YOU CAN ALL HATE THE YANKEES…

But you can’t hate Mr. Jeter!

When I was growing up as a baseball fan, there were many players of Hall of Fame caliber. Stan the Man Musial, Ted Williams, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron, who electrified the stadiums they played in.

There were players who had a high moral fiber that made them endearing and loved, like Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese and Gil Hodges, who played for my team the Brooklyn Dodgers. Through the years as the game transformed from a sport into a business, there were few players that I cared about in terms of the moral character they had. No longer was there a Yogi Berra, but instead we had Barry Bonds and Jose Consecos that polluted the sport.

There is however one player that I see as a class act, highly moral and truly great, and that guy is Derek Jeter. He is the epitome of high standards, belief in himself and dedicated to excellence. He has proven time and time again that being a man is not proving anything, but just going out and doing what you are paid for.

As he reaches his old age of playing in baseball years, he once again amazed me with his dedication and production, earning every penny he gets from the Yankees. He carries his team on his shoulders, and I can see in his eyes the pain of failure if his team loses. He is a true Hall of Famer, who doesn’t need the record books to back it up. Seeing him play is exciting, and you know he comes through more times than not in a game of inches and averages,

Watching him play as he reaches his late 30’s, I can’t help but smile, as I do at the great Mickey Mantle, in terms of greatness in his sport, and value he had to the Yankees, or the hated Willie Mays who made baseball so exciting in his younger days as a New York Giant, or the great Jackie Robinson.

I feel sorry for people who are not baseball fans, they miss the opportunity to witness greatness, see it happen over a period of years and know instantly that a player will be a Hall of Famer some day without a doubt, like Mr. Jeter, who has saved the game from being worse than it s already with the bums that inhabit it.

That's all I wrote, folks!