Saint Derek of The Bronx

When Ken Griffey Jr. retired, I attempted to put his career into some kind of historical context. With Derek Jeter recently reaching 3,000 hits, I thought it would be a good time to do the same with him. Where does Jeter stand all-time? As a Yankee? As a shortstop?

I should probably mention a couple of things before we start. First, I always really liked Griffey Jr. while, in comparison, I've always been pretty ambivalent about Jeter. On the plus side, he's been around for five championships for my favorite team, and he was a key player (if maybe not the best player, but we'll get to that) for each winning team. On the down side, I rarely buy into intangibles and leadership (which we'll also get to) and "that guy is just a winner". In that way, Jeter is tailor-made for me to hate, if he played for any other team, he'd probably be my least favorite athlete ever.

Also, just to get it out of the way right now, when I talk about comparing Jeter to other shortstops, I'm not including A-Rod. First of all, Alex only played shortstop for half of his career, and secondly, steroids. Say what you want about Derek, but he'd probably make anyone's top ten list of "guys who seem clean". Could he have us all fooled? Sure, but he's never tested positive or publicly admitted using PED's and, at this point, that's the only fair standard we can use.

So, where do you put Derek all-time as a Yankee? I heard some radio moron yesterday saying he was definitely in the discussion as a top-five Yankee(actually, now that I think about it, that moron might have been Joe Girardi). Stop right there. The top four all time Yankees are set in stone; Ruth, Gehrig, Mantle and Dimaggio. Some people put Dimaggio ahead of Mantle, I continue to call those people Communists.

That only leaves one more spot in the top five, and we're already done. Even if you like Jeter more than the other guys from the past (Whitey Ford, Yogi, Munson, Mattingly, etc...for me, Whitey gets the 5th spot), you can't put Derek ahead of Mariano, who is the best relief pitcher of all time and was THE MOST important guy on each of Jeter's five championship teams, period.

So, top ten maybe? Now we're talking. I'd put Ford and Rivera 5th and 6th. Jeter beats Munson and, I think, Mattingly. Mattingly's four year run from 1984 to 1987 tops any four consecutive years Jeter had (1998-2001 or 2005-2008 being the two best four year runs for Jeter), but there's something to be said for longevity and, especially with the Yankees, championships.

The tough one for me is comparing Jeter to Yogi Berra. Yogi was a three-time MVP, and finished second in the voting two other times. Jeter's highest MVP finish was second, which he did once. Yogi was also part of 10 championship teams, compared to Jeter's five (to be fair, Jeter did it with a lot more teams in the league). On the other hand, Derek will most likely finish his career with something like 1,000 more hits than Yogi, including seven 200 hit seasons compared to Yogi's zero.

Tough call, but I like Jeter just a little more. A .300+ career average and well over 3,000 career hits are two statistical career milestones that Yogi can't touch, and I think it's enough. Plus, as I learned on the YES Network this weekend, Derek Jeter's sweat can be distilled and used as a cure for over 20 diseases...and counting. So there's that.

What about all-time shortstops? Shortstops are really hard to compare, because defense factors into the equation in a way that it doesn't necessarily do at other positions. For example, here are the career offensive numbers for a guy who is, as far as most people are concerned, easily a top five all-time shortstop:

.262 BA, 2460 hits, 28 HRs, 793RBI, 580SB

The low power numbers and high number of stolen bases point to a lead-off hitter, but this guy's .337 career OBP tells you he wasn't a great lead-off guy. These numbers belong to Ozzie Smith. As much as I trust offensive numbers, I don't really like the numbers they've made up to measure defense in baseball. For example, Ozzie's career range factor per nine innings was 5.22, Derek's is 4.11. Ozzie's is higher, but is that a lot higher or just a little higher? So, does Ozzie Smith go ahead of Derek Jeter on the all-time shortstop list. I say yes. Can I prove it? Not really.

As compared to other great shortstops, MVP's are Jeter's big Achilles heal (0 for Derek compared to 2 for Cal Ripken, 2 for Ernie Banks and 1 for Barry Larkin), but that evens out with championships, Derek's five are more than Ripken, Larkin, Banks, Alan Trammell and Ozzie Smith combined.

I like Arky Vaughn is a historical comparison for Jeter. Batting average (.318) and homeruns (96) pretty close when adjusted for era. If Vaughn had played a full career, he probably would have reached 3,000 hits. Ernie Banks makes a decent comparison too. They're different players, but Derek's high average, 3,000 hits and 5 championships puts him pretty close to Banks' MVPs and power. I'd probably place Derek fourth all-time, behind Honus Wagner, Banks and Smith, just in front of Vaughn and safely ahead of Larkin, Trammel and the stupendously overrated Ripken.

Guys like A-Rod and Robin Yount are hard to categorize by position, having spent plenty of time elsewhere on the field. Yount was great, but probably not quite where Jeter is. Omar Vizquel is tough for the same reason as Ozzie, but probably just a bit behind Derek. Also, unlike the rest of the these guys, Jeter is able to use his psychic powers, which continue to grow as long as Derek lives under the light of a yellow sun, to magically make his teammates better.

So what about those amazing leadership abilities? Let's get a few things straight. First of all, almost nothing in sports is less meaningful than being the captain of a baseball team. Calling Jeter "the Captain" is roughly the same as when a co-worker walks into your office and you say "hey chief". It doesn't make him an actual chief, he's still just some guy you work with.

Secondly, Derek's awesome leadership didn't build 1996-2000 Yankees, unless Gene Michael was actually Jeter in an old man costume, which I guess he could have been. Also, where was the Dear Leader when A-Rod showed up in town and everyone hated him for no real reason. Seems like that would have been an awesome time for the greatest leader in the history of the human race to step up and help out a new teammate.

So, here's the point. Derek Jeter is one of only 28 guys with 3,000 hits. I have him as a top five shortstop and a top ten Yankee, and I think it's fair to put him in the top 75 of all-time players, but that's the end of the story. He's a great baseball player, but he's just a guy, ya know? I always really wanted to like Derek, but I think my natural aversion to religion hurt me here. With so many other people making Derek out to be a god, it takes all my energy just to be willing to believe he exists.

One Night In Ohio

About 6 or 7 years ago, I took a road trip to Cincinnati in the middle of the summer to see a Reds game. I had wanted to take a road trip for a while, and I thought it would be fun to see a game in one of the new ballparks. I'll explain how I settled on Cincinnati in a minute. I made a 3 or 4 day vacation out of it. One day driving there, one or two days in Cincinnati and one more day driving back.

The ride there was interesting. If you've never done it, driving through Pennsylvania is a harrowing experience, it is impossibly long. I stopped just south of Pittsburgh to try a Primanti Bros. sandwich. I have to say, I was not impressed. Yes, the fries were right there on the sandwich. Unfortunately, the flavor was not right there on the sandwich. The flavor was, in fact, nowhere to be found. The highlight of my trip to Primanti Bros. was actually the Iron City Beer, which was a little bitter for my taste, but not half bad.

Growing up in New York, I really never understood what it was like in parts of the world where people don't live. The stretch of I-71 between Columbus and Cincinnati isn't completely deserted, but it's pretty damn close. I felt like I was driving through the science fiction movie right after the part when the aliens destroy everything.

Cincinnati itself is a perfectly nice little town. The people were super friendly in that chatty, mid-western sort of way that annoys New Yorkers like me. Also, did you know Cincinnati is the chili capital of the world? Me neither, if you had given me 50 guesses before I took this trip, I wouldn't have gotten it, but they swear they are. I actually drove just over the boarder to Kentucky and sampled a place called Skyline Chili. They'll put chili on anything. Hot dogs, potatoes, spaghetti, whatever you want. I think if I had pulled up to the drive thru with some of my own food, they would have been willing to dump some chili on it for a dollar.

The Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati is a really cool place to see a game. It isn't big and flashy like some of the other new stadiums, but it's perfect for the team and the city. Small, classy, understated. Not a bad seat in the house. I had a great seat about five rows back right behind the visiting dugout (by the way, Albert Pujols is huge in person, HUGE! I can't even come up with a funny comparison to do him justice. He is a gigantic man). You can walk the concourse from foul pole to foul pole and get a clear view of the game from any angle. Great food too. More chili, but also fantastic BBQ pork sandwiches. I may have had one or two, or four, or twenty, I can't remember. Positive experience all around.

OK, so why Cincinnati? Well, I knew I wanted to see a baseball game at one of the nice new ballparks, and I knew I wanted a decent drive, but no longer than one day. That narrowed it down a bit (Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Baltimore). Each option had pros and cons (for example, Detroit. Pros: the team has great history and I know they did a good job honoring it in the new ballpark. Cons: Detroit's chief export is sadness). Cincinnati had one thing that put it over the top, one person actually, Ken Griffey Jr. I figured Griffey would be retiring in the next year or two (whoops) and I wanted to see him play in person.

If life was fair, this would be where I would tell you how great it was to see Griffey play up close. How he hit a home run to break a tie in the bottom of the 8th and how you could feel the buzz in the stadium as he moved one homer closer to Hank Aaron's record. How he wasn't as fast as he used to be, but he still had those great instincts in centerfield. But life isn't fair, at least it wasn't for Griffey. Between the time I booked the trip and the time I got there, Griffey went down with yet another hamstring injury. He was on the DL when I got to Cincinnati. I wasn't disappointed, I knew the risk when I planned the trip.

That's my Ken Griffey Jr. story. Griffey is the Willie Mays of his generation, the Babe Ruth even. Older baseball fans all have their stories about the best players they saw and the great things they did on the field. I wonder how many people my age have a Griffey story that involves him being injured rather than doing something great. I hope it doesn't cheat him out of his rightful place in history.

What is his rightful place?
First, he was the best player of his generation. Only Barry Bonds comes close. Bonds was a great player before the steroids, but only the steroids made him better than Griffey. Griffey started his career with five straight seasons hitting over .300, two of them over .320. Between 1993 and 2000, he hit 40 home runs every year, except for 1995 when he got hurt. That includes the strike season in 1994 when he hit 40 home runs in just 493 at-bats. 13 all-star games, 10 straight gold gloves between 1990 and 1999, and 0 steroid accusations. None. If you forced me to bet everything I own on one power hitter from the steroids era being clean, I'd bet it on Griffey. He may be the only player left who would surprise me if he came out tomorrow and said he used steroids.

Second, He's somewhere between the fourth and sixth best centerfielder of all-time. Willie Mays, Ty Cobb and Mickey Mantle are the top three. The next three are Tris Speaker, Joe DiMaggio and Griffey (some people would even put DiMaggio ahead of Mantle, I call those people communists). Early reaction to Griffey's retirement seems to be putting him below DiMaggio and above Speaker. Let's look at some career numbers.

Ken Griffey Jr.: .284 avg, 630 HR, 1836 RBI, 184 SB, 2781 H, 9801 AB
Joe DiMaggio: .325 avg, 361 HR, 1537 RBI, 30 SB, 2214 H, 6821 AB
Tris Speaker: .345 avg, 117 HR, 1529 RBI, 436 SB, 3514 H, 10195 AB

A couple of things to keep in mind. First, Speaker played most of his career in the dead ball era. In 1912, he led the league in home runs with 10. Also, like Ted Williams, DiMaggio missed a huge chunk of his prime (three full seasons) to go fight in WW2 (stupid nazis, they ruin everything). And, since I mentioned Griffey's 10 gold gloves before (an award that hadn't yet been invented when Speaker or DiMaggio played), it's only fair to mention DiMaggio's impressive 3 MVP's compared to one each for Griffey and Speaker. DiMaggio, like Griffey, also had 13 all-star appearances and Speaker, well, he missed out on that too.

People will also tell you DiMaggio would have hit 500 or more home runs if he hadn't played at Yankee Stadium all those years. That's probably true, but I would have led the NBA in rebounding this year if I was 7 feet tall, but I'm not, so I didn't. Just like Griffey's injuries and Speaker's dead balls (HA!), you play where you play and you get what you get.

The point about Griffey isn't where exactly he fits with DiMaggio and Speaker. The point is that he does fit with them somewhere. He's a first ballot hall-of-famer, an all-time great and quite possibly the best all around player anyone under 40 who reads this will ever see. Injuries robbed him of the chance to be the greatest ever, and robbed people like me of a proper Ken Griffey Jr. story. But isn't the fact that he still had the career he did, even while basically never being healthy for the last 10 years of it, a testament to how great he really was? He's one of those rare "what if" guys who was still great, and even if I never got to see him in person, I can still sit back one day and tell young whipper snappers that I got to see him play at all, and that's good enough for me.