What a luxury to be a New York Yankees fan.
Thursday night they said goodbye to Derek Jeter, an icon. It was epic. It was over-the-top. It was merchandised. It’s been a while since New York has had an icon to celebrate, and it’s not a modest kind of place.
The only debate about Jeter is exactly how iconic he is. It’s agreed he’s not as iconic as Babe Ruth or Lou Gehrig. But is No. 2 more iconic that Yogi Berra? Does retiring sixth on baseball’s all-time hits list and as a five-time World Series champion match up with Mickey Mantle?
These are good problems to have. Other franchises don’t have them. Argue about his defensive short-comings or his fading skills all you want, but for 20 seasons Yankee fans have been able to look out to shortstop and say, with certainty, that their guy is awesome. And he was classy about the whole thing, even if his organization let things get out of hand a little bit.
But a big reason Jeter is an icon is because he was a Yankee, and the Yankees made it worth his while, financially and competitively. Fans of nearly every other franchise can only wish. Take Toronto for example.
As 50,000 crowded into Yankee Stadium to watch Jeter’s final home game Thursday night, with reports that some swells had paid $10,000 for the privilege of being beside the home dugout when Jeter took his final bow, there were 17,173 at Rogers Centre to watch the Blue Jays and the Seattle Mariners play out the string on a season both teams thought held more promise.
The closest person the Blue Jays have to a Jeter – and I acknowledge the stretch – was enjoying the evening off as manager John Gibbons gave Jose Bautista a rest.
It’s hard to argue that Bautista is under-appreciated either in Toronto or in baseball – he’s a five-time all-star and twice led all of baseball in fan voting – but I’m not the first to make the case that he’s enjoying perhaps his best season as a Blue Jay and undoubtedly his best season as the face of the Blue Jays.
It’s not just that he’s leading MLB in on-base percentage (.409) which compliments his typical production numbers – he’s sitting on 35 home runs and 103 RBI with three games to play – so elegantly.
It’s been his complete game: base-running; hitting the opposite way against the shift. When he walked-off the Detroit Tigers in the 19th inning on August 10th and the Blue Jays playoff hopes were faltering, it felt like an elite player trying to exert his individual will in a team game.
Trying to lift a team usually leaves you with a sore back, but watching it can be exhilarating and watching Bautista was like that at times this season. He was uncompromising.
It didn’t work of course. The 2014 season will be remembered elsewhere as the End of Jeter, but closer to home it will go down as another year when Bautista’s best wasn’t enough.
It’s becoming a pattern. It’s hard to be an icon without a team that is capable of being elevated. Ultimately this year will go down as a disappointment because the Blue Jays failed to take advantage of a soft AL East and break their 20-year playoff drought. Bautista delivered, but the bullpen faltered and Lawrie got hurt and it seemed like ownership decided that $140-million was enough and didn’t want to spend any more.
A big part of Jeter’s magic is that he won four World Series in his first five seasons. Until this season he’d played one game in his previous 19 when the Yankees weren’t still in playoff contention. That’s a costly proposition, but the Yankees were always ready to pay. They gave Jeter a three-year, $51-million deal in 2010 and a one-year $12-million contract for this season to make sure they could celebrate his legacy and theirs this season.
If you look around the Blue Jays’ Level of Excellence there are only five players but no Jeter-types – homegrown legends who played their entire careers with one franchise and made themselves into Hall-of-Famers. Roberto Alomar was only a Blue Jay for five seasons. Tony Fernandez got traded. Joe Carter authored the signature moment in Blue Jays history, but is no one’s version of a Hall-of-Famer. George Bell and Dave Stieb were great Blue Jays, but hardly baseball greats.
Jeter is an icon for lots of good reasons, but the common thread between him and the Blue Jays legends is that they were all on teams that won something — a division, a pennant, the World Series.
The Toronto exception on the Level of Excellence is Carlos Delgado, the most dominant offensive force in Blue Jays history, but another star who never had a chance to shine in September and October. He is Bautista’s spiritual heir as one of the greatest players the franchise has ever known, but one that never knew the post-season.
It’s amazing when the talk turns to ‘best-ever’ Blue Jays how rarely anyone talks about Delgado.
He was signed by Toronto, made his debut in Toronto and played the vast majority of the best years of his career in Toronto.
And they were incredible. As awesome a year as Bautista is having or has had, I’ll take Delgado’s 2000 numbers, when he hit .344 with 41 home runs, 137 RBI and a team record OPS of 1.134. He had 99 extra base hits that season, another team record, and 123 walks. It’s crazy. The Blue Jays finished just 4.5 games back that year, the closest they ever got to the playoffs with Delgado in the lineup. For eight seasons beginning in 1997 his 162-game average (and he was rarely hurt) was .286 with 40 home runs, 124 RBIs and a .961 OPS.
That run earned him his spot in Blue Jays franchise history. He’s got a strong statistical case to be a Hall-of-Famer when he’s eligible for consideration in 2015 and it will be interesting to see if the fact that he played during the height of the steroid era and never drew so much as a whisper of suspicion helps his cause.
Delgado was never on a playoff team, however, not even close. During his eight year peak the Blue Jays finished, on average, 20 games out of first place. Tough to be an icon under those circumstances.
Will Bautista ever get a chance to earn a place on the Level of Excellence? His numbers suggest he will. He’s tied with Joe Carter for third place in franchise home runs with 203. He should pass Vernon Wells (223) sometime next July. He’s delivered some of the best seasons in franchise history. But unless things change he’ll have a lot more in common with Delgado than Alomar. Unless the Blue Jays are willing to pay up when his current deal expires two years from now, he’ll likely play his final seasons somewhere else. The best years of his career could mean nothing.
In that light, the idea of the Blue Jays producing their own Jeter – or at least a Jeter-like moment — remains as unlikely as Sasquatch (and not just Adam Lind’s beard) playing first base.
Every franchise deserves an icon, but for the Blue Jays it appears it may forever be a luxury they can’t afford.