derek jeter
For the past two decades, reporters from the press, television and the
web have studiously anointed Derek Jeter as saint and savior of the
Yankees. He stood upright, played brilliantly quite often, and remained
relatively unsoiled. We did the rest. We built his sterling reputation,
accomplishing this while desperately, unsuccessfully attempting to glean
even one meaningful quote from the great shortstop.
Nobody says nothing better than Jeter. We always knew and accepted
that. He treated almost all reporters as he might autograph seekers: We
were necessary nuisances who demanded his time and whose requests were
best deflected. He did his duty with us, the bare minimum, albeit
politely. As captain, for some reason, he never felt the responsibility
to stand up publicly for teammates or to battle injustice. He was
leading by example on the field, and that was enough.
“Derek Jeter is a lousy captain,” the late sportswriter Maury Allen
used to say. “He never says anything. That’s not a captain.”
But now, Jeter is telling us that he had plenty to say; that he and
other players are lousy quotes only because they distrust reporters. And
in his new enterprise, a website called The Players’ Tribune
(www.theplayerstribune.com), famous athletes like Jeter will express
their true thoughts on the forum without the inconvenient filter of the
media. Jeter is done merely frustrating reporters. He’s declared war on
his own kingmakers.
“I do think fans deserve more than ‘no comments’ or ‘I don’t knows,’ ”
Jeter wrote in his first post on the site. “Those simple answers have
always stemmed from a genuine concern that any statement, any opinion or
detail, might be distorted. We just need to be sure our thoughts will
come across the way we intend. So I’m in the process of building a place
where athletes have the tools they need to share what they really think
and feel. We want to have a way to connect directly with our fans, with
no filter.”
No filter, no analysis, no crafted words or humor. Kill the old
messenger. Jeter is the new messenger, the middle man, the guy bound to
profit on the words of others.
There are several problems with this concept. For one thing, the forum
already exists. It’s called Twitter. Apparently on The Players’ Tribune,
posts will be more carefully edited by “producers” and molded by
advisers, or editors. In other words, they will be sterilized and more
boring than the visceral, often loony posts on Twitter that have
generously fed both talk shows and back pages.
Here’s another thing that’s wrong with Jeter starting such a site: We
no longer care nearly as much what he thinks. For 20 years, we wanted to
know how he really felt about George Steinbrenner; about the Red Sox;
about Joe Girardi’s treatment of Jorge Posada; about Alex Rodriguez.
We got virtually nothing from him. Now that he’s no longer in the
lineup, his words still carry some weight. But not nearly as much.
“I’m not a robot,” Jeter, and perhaps his handlers, wrote in an
introductory post. “Neither are the other athletes who at times might
seem unapproachable. We all have emotions. We just need to be sure our
thoughts will come across the way we intend.”
OK, let’s see. Let’s see if the athletes, and the producers, on this
site now take on the racism in the pro leagues; the domestic violence;
the drug use; the networks; the sponsors. Let’s see if they do what the
media has tried to do for so many years, with very little help from the
athletes themselves.
The job of a sports reporter, too often, is to wait around a long time
to interview athletes who don’t want to talk to us and have nothing to
say in any case. If it turns out they really had something to say, and
made us wait around for nothing, the relationship only grows more
cynical. My guess, though, is that milquetoast is milquetoast, now and
forever. After one or two large, pre-arranged “reveals,” the site will
likely retreat to safer grounds.
Take a closer look at Jeter’s first post. You know what he revealed about himself? Nothing, except that there’s much to reveal.
http://www.nydailynews.com
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