Wozniak wrote:
THREAD SUMMARY:
Jeters defensive range is often over rated by yankee fans but his offensive product kind of helps mask that to some extent.
His status in baseball might be a product of playing for the Yankees but he does have solid leadership and "playoff hitting" skills.
did i miss anything or can everyone agree with these statements?
WRONG!!! The thread summary is, "congrats to Yankee fans and thanks to the four long time contributors to the team".
Then irony wanted to dump on Jeter for a while because he's bitter that a classy athlete that has had a ton of success isn't slammed for a fairly minor flaw in his game. There are a ton of players with more flaws in their game, but Jeter is a Yankee, and irony hates the Yankees, so Jeter must be torn down from his imagined golden pedestal that all Yankees are imagined to be on in the minds of Yankee haters.
I can say this with an absolutely clear and unbiased conscience, because I stood by the Yankees for 16 years before they won shit. 16 years while Detroit won the WS, Boston stomped on them, and Steinbrenner micromanaged the team into a joke. I have no convoluted images or memories of glory and legend, just a bunch of mediocrity and disappointment while classy men like Mattingly and Winfield never were rewarded for their efforts.
So when another classy player like Jeter is getting slammed for some irrational preception that he's a god just because he's a Yankee - for of all things the end all/be all stat of "range factor", I'm going to call bs on it. Bs because he's just been fortunate enough to be a very good player on a string of very good baseball teams. No more, no less. Any team's fans will hold their guys at a higher level, that happens everywhere, but I don't recall anyone tearing down Garciaparra or Ramirez (aside from being an idiot) for their flaws. Same for Canseco and McGwire, Larkin and Davis, Carter and Molitor and Fernandez, or any player from a WS winner beside NY over the last decade. That's because nobody has won it as many times as NY lately, and only the teams and players that have been on top the most ever get a target on their back.
I don't remember people tearing down Montana for his lack of arm strength, or Emmitt Smith for his lack of breakaway speed, Jordan for his shooting %, or Gretzky for his lack of physical play and defense. Fans accepted them for the things that they did great. A Yankee though??? People don't like the Yankees because they are "bought" (even though other owners could try to pay for better players but don't, and the Yankees pay out 30 MILLION a year in luxury tax to the rest of the MLB), or because their fans think they are great and even
should win the WS every year (like other fans wouldn't after 27 titles).
So this sniping at a player like Jeter really isn't about reality, it's about perception. The perception that Jeter is put on a pedestal. But guess what? As much as some people think that way (validating irony's thought) many others do not (which invalidates irony's thought). So irony's perception that other people's perception is wrong...is also wrong. So get over it. Jeter has done enough to fairly garner respect and recognition. There are only a small handfull of SSs that could have filled in for him with that level of play, over that same period of time and reaped the rewards of five WS titles. They would also be held in higher esteem around the league just for having won five titles, but Jeter was lucky enough to be that guy. He's also classy enough to handle that recognition in a respectable manner.
Get over the Yankee hatred.