The Derek Jeter Generation Peter Gammons

Peter Gammons: The Jeter Generation

September 29, 2014 by Peter Gammons 1 Comment

On the final day of Derek Jeter’s career, it was Détente Sunday in Boston. Red Sox and Yankee fans alike wore RE2PECT t-shirts, Bostonians wore shirts commemorating Jeter retiring in Fenway Park, Yankee fans by the thousands lined Yawkey Way in Jeter uniforms and the best there can be in baseball came when Jeter ran to embrace ALS victim Pete Frates while he was being wheeled towards him at shortstop.
Ian O’Connor smartly called Jeter the first person to build a bridge from Yankee Stadium to Fenway, and 54 years after Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu before 10,454 in this park, they bid Jeter adieu on a day when all the obscene shirts and taunts were reduced to the realization that whether you’re from Bridgehampton or Bridgewater, you and this Hall of Fame player all have something in common, the love of and respect for the game, and those who play it.
When the Red Sox players lined up to bid Jeter adieu, Dustin Pedroia was at the end of that line, a player close to Jeter, a player Jeter openly respects, a player who personifies what makes Americans thankful that Derek is one of us.
And as Jeter rode across Fenway on a golf cart an hour after the last out, the 2014 regular season had essentially ended, the post-season participants were decided, and as the BBWAA voters prepared their ballots for pre-midnight delivery, there was that moment when one could take a break from asking “who will be the next face of the Yankees” and realize that in his wake, Derek leaves behind a season when the young faces of the game should and will dominate the post-season award announcements.
Take the National League MVP awards. Clayton Kershaw is so rare a man, at 26, that one can talk comps with the names Sandy Koufax, Fred Hutchinson and Nelson Mandela. Really. In winning his fourth straight earned run average title and posting unprecedented strikeout/WHIP/ERA numbers, he has become Koufax, and since the Dodgers lost but three of his starts all season and beat the Giants by six games…OK. This reminds one of Roger Clemens in 1986 and the swagger his Red Sox took out onto the field when he started. One can easily argue that had Giancarlo Stanton not been hit in the face, he would have won the MVP. He led the league in standard and sabermetric categories covered only by Mike Schmidt in 1981, Babe Ruth in 1921 and Ted Williams, thrice, and he made the Marlins relevant.
One can argue Andrew McCutchen, not only close to Stanton in W.A.R. but the man who led Pittsburgh’s charge to the finish with greatness on the field, a greatness that has restored Pittsburgh to a major baseball town and helped sell out PNC Park more times in 2014 than the Yankees have sold out the last two seasons.
Kershaw, Stanton, McCutchen. They are part of the Mount Rushmore of the Jeter Generation.
It is unfortunate for Adam Wainwright and Johnny Cueto to be in the same league as Kershaw, literally and figuratively. It’s unfortunate for Corey Kluber to break on through to the other side in another Felix Hernandez season, just as it’s unfortunate for Chris Sale. But all things considered, from their defense to their ballparks. Kluber likely earned the Cy Young Award, although he may be Mike Trout to Miguel Cabrera, 2012-13.
Trout is going to win the MVP this season, no matter what Michael Brantley, Victor Martinez, Jose Bautista and Adam Jones have done.
What one wonders, as baseball searches to lower the age demographics of its audience, if why, Jeter or no Jeter, Kershaw, McCutchen, Stanton, Trout, et al are not better marketed. MLB has too long marketed players from the past, selling brands, not its talent. There are cynics who point to MLB brand marketers demanding that little leaguers and Cape Cod League franchises are told they must pay to use franchise names, then wonder if the lack of young player marketing isn’t about avoiding paying for the players’ brands.
At a time when the National Football League must struggle with its players perception, this is a perfect time for baseball to make Kershaw, Stanton, Trout, McCutchen the poster boys for billboards that read, “This is Who We Are, The Jeter Generation—The MLBPA and MLB.”
The era of good feelings did not end when Jeter walked out of Fenway Park. It moves forward to a day this week when many of us will be asking, “can you believe Clayton Kershaw and Adam Wainwright are hooking up?”