jeter

OK all you Yankee haters out there, hang on, keep reading, stay with me now.  Not all the Yankees are the enemy – only some.

Come to think of it, this man may be your biggest enemy – especially if you’re from Philly or happen to be an Angels’ fan or, much worse, happen to have the great misfortune of living in Boston, MA.

Derek Jeter, the enemy?  Only on the baseball field.

Derek Jeter was just named Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year capping off a phenomenal season where he won many of baseball’s top awards for hitting, fielding and team leadership.  Also, as we all know by now, his team, The New York Yankees won the World Series for the unprecedented 27^th time in history.

This man is ridin’ high.

And because of it, so am I.  I live and die The NY Yankees.  Lately, it’s a good livin’.  And this man is in the middle of it all.

Baseball skills aside, this man is clearly skilled at life.  Certainly one of the most graceful men on the planet, he seems to move through life blessed with a charm, handsome good looks, affability and centeredness that has been not only long-lasting, but amazingly constant considering the national spotlight that has lit his way for the past 15 years.

Living in NYC these past 35 years, I’ve watched a lot of people crash and burn during that time.  It’s that old American tradition of push ‘em up on the pedestal and the minute they get up there start throwing the rocks.  It’s a very tough height to negotiate and an especially tough pedestal to stand upon for long.  This man has done it with grace and majesty all these years in a town that’s got to be the world’s most difficult platform.

He’s been able to do it because basically, Derek Jeter is a good person – not just a good ballplayer, but also a good person.  Now go back over that sentence and substitute the word “great” for the word “good”.  It holds up.

When you get up on that height with that intensity of light shining down on you, you can’t fake it.  The light’s too bright up there.  It shines through the fakery of many and exposes the flaws very easily.  That’s why so many people crash and burn in that position.  They may do something quite extraordinary to get up there, but once they’re there, the whole man or woman just isn’t enough to survive the scrutiny.  It’s called being a human being. (See Olympic Champion Michael Phelps, Actor Tom Cruise, even NY Yankee’s other star Alex Rodriguez.)

I don’t think we human beings were made to live long in that kind of light.  Our mortality just can’t take that kind of scrutiny.  But I’ve watched this man live in this light very gracefully (that’s the word that keeps coming to my mind over and over) now for these 15 years and not only survive it, but stand tall in it and become a role model for us all – not just as a baseball player, but as a man.

I’m not saying that he’s never done anything wrong in his life, but somewhere along the line, he’s learned how to even negotiate the missed moments with the press so that they would not go after him in their inimitable fashion.

Ah yes, the press…  If any of us down here think that standing on that pedestal might be fun, we’d better re-think that one.  If the people won’t tear you down and push you off, the press certainly will give it their best efforts.  The press, without which nobody gets there, is the great American mechanism of demolition.  It’s the press that is most difficult to survive, because the press is always looking for the tragic story to feed to us.  If they can’t find it, they’ll make it.  This also, of course, does not say much for us, ravenous as we sometimes are.

Enough on the idiosyncrasies of human kind.  I’ve been amazed at Jeter’s smarts and straight from the socks centeredness in handling the dopey questions of the press over the years.  At the end of one of the division playoffs this past year when the Yanks had won and were moving on to the next plateau, Derek was interviewed after the game.

With the team celebrating behind him in the locker room, the interviewer launched into the A-Rod steroid debacle once again.  It was an idiotic moment on the interviewer’s part and I found myself groaning out loud at his total insensitivity to the championship moment.  I could just see Jeter’s eyes rolling along with mine as he got ready to spit out the same old answers he had given all season.  I could see his blood boil at the insensitivity of the moment for a split second.

Then he said with great deference to the idiot, “I’m sorry we have to start with the negative at a time like this”.  As he wiped the dripping champagne from his weary brow, he then turned the sour moment into a positive one and left the insensitive moment behind in the dust.  Not only did he correct the insensitivity and give us a new and better spin on A-Rod, but he also did it without embarrassing the idiot interviewer.

I sat back in my chair and thought, “Wow, that was really something.  That was the way Jesus would have handled the moment.”  Now I’m not comparing Derek Jeter to Jesus, but in a way I am.  He was, in that moment, so on top of life, so caring for his fellow man, so sensitive to everybody around him – even the perpetrator, and so centered that he turned an awkward and embarrassing moment into a memorable gem and raised his image a few more notches in the meantime.

I’ve seen these moments over and over throughout these years coming from this young man.  It’s been a joy to watch him play baseball and a joy to watch him live.

If you get a chance, pick up a copy of this week’s Sports Illustrated.  You’ll see the man himself on the cover standing at the subway exit to Yankee Stadium all dressed up and ready to play.  Read the article and get to know better this most Inspirational man.