The Toronto Star's Cathal Kelly asserts that Derek Jeter is in a position of power as he and the Yankees dance around the terms of a new contract. Within, he suggests:
Well... I Mean, Derek Jeter Is Kind Of Like The Mona Lisa
Yankee Stadium is an enormously successful sports museum. Derek Jeter is its Mona Lisa.
Over at Hardball Talk, Craig Calcaterra rightly points out that the Yankees have more leverage than Kelly gives them credit for. However! I think, I’m surprised to say, I have to disagree with Mr. Calcaterra here and argue that Jeter is indeed the team’s Mona Lisa. Not literally, of course, as he is not a painting. Anyway:
Most serious baseball folks are hip to the fact that Derek Jeter’s talents aren’t commensurate with his celebrity. He is bad defensively, and his offensive numbers in 2010 were just shy of the average player’s. To pay $25 million per year for those numbers would (will) be lunacy.
He is iconic, though, because he’s the standard-bearer. He’s as beloved in New York as Mickey Mantle was, and he’s been present throughout a 15-year period that has seen five World Series championships. Why is he the subject of such adulation? Well, the why doesn’t really matter; we simply know that he is New York’s favorite.
None of this has anything to do with winning, of course. If the Yankees’ sole motivation is winning, then they really need to look elsewhere. But perhaps they’ve won the video game so many times that they’re seeing whether they can make it through the entire game without even having to use the machine gun.
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