When you’re a sports fan, the games you follow seem to have this uncanny ability to echo your personal growth. Just as you hit transitional times in your life, so do the teams, players and sports you love.
My earliest sports memories are nearly universally baseball related. Baseball, as it was for so many, was the first game that my father, brother and I shared. From little league games to the hometown Mobile BayBears to my beloved yet perpetually disappointing Atlanta Braves, America’s pastime was, to me, everything the philosophers of the sports page thought it could be: heirloom, recreation, education and aspiration.
Besides my dad, my earliest heroes were baseball players. I wanted to be Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, John Smoltz and, most of all, Chipper Jones. And in order, I watched my heroes go gentle into that good night of retirement.
Those four were the anchors of my team. In the so-called Steroid Era of baseball, they never came close to suspicion. They’re first ballot hall-of-famers. Glavine, Maddux and Smoltz are in the conversation as some of the greatest pitchers of all time, and Jones is in the same echelon of hitters. They weren’t perfect men – not by a long shot. Perfect men don’t exist, after all. But they were four phenomenal role models for a young kid.
Chipper Jones’ farewell tour coincided with the end of my high school career and the beginning of my college career. I’m sure this coincidence inspired me to place too much emphasis and metaphorical meaning on the end of a third baseman’s time making absurd amounts of money playing a child’s game. But despite that awareness, it felt important to me. It felt like the end of an era. I will remember Chipper’s last game, his last at bat (a two-out broken-bat single in the ninth inning of the most heart-breaking playoff game I’ve ever seen, which is saying something when you’re a Braves fan) and his retirement ceremony for the rest of my life. I’m not sure, but I probably teared up for all of them.
I might have been a Braves fan, but that doesn’t mean the only titanic sports figures of my childhood were Braves. There were other baseball players who did things the right way, whatever that means. There are other guys from that era I still respect. To baseball fans my age, however, there’s one name that, I hope, commands a certain amount of respect regardless of affiliation: Derek Jeter.
Yes, like every good red-blooded American, I hated the Yankees – still do, really. But Derek Jeter is the kind of player that no one could really hate. Jeter was the ultimate aspirational figure: He spent his childhood dreaming of playing shortstop for the New York Yankees, then spent the last 20 years doing just that.
Jeter was a superstar almost entirely on the merit of his on-field achievement. He never entertained any glimpses into his personal life and never could have been accused of “dishonoring the game.” If you had anything bad to say about Jeter, it was only that he beat you – over and over and over.
People will have a lot to say about Jeter over the upcoming season, and some of it will feel overwrought. Try not to be too cynical about the farewell tour, though – the gifts, the high ticket prices, the speeches. Remember that for so many fans, Jeter’s retirement finally cements the end of an era.
