More Derek Jeter love
ByThe Week of Jeter continues today with a few interesting articles. In one corner, we have a Richard Sandomir piece about a profile in The New Yorker from the 1930s about Lou Gehrig. Apparently, the weekly magazine mocked Gehrig. In Sandomir’s write up, though, he drops a gem from octogenarian sportswriter Roger Angell: “I’ve never heard him say an interesting word. He’s not a guy who likes to talk. But he’s very well liked.”
While Angell is simply expressing what many of us have long about the quotable Derek Jeter, he did pen a post praising Jeter’s hitting. Angell looks far into the future but does not yearn for “the wrenching autumn moment” when Jeter knocks out his last hit. That final hit could make Jeter the all-time hits leader, but Will Weiss at the Banter highly doubts that reality will come to pass.
And from Joe: Gary Armida of Full Count Pitch looks at Jeter’s consistency throughout the years. Highlights: looking at his powerful shortstop peers — Nomar Garciaparra, Alex Rodriguez, Miguel Tejada — and showing where they are now. And then, looking at Rod Carew, Tony Gwynn, George Brett, Rickey Henderson, Cal Ripken, and Paul Molitor, it’s tough to pick out Jeter.
I bristle a little bit, if I may be so bold, at Roger Angell being seemingly marginalized with the somewhat stark and dismissive label “octogenarian,” as though his viewpoints are crotchety or unenlightened. Have you read the guy? He’s an absolutely brilliant writer, and we should all count ourselves lucky that he applies his masterful pen to baseball as much as he does. Over-romanticization can be a detriment to objective analysis at times, it’s true, but Angell is so expert at making the romantic fresh and immediate, that, for my money, he’s the best at capturing why baseball is such a damn good sport.
The guy’s 89. It’s a truthful and accurate label. He’s seen more of the game than just about anyone else alive.
Oh, I know it’s true, that he is that old. I guess I just wondered why that was relevant to his comment about Jeter, or why that was the monicker you chose to give him, when he has so many other outstanding qualities he could be identified by. It was the choice of the word rather than its veracity that made it seem dismissive. But, I’m probably just over-reacting, because I love his writing so much.