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Klapisch: Derek, don't fail us now

metirish Feb 09 2009 12:22 PM

For fucks sake Bob grow up. ] Sunday, February 8, 2009 Last updated: Monday February 9, 2009, 11:52 AM By BOB KLAPISCH RECORD COLUMNIST Baseball is at the outer limits now, a dark universe where everyone cheats and lies. Let us join hands and admit we’re down to the last player we can trust — Derek Jeter. Pity this sport if the Yankee captain falls into the abyss, too. With Alex Rodriguez now exposed as a steroid fraud, baseball turns to Jeter as the last outpost of honesty. Someone has to be beyond suspicion; someone has to care enough to say “no” to the syringe. It’s Jeter, it has to be. Indeed, most Yankee fans will take his shrinking power numbers over the artificial A-Rod’s. Now we know how a man could hit 50 home runs and play Gold Glove middle-infield defense at the same time. But give A-Rod this much credit: His fall from grace has legitimized Jeter’s decline. We can take comfort in the fact that the captain is aging before our eyes; it assures us that he’s clean. Jeter’s home runs are down, his slugging percentage is shriveling, he’s hardly steals bases anymore. And that’s how it should be for a soon-to-be 35-year-old. Though it may create a public-relations nightmare for the Yankees in 2010 when Jeter’s contract expires, his lowered profile has turned him into the anti-Alex Rodriguez. Which is why he cannot fall, not now, not even retroactively. If Jeter’s name is among the 103 players who failed drug tests in 2003, we might as well turn off the remote this summer and start watching the Newark Bears or Jersey Jackals. Or maybe it’s time to surrender to the WWE. We are, after all, reeling from the news that A-Rod, the onetime poster boy for clean living, is a liar, after all. And he’s not the only one being shamed: According to Sports Illustrated, the players’ union was part of the scam, tipping off A-Rod to an imminent drug test in 2004. Of course, some baseball insiders said A-Rod’s incredible growth and surge in muscularity over the years should’ve been a tipoff. Perhaps. But no one ever waged a whispering campaign against Jeter, who, with a laugh once said, “Just look at me” when the conversation at his locker turned to steroids. He’s just a notch above skin and bones, not much in the way of muscle. Nor has Jeter ever experienced an unnatural spike in his numbers; he peaked in 1999 at the age of 25 and hasn’t been quite the same since. The arc of Jeter’s career, in fact, is even more believable than Mariano Rivera’s, who’s maintained his inhuman cut-fastball even as he begins this season at age 39. There’s no doubt Rivera is the greatest closer in the sport’s history. His durability is due, in large part to his natural athleticism, conditioning and work ethic. But this is what one major-league talent evaluator had to say about Rivera after it was learned that A-Rod, another hard worker, had been exposed as a fraud. “If you want to start taking a hard look at everyone, and I mean everyone, then look at the year Rivera was in the minors and all of a sudden goes from 91 mph to 95-96 mph [on the radar gun], in just one start,” he said. “If I’m going to be suspicious of everyone, that’s one thing that would jump right out at me.” The idea that Rivera could’ve been enhanced is more than the Yankees care to contemplate. It’s too dark, too sinister — just as indigestible as Jeter using a syringe. It takes a certain mind-set to cheat like that. It requires a torrent of vanity and arrogance, not to mention a risk-taking gene that borders on stupidity. Jeter has never craved attention the way A-Rod has. Rivera has displayed the same modesty. But arm-chair psychiatrists beware: Everyone believed that Andy Pettitte was as innocent as a dove, too. Just goes to show, the lure of steroids is so powerful, no one is immune to its temptations. There are those — Barry Bonds sycophants, mostly — who insist that juicing doesn’t actually enhance a ballplayer’s skills; you can either hit home runs or you can’t. But if that were true, why have so many players injected themselves? The answer comes from a former major-leaguer, who told me recently why he used steroids at the midpoint of his career and how they helped him. “The biggest thing was my vision. I saw the ball so much better and I was able to wait longer before I swung,” he said. “The ball looked like a softball. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to hit.” Turns out, a vast number of players found similar reasons to fall in love with the juice, perhaps as many as 70 percent during the steroid heyday. That’s why it’s important to hunt down the honest ones and, yes, put them on a pedestal. It takes guts to say no to synthetic achievements. It takes strength to age naturally. A-Rod was too insecure to trust his genetic coding, and now he’s paying the price. His debt to baseball cannot be repaid any time soon. Perhaps Rodriguez doesn’t know (or care) about the devastating effect of his fall. All of baseball suffers with the knowledge that his home runs and speed were concocted in a laboratory. Woozy with bad news, baseball only has one place left to turn. Fingers crossed, prayers said fast and furious, the sport embraces its last remaining icon. Jeter better not fail, too.

metsmarathon Feb 09 2009 12:25 PM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Feb 09 2009 12:35 PM

]Jeter has never craved attention the way A-Rod has. oh, for the love of god... also... ]He’s just a notch above skin and bones, not much in the way of muscle. Nor has Jeter ever experienced an unnatural spike in his numbers; he peaked in 1999 at the age of 25 and hasn’t been quite the same since. where exactly is the unnatural, clearly evident spike in arod's career that should've tipped us off? the dude hits 36 homers at age 20, what do you expect him to do when he's 26, hit fewer? please... this revisionist bullshit is farcical.

MFS62 Feb 09 2009 12:35 PM

]Baseball is at the outer limits now, a dark universe where everyone cheats and lies. Let us join hands and admit we’re down to the last player we can trust — Derek Jeter. If I dropped my keys, I wouldn't trust him if he were behind me when I bent down to pick them up. Later

metsguyinmichigan Feb 09 2009 12:36 PM

Klap being Klap. Exactly what you expect from him, with one exception -- usually he throws a dig at the Mets in there somewhere, regardless of the topic.

metsguyinmichigan Feb 09 2009 12:38 PM

"There’s no doubt Rivera is the greatest closer in the sport’s history." Trevor Hoffman and Dennis Eckersly might have something to say about that.

Frayed Knot Feb 09 2009 12:40 PM

Parsing this is akin to shooting fish in a barrel, but; "... arm-chair psychiatrists beware: Everyone believed that Andy Pettitte was as innocent as a dove, too. Just goes to show, the lure of steroids is so powerful, no one is immune to its temptations." Yet the premise of the piece is that Jeter IS innocent and above temptation.

metirish Feb 09 2009 12:44 PM

Please , let us all join hands now...

metsguyinmichigan Feb 09 2009 12:45 PM

"Baseball is at the outer limits now, a dark universe where everyone cheats and lies. Let us join hands and admit we’re down to the last player we can trust — Derek Jeter." OK, this bastard really has my goat and now I can't concentrate. Frank Thomas, Ken Griffey Jr., Greg Maddux, Cal Ripken even Glavine. None of these guys has ever been suspected of using. Except none of them were Yankees, so they don't exist in the Klap World View.

metirish Feb 09 2009 12:48 PM

" All we are saying is give Jetes a chance".....

Edgy DC Feb 09 2009 12:49 PM

="Frayed Knot"]Parsing this is akin to shooting fish in a barrel, but; "... arm-chair psychiatrists beware: Everyone believed that Andy Pettitte was as innocent as a dove, too. Just goes to show, the lure of steroids is so powerful, no one is immune to its temptations." Yet the premise of the piece is that Jeter IS innocent and above temptation. That's what hit me, too. Warning armchair psycholigists in an essay that amounts to armchair psychology.

Edgy DC Feb 09 2009 12:53 PM

By the way, is it crazy to believe that Klapisch has a tip that Rivera will be on the 103 from '03 list and Jeter not, and he's doing some pre-emptive spin? 'Cause this is just too nutty.

seawolf17 Feb 09 2009 01:02 PM Re: Klapisch: Derek, don't fail us now

="klapisch"]Jeter has never craved attention the way A-Rod has.

Benjamin Grimm Feb 09 2009 01:07 PM

To tell you the truth, I couldn't read any further once I got to this part, which was in only the second paragraph: "baseball turns to Jeter as the last outpost of honesty."

themetfairy Feb 09 2009 01:20 PM

Barf!

metsguyinmichigan Feb 09 2009 01:24 PM

My buddy points out that Klap was probably writing the same sort of pooh about Clemens three years ago. I'm going to bring this column to my journalism class as an example of what not to do. Bill Madden no doubt read this and said "Thank goodness someone looks stupider than me today!"

Centerfield Feb 09 2009 01:43 PM

seawolf17 Feb 09 2009 01:49 PM

At least Derek doesn't whore himself out to Ford fifteen times during every fucking Mets game on SNY. Oh, wait.

metsguyinmichigan Feb 09 2009 02:32 PM

So, when ARod takes that first at-bat in the new Yankee Death Star, will boos "fall on him like soft rain," Mr. Klapisch?

Fman99 Feb 09 2009 02:47 PM

I can't comment. I'm busy sculpting little Derek Jeters out of bars of soap and piles of mashed potatoes here.

G-Fafif Feb 09 2009 02:54 PM

Bob Klapisch promotes dental hygiene by brushing his teeth with his Derek Jeter Toothbrush! Oh wait...that's not a toothbrush.

Edgy DC Feb 09 2009 02:59 PM

="Edgy DC"]By the way, is it crazy to believe that Klapisch has a tip that Rivera will be on the 103 from '03 list and Jeter not, and he's doing some pre-emptive spin? 'Cause this is just too nutty. Nothing, huh? I guess I'm just a paranoid conspiracy nut.

G-Fafif Feb 09 2009 03:07 PM

If either Jeter or Rivera showed up on any such list, Klapisch would be the first to tell you that it proves steroids are really gumdrops and pixie dust -- but only the ones his heartthrobs took. Remember Klap's near-calamitous mishap playing ball last summer? Good to see the surgeons did such a wonderful job restoring his fetish.

OlerudOwned Feb 09 2009 03:33 PM

Does it make me a spiteful, petty, and/or bad person for sincerely hoping that Jeter gets nailed for PEDs too? Not even to discount his own accomplishments, because with the era he played in you really can't fairly do that to anybody, but just to see the exact moments where the fanboys' fragile hearts shatter. Some sort of Jeter/Brett Favre drug running ring would really be outstanding.

MFS62 Feb 09 2009 03:40 PM

="OlerudOwned":3myv17d1]Does it make me a spiteful, petty, and/or bad person for sincerely hoping that Jeter gets nailed for PEDs too? [/quote:3myv17d1] Is PED short for Pedophilia? Later G-Fafif Feb 09 2009 06:36 PM Jeter's totally into [url=http://www.peds.com/?p=pedsproducts:1fn2wk9u]Peds[/url:1fn2wk9u]. Reportedly. LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr Feb 11 2009 03:49 PM "Jeter’s home runs are down, his slugging percentage is shriveling, he’s hardly steals bases anymore. And that’s how it should be for a soon-to-be 35-year-old." But he's still got the intangibles of a strapping 19-year-old... for now. [Please tell me his intangibles aren't shriveling, too. Dear tiny baby Jesus, with your little balled-up fists, please let it not be so.] Fman99 Feb 12 2009 05:12 AM ="G-Fafif":27adq1wo]Jeter's totally into [url=http://www.peds.com/?p=pedsproducts:27adq1wo]Peds[/url:27adq1wo]. Reportedly.[/quote:27adq1wo] I prefer speds myself. metirish Feb 19 2009 01:15 PM Yeeees , Jetes has never done steroids because he says so and that's good enough for Bob the bollox. ] Klapisch: Jeter makes all the right moves TAMPA, Fla. – The education started early, long before Derek Jeter ever wore pinstripes for the first time. He grew up recognizing the unyielding line between right and wrong, a testament to Charles and Dorothy Jeter’s influence. They taught their son so well that when temptation whispered in his ear, the future Yankee captain took off on a sprint the other way. This history lesson is relevant, of course, because of a Yankee teammate who couldn’t say no to steroids. It was Jeter’s turn to deliver a verdict on Alex Rodriguez’s fall from grace, but before he did, the shortstop wanted to clear the air about the pervasive cheating in baseball. Don’t count me among the crooks, was the essence of Jeter’s message. “One thing that’s irritating to me, and it upsets me a lot, is when you hear people say ‘this is ‘the steroids era, everyone’s doing it,’ ” Jeter said. “That’s not true, everyone wasn’t doing it.” With that, Jeter took a sweep of the reporters clustered around him and made sure they understood: He’s never used steroids, HGH, amphetamines or any performance-enhancing substance. “You can go down the list,” he said, and still come up clean. Jeter doesn’t dare take a census on the number of syringes that were floating around in 2003. For now, all that matters in Yankee camp is that one of them belonged to A-Rod. That’s why the captain is faced with an impossible dilemma, forced to support a fellow Bomber who has committed an unpardonable sin. To his credit, Jeter handled the balancing act with grace Wednesday. Sitting in the first base dugout at Steinbrenner Field, Jeter made it clear that, while he doesn’t condone A-Rod’s decisions, he considers it an obligation to make the third baseman as welcome as possible. The interaction between the two Wednesday was hardly warm, but certainly professional. When the Yankees stepped onto the field for their first full-squad workout, Jeter made sure to long-toss with A-Rod – his way of sending a powerful and positive vibe to the rest of the team. The gesture was subtle, but hardly unnoticed. The fans in the ballpark cheered A-Rod, although he took batting practice on a back field, away from the morning’s hub of activity. No one, of course, is pretending that A-Rod’s penance is complete. In fact, according to ESPN.com, Major League Baseball will request a fuller account of Rodriguez’s steroid use, including the identity of his unnamed cousin in the Dominican Republic. Jeter said, “Alex made a mistake, and it’s something he’s going to have to deal with.” The Yankees were similarly neutral about A-Rod in the aftermath of Tuesday’s news conference. No one confused his opening statement with the Gettysburg Address. But at least one element of A-Rod’s defense – that steroids were a swarm, preying on otherwise well-meaning ballplayers – bothered Jeter enough for him to speak up. He and A-Rod may wear the same uniform, but when it comes to cheating, the two live in different worlds. Jeter made that distinction a decade ago, when chemicals were allowing mediocre hitters to turn into home run-hitting monsters. The shortstop, who’s never hit more than 24 HRs in a season, decided it would’ve been poison – and certainly dishonest – to artificially remake his offensive profile. “In the situation I was in, [steroids] didn’t occur to me,” he said. “I was fortunate to be with a team that won, so in terms of that temptation, it wasn’t there.” Abstinence has kept Jeter’s résumé clean, even if it means paying a surcharge in his statistics. He’ll soon turn 35, and by every indication, the shortstop is indeed aging. His power numbers are down, notably his slugging percentage — .408 last year was his lowest since 1997. Gone are the days when Jeter was an opposite-field gap hitter. More recently he’s become a singles specialist, a ground ball machine who bounced into a team-high 24 double plays last year, tying him for fourth in the American League. Jeter makes no alibis about his shrinking footprint in the Yankees’ offense, but club officials are hopeful that he’ll become more of a threat in 2009, now that he’s fully recovered from a devastating hand injury. As long as Jeter is unwilling to talk about it, there’s no way to quantify the damage he suffered after being struck by a Daniel Cabrera fastball during a May 20 game against the Orioles. But it was obvious Jeter had lost power and his signature ability to inside-out fastballs that crowded him. Jeter finished the month just 4-for-40 (.100), and even though his final average stood at .300 – and he remains the only shortstop in history with 2,500-plus hits, 200 or more home runs and .300-plus career average – it was the quietest summer of his career. That kind of slow, insidious slide would be enough to drive a lesser man into the arms of a steroids dealer. If anyone needed a boost, it would’ve been the skinny-armed Jeter. But true to his word, he stayed away from the junk, remembering the lessons of his youth. In fact, it seemed like only yesterday when Charles and Dorothy Jeter were reminding their son about the virtues of old-fashioned hard work. The words stay with Jeter because, as he said, “I don’t want to disappoint my family.” It might sound corny, a grown man still listening to his mother and father. But with three of baseball’s biggest stars – A-Rod, Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds – sucked into the steroids vortex, the sport could use some of that corniness now. Jeter suffered from a devastating hand injury last season?Checking baseball-reference I see Jeter didn't miss any games after that devastating fastball to the hand from Daniel Cabrera on May 20. http://www.baseball-reference.com/pi/gl ... &year=2008