Why Derek Jeter’s Career-Ending Walk-Off Single, Which Didn’t Mean Anything, Meant Everything

           

(Photo Courtesy of United Press International)

            Last Thursday marked the end to a 20-year marriage between Yankee Stadium and New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter — while illustrating the fundamentally unifying role sports can play in day-to-day life.

            The final column in the last home box score of the sure-fire Hall-of-Famer will melodramatically read: “single, RF, RBI.” It will be accompanied by a miniature baseball field, in which a straight line runs from home plate to shallow right field. It will be most coldly read as the last at-bat of the 162^nd game of the season, the result of which having no post-season implications on either team involved. In short, the at-bat, by just about every single measure, meant absolutely nothing.

            That at-bat, however, means everything.

            “Der-ek Je-ter, duh duh, duhduhduh. Der-ek Je-ter, duh duh, duhduhduh.” The crowd roared. The scoreboard read Baltimore 5, New York 5. An incredible circumstance: with a runner on second base in the bottom of the ninth inning, Jeter had a chance to end his home career with a game-winning hit. Though extraordinary, it may be the only fitting ending for one who is widely known as “Captain Clutch.”

            CRACK. Before the crowd could try to wrap their heads around the situation and prepare themselves for Jeter’s last ever — LAST EVER — at-bat at Yankee Stadium, Jeter had struck the first pitch — a rare act for the 14-time All-Star — and finished his career in the Bronx by shooting a ball into right field, past a diving first baseman.

            The ball took a sharp bounce about five feet in front of the outfield grass and skipped into right field. The crowd erupted, yet simultaneously held their breath in utter angst: the right fielder had a play. It was the paradoxical time warp in which one has just won everything in a matter of seconds, yet there is a slivering possibility that that everything could be taken away in, once again, just a matter of seconds. It’s the type of experience that takes years from one’s life. It’s why grown men watch other grown men in tight pants throw, swing, and run. It’s why plump old men by season tickets, and stay through every single ninth inning for their home team that remains locked in the cellar year in and year out. It is, in fact, what people precisely mean when they say, “for the love of the game.” It’s the feeling that advertisers have tried to package and sell for decades and decades. But it can only be felt, not described.

            The play seemed to have taken 10 minutes. The lanky southpaw right fielder charged, pitter-pated his feet, scooped the ball, and, in a fluent yet unsettling, catapult-like motion — as all left-handers do — launched the ball to home. The small, cowhide-covered yarn ball now contained so much life, so much potential, and thus so much power — a power that could deflate the entire crowd, a power that could very well crush an ending no one would dare script. The ball took one long skip, and beat the runner to the plate — with cheers and a heavy anticipation still hanging in the air.

            The ball bounced into the catcher’s chest and disappeared for a few seconds. The Bronx was still. Like a cat escaping the capture of an over-anxious child, the ball snuck through the space between the catcher’s left elbow and torso, skipping to the backstop, dyeing with every bounce. With the death of the ball, the home plate umpire viciously extended his arms laterally, signaling that the incoming runner sliding-head first was safe.

            The Yankees had won. Jeter had done it, had done it again — if only words could do it justice.

            In a sort of sea of emotion, the crowd erupted, again. But the crowd was not alone: Jeter stood halfway between first and second base, both arms locked and erected straight into the air. He had discarded the calm and collected attitude he had built in over 20 years in the Yankee organization. The thin 6’3 41-year-old seemed like a colossal giant, with all of the Bronx beneath him.

            Under the giant stirred a crowd of children jumping and shouting, yet unable to truly fathom why they jumped and shouted so; a crowd of weeping grown men, who really could not believe what they had witnessed; a TV audience of millions in their living rooms who were either erupting in dismay, or covering their mouth in disbelief. For these fans, this 11 o’clock lazy line drive will sneak its way into tomorrow, the following day, next month — it will hold them over until next season. It will make tomorrow’s early morning bearable for the factory worker; the late afternoon exam less dreadful for the fifth-year senior; it will make for all of the discussion at the middle school lunch table.

            It will have facilitated a human bond that cuts across age, class, race, and gender lines — indeed, the ultimate accomplishment sports can achieve.

            This is how the five-time World Series champion should be remembered: not by an articulate post-game speech, nor by a 500-foot bomb to center field, nor by his Nike shoe deal — but by sending the Bronx, and many others, into a collective, harmonious, inspiring uproar on a cool night in late August over the 162^nd game of a season that, for Jeter, was otherwise utterly forgettable.

Thoughts on Senior Year: an Account Un-fit for Office of Admissions

[Early this week, we all received an email encouraging us to share our “Wittenberg story,” which would probably be used to advertise the University; thus, I thought it fitting that I’d share mine.]

(Courtesy of Wittenberg Office of Admissions) 

            Senior year is rapidly speeding up, yet quickly coming to an end. It is indeed the most cliché paradox, but true nevertheless. In a quick nine months, my time at Wittenberg will be over. I’ll have spent my last afternoon in Hollenbeck, my last late evening in the library, played my last intramural basketball game in HPER — as many people have before me, and as many will after.

            However, because I’ll be the first person in my extended family to graduate college, leaving Wittenberg also means blooming into the fruition of a lot of grueling hard work on the part of my parents, especially my father. It will thus be a moment filled with nostalgia, yet a moment filled with pride.

            While at Wittenberg, I feel, as many probably do, that I have come into myself — as a student, a writer, and a human being. Wittenberg has challenged me in many ways; it has, in fact, even forced me to challenge Wittenberg itself.

            It is tough, for example, to reckon with the fact that my education has come at the expense of others, and by “others” I mean the housekeepers — those we subject to live on a poverty wage. I certainly should have done more; or, more accurately, should have done something.

            It is also tough to look back on my education and realize it was ultimately a product I had to buy; the most fulfilling time of my life — intellectually, socially, personally — was but a commodity. It will be but tougher to face the fact that many people will go without such an experience, and for no reason of their own. Indeed, these are all privileged problems to reckon with, but challenges nevertheless, and one is never quite sure how to handle them.

            Paradoxically, it has been the most fulfilling aspects of my “Wittenberg experience” — as admission’s office brands it — that have forced me to interrogate the problematic — no, rather, unjust — aspects of Wittenberg. To put it another way, for me, Wittenberg’s success has highlighted the institution’s absolute failures. [Certainly, the last two tensions I’ve listed above are not exclusive to Wittenberg; they are part of the educational system at-large.]

            And, unfortunately, it seems the most powerful thing that Wittenberg has taught me is that one’s most powerful vote in this society is with one’s checkbook. It is for this reason that I can’t genuinely say that, if I had a chance to do it all over again, I would choose Wittenberg again. Instead, as this administration did with the housekeepers, I would have made a market decision that reflected my values, and chosen a school that doesn’t perpetuate poverty.

            I couldn’t have asked for better professors, for more growth, more camaraderie; I, in short, truly could not have asked for a better college experience — but I also shouldn’t experience those things at the expense of others.

            Is one really able to find fulfillment while walking on the backs of others?

What Citizens Should be Lobbying for While Uncle Sam is in Town: a Financial Transaction Tax

Today, many families around the nation will make their way into a Wal-Mart to purchase the necessities of life — hygiene products, medicine, and, in some states, even food — and be charged anywhere from six to nine percent in sales tax. Meanwhile, in the same day, the Waltons and their shareholders will make millions of dollars off of thousands of stock trades — but won’t be taxed a penny. This is morally unjust and fiscally irresponsible, and it’s well past time that we institute a federal Financial Transaction Tax [FTT].

An FTT would leverage only half of one percent (.5%) — or, about 50 cents for every $100 — on derivative, stock, and bond exchanges. This tax would raise an estimated $350 billion a year, which could be used for various things: from reducing poverty, to fixing infrastructure, to investing in education, to strengthening social security, all the way to funding research that could cure diseases — all without costing the average citizen a penny.

In addition to raising revenue, the tax would also defer risky, speculative, and High Frequency Trading [HFT]. For instance, HFT is a type of algorithmic trading that destabilizes markets, and fails to produce human or social capital. These socially useless transactions are based on very small profit margins — hence the need to trade quick and often — and, by cutting into those margins, this tax would push these trades out of markets.

It’s also worth note, because of its modest size, the tax won’t adversely affect small-time, middle-class traders.

This year’s congressional session has come to a close, and thus elected officials are making their way back to their home districts; constituents should be making the case for a FTT. By merely requiring big banks and financial institutions to pay taxes in the same way that average citizens do, we could secure a moral and fiscal victory for the people of this country.

If corporations are people, we ought to tax them as such.