The Yankees Are Treating Derek Jeter Rather Shabbily

Who said the Steinbrenner kids weren't going to be as much fun as their old man? The Evil Empire, through its GM (and future cat lady) Brian Cashman, sent an e-mail yesterday that said if Yankees' Captain Derek Jeter could find a better offer than 3 years $45 million, he should Fucking Take It Somewhere Else. It was the kind of drunken hurt text message you send your favorite prostitute. OH YEAH? WELL YOURE JUST A FUCKIN PROSTITUTE AND IM A REAL PERSON! $45 million, by the way, is how much the Yankees spend annually on Puffs Plus. The good kind, with the lotion AND the Halls mentholyptus essence. Which is not to be used south of your equator, front or back, under any circumstances.

So why should you give a fuck whether Derek Jeter gets paid more than a gillion dollars to play baseball? Didn't he give Jessica Alba herpes? Well, I don't know, fuck it. I'm a diehard Red Sox fan. I'd practically suicide-bomb the new Yankee Stadium. I cheer for the Mets because sometimes I like to feel sad and alone. And this post-season I wore a Yankees cap around with the hopes that my terrible luck would rub off on the Bombers. Mission Accomplished. In less than a month they've been blown out of the playoffs by a former crackhead and his team full of lovable Antler and Claw hand-signalling Texas Rangers. And now the Yankees have taken the handsome face of their franchise and told him to start printing up his resume. When a baseball team doesn't offer you salary arbitration it's because they want to pay you way less. And they don't fear you'll go somewhere else. For a few million more than they paid Derek Jeter last year they could have had him back already, sans dramatics. So they must really want to put that fucker in his place.

The rule of baseball negotiations is that players shouldn't take a pay cut to play for their old team. Now, Derek Jeter is pushing 37 and Short Stop is a young man's domain. He pressed at the plate last year and only hit a respectable .270 on the last day of the season. Imagine if he'd hit .269? ".269!" They'd Say. But Derek Jeter has never been about the numbers. He is, in fact, a baseball numbers-bending enigma. No one has come up for the correct way to measure the intangibles he brings to playing for the Yankees. He always seems to get big hits, be in the middle of great plays and just be handsome and likable for no good reason most of the time. The only performance enhancing drug he's on is his own awesomeness. And, um, maybe Valtrex?

The Yankees claim to be the organization that epitomizes class. Class in New York City is defined as not throwing up on people or keying their car more than once. And the death of George Steinbrenner brought all the Revisionist Historians out to create a sprawling narrative of just what a Champion Steinbrenner was. His only charm, naturally, was throwing Tons and Tons of money at Free Agents. And then hiring knock-around guys to get dirt on those free agents to use against them on the pack pages of the great New York tabloids. George Steinbrenner once blamed Jeter's playboy lifestyle for a year in which the Yankees didn't win the World Series. They did a credit card commercial about it with a conga line and all was forgiven. With Steinbrenner it wasn't about Truth or Money or Being Classy. He was a gangster and it was about respect. And in baseball Respect is also Money. Money is also Money and your money is definitely their money.

But the old man liked to give complete jagoffs tons of his cash, because that was the Yankee formula. Crash your Camaro, Buy three More Camaros. In the meantime baseball progressed. Geeks and dorks left their Dungeons and Dragons behind to come up with wacky stats and suddenly teams that sucked won the World Series. Which was bullshit. The Yankees are always supposed to win the World Series, and the crushing expectations of being a Yankee usually destroy good players who otherwise might thrive. New York and Philadelphia and Boston fans understand this. You have a brief window to endear yourself or you will be TO BLAME. I still blame Calvin Schiraldi for the end of my first prison marriage.

Derek Jeter isn't as much of a Baseball Player as a Unicorn. He's like Superman or something, except when Superman gets too old to play Short Stop. But imagine the Justice League of America telling Superman he can join the Avengers if he doesn't like the money they're giving him? Superman has saved the Earth in every issue of every comic Superman has every been in for 1,000 years. Doesn't the Earth owe him an Underpants Party by now?

Derek Jeter, if he gets to hang on with the Yankees, would be the first Yankee to accumulate 3,000 hits. Most hitters that get to 3,000 are mediocre, healthy guys. The Immortal Craig Biggio was the last one to do it. Druggie Rafael Palmeiro before him. It's a nice milestone, the kind Jeter can reach because he's not a home run hitter. But entire Wikipedia articles could be written about how Derek Jeter matters to the Yankees that apparently even the Yankees don't care about anymore. Suffice to say, all Derek Jeter has done is be the best Yankee of the past 50 years. Stalwart and true. Universally praised and respected. The Yankees "have encouraged him to test the market" to find a fair price for his talents over the next few years. It's like the old guy who always had dollar bills falling out of his pockets finally got a fucking wallet on a chain. Why have the Yankees closed the Bank? It would have behooved them to close it earlier. But to close the vault door on Derek Jeter?

Maybe they've got something on him the rest of us don't know about. A secret half-dead skeleton baby that follows him around. A collection of hooker skulls. Who knows? Everyone is more fucked up than you imagine, especially the people who seem nice and normal. Haven't you seen David Lynch's movies? Maybe Jeter was a Papa Steinbrenner kind of guy and the sons are pissed off at him because Daddy Never Loved Them but he did love his Derekbear. Maybe he's an insufferable prick. His move with the ladies is allegedly to send a friend over to them at the clubs and be like "You see Derek Jeter over there? He wants to party with you." That doesn't seem very prickish. He still calls Joe Torre, his old manager, "Mr. Torre." The guy is a walking talking glass of fucking Ovaltine, people. He's black, he's white, he's handsome (with the beginning of a little manjowl going on), he's funny. He pretends to be hit by pitches that didn't hit him. How could you not love Derek Jeter?

My brother and I have worked out a fair market price for Jeter. He and Mariano Rivera of the Yankees come play for the Red Sox, package deal, 2 years, $200 million. Blood would run in the street. Fans' heads would fall off and broken glass would spill out. The Yankees Would be Destroyed for a Generation. Yankee Stadium would become the Poltergeist House. We have it all worked out. I mean, who wants to watch half-centaur Alex Rodriguez hit his 800th home run mark without Jeter around? Jeter is how Yankee fans imagine themselves. Debonair, manly, handsome, occasionally broken out with little red bumps. He is a goddamned walking God who should get blank checks and constant blowjobs from Yankee fans and management everywhere. But everyone there is spoiled, they'd rather fight about shekels. And now they've Embarrassed him Publicly in the way only Sports players can be embarrassed. They've taken away his Spermy Allure, a cultivated scent he has carefully crafted over the past two decades by keeping himself under wraps. Just hope he doesn't sign somewhere else for a little more than what the Yankees offered. Then we'll find out about those Skulls in his duffel bag in a hurry.

And this all occurred because Jeter's agent said he was "baffled" by the Yankees Negotiation Strategy. Unless there is a bag of bones this is the Baffler of the Year. Inside a Giant Flying Stinkbug (I saw my first one last night BE AFRAID).

Image by Keith Allison, from Flickr.