New York Yankees designated hitter Derek Jeter tips his cap to the crowd at Fenway Park after coming out of the baseball game for a pinch-runner in the third inning against the Boston Red Sox in a baseball game Sunday, Sept. 28, 2014, in Boston. It is the last baseball game of his career. At left are teammates Brett Gardner (11) and Mark Teixeira (25).Imagine an orange-wrapped crowd at Tennessee's Neyland Stadium on the Third Saturday in October paying tribute to former Alabama quarterback Joe Namath. Or a basketball gathering at North Carolina's Dean Smith Center rising to its feet to applaud Duke's Christian Laettner.
No way, you say?
Yet that's just what happened at Fenway Stadium, home of the Boston Red Sox, on Sunday. The Fenway Faithful -- OK, so there were a huge number of New York Yankees fans in attendance -- delivered a standing ovation to retiring Yankees short stop Derek Jeter, theoretically Enemy No. 1 in Beantown.
Yet if an American sports legend ever deserved such acclaim from the enemy it is clearly Jeter, who just might epitomize all we wish our athletic heroes should be better than anyone who's played any team sport for the past two decades or so.
Go ahead and name one time in the 20 years he played for this country's most storied franchise that this son of Kalamazoo, Mich., ever did the first insensitive, unprofessional, embarrassing thing to bring unwanted attention to himself, his family or the Yankees.
Has the guy ever gotten so much as a parking ticket?
Nobody's perfect, but Jeter's been awfully close. And it's not as if he's had the advantage of racking up those 3,465 hits, career .310 batting average and 1,311 RBI over 2,747 games played in some small-market, media friendly town such as Cincinnati or Kansas City.
The guy spent his whole career in New York City and its monstrous media microscope. There's more than one reason the old song proclaims, "If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere," because no other city in this country can be as unforgiving and unrelenting as the Big Apple.
So for all those sour souls who've written in recent weeks that Jeter's numbers aren't worthy of the hype, he made it in New York for two decades under the brightest spotlight on the planet without a single off-field hiccup. Add in his playing stats, and there's no way he shouldn't be a unanimous Hall of Famer.
Yet those hard stats are pretty good, too. Consider that no shortstop of note has a higher career average. Compare him to the great Cal Ripken and Jeter has three more Gold Gloves and four more World Series crowns (5 to 1) while batting more than 30 points higher for his career. If it's about numbers, those five World Series rings and 3,465 hits are about as big as it gets.
But even that's not what's made Jeter the most beloved, respected player of the least respected era in major league history. Merely consider this Friday quote concerning his intention to play two games in Boston after bowing out in the Bronx last Thursday with the game-winning RBI in his final Yankee Stadium at-bat.
"I'm playing here because I have respect for this rivalry, and for Boston and their fans," he said. "If it were anywhere else I don't even know if I would play."
But he did play, and Boston showered him with the upmost respect on Sunday, bringing out such Beantown legends as hockey's Bobby Orr, former Red Sox Carl Yastrzemski, and ex-Celtic Paul Pierce to salute him. On Fenway's timeless scoreboard, the changing numbers still put up by human hands, it read, "With Respect 2 (his jersey number) Derek Jeter." They even had someone sing Aretha Franklin's "Respect."
Given the off-field news of the past few months -- everything from racist behavior by front office types such as former Clippers owner Donald Sterling to the Atlanta Hawks' Danny Ferry, to the wretched domestic violence issues in the NFL -- it's almost enough for everyone connected to any pro sport to ask the question "What would Derek Jeter do?" before every word they speak or action they take.
Actually, perhaps we should all ask that after the despicable actions of a few pathetic souls during Sunday's Ironman Chattanooga. When you believe it's OK to pour motor oil and tacks onto the path of cyclists traveling 19 mph, an action that forced at least a half-dozen competitors out of the event, you need to suffer for your actions
Let law enforcement officials find the guilty and force them to pay restitution for whatever damage they called, then make them stand before the public and issue a videotaped apology for both ruining this event for those competitors forced to withdraw as well as embarrassing our community. Finally, hand them at least 20 hours of community service to be served by cleaning up after next year's Ironman.
It would be nice to think Jeter might one day become the nation's Czar of Sportsmanship, strongly encouraging everyone to play as he played and behave as he behaved. A single story to show the person he is: ESPN's Tim Kurkjian's was supposed to interview Jeter at the close of the 2009 World Series, which was the Yanks' fifth title with No. 2 on the field.
He got the interview, but only after Jeter made his way through a raucous Yankees locker room to give his parents a long hug in a small, private room.
Said Yankees manager Joe Girardi on Sunday, "I think it is an end of an era."
If it's also the end of sportsmanship and professionalism as Jeter practiced it for 20 years, if the current and future pros don't more strongly attempt to follow his exemplary example, may it also soon be the end of their games as we now know them.
To be like 2, too. That should be our sporting mantra from this day forward.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.