No player in baseball history will be more famous than Derek Jeter 50 or so years from now. There’s no arguing that his name will be in the conversation with guys like Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, and Mickey Mantle. With the career he has put together, Jeter deserves all the attention he has been getting — the HBO special, the MLB.com shop gear, all of it. Heck, Derek might even deserve the favor David Price did for him. If you don’t like it, you can always download the Jeter Filter and pretend his 3,000th hit never happened.
Whether Angels fans like it or not, their team will be getting in on the act this September. According to the LA Times via the Orange County Register, Los Angeles will honor the Angel-killer before the series opener between the Angels and Yankees on Sept. 9 at Angel Stadium.
“We are still finalizing some things,” says Tim Mead, Angels vice president of communications. “It is fair to say we want to honor the man, the player and the person in some form.”
As a Red Sox fan I was brought up hating Jeter. That being said, even I don’t have a problem with the Angels honoring the Yankee captain. In fact, I wouldn’t even mind honoring him at Fenway Park. Jeter is one of the most rare personalities you will find in professional sports. He will likely be a first-ballot Hall of Famer, and he went through his entire career without tarnishing his name in any way or using performance-enhancing drugs. Jeter is the definition of one of the good guys. In fact, he may be the good guy.
