After years of saying nothing, now Derek Jeter has something to say
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, 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 advisors, 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.
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