I'm Ready

After the game, Derek Jeter gathered the team on the mound and gave what he says now was an off-the-cuff address directly to the crowd about Yankee fans being the “greatest in the world” and how we were the keepers of memories and how he was relying on us to carry those memories across the street to the new stadium where they would be joined with the new memories – presumably the 27the world championship for the team (we’ll see, now that the Yankees have been officially eliminated from playoff contention for the 2008 season by their arch-rival Red Sox winning last night.)

I thought the speech was very good. I was impressed also with his delivery, although it’s hard to imagine Jeter not being poised under pressure. And I think I officially became a real Jeter fan (actually maybe even a few days ago when I read the SI piece about the stadium closing and about how Jeter had told W. after Sept. 11th to make sure he didn’t bounce the ball when he threw out the first pitch because “they’ll boo you.” It takes a lot of chutspah to tell the leader of the free world 'you better not suck'.)

And but so, the thing that struck me, laying there in the dark, not being able to sleep after the night at the game, how beloved Jeter is. People LOVE him. Yankee fans love him anyway, and most Yankee fans I know would like to think that baseball fans in general love Jeter but I think those people would say he was overrated. Nevertheless, the average Yankee fan loves him, adores him, and would stand weak-kneed and voice-atremble if they had the good fortune of actually meeting him. But these are, in many cases, the same people that make Obama’s road to the White House that much more arduous, needing, as it has been reported recently, something like a 5-10% point lead over McCain in the national polls to overcome the unspoken reluctance on the part of those being polled to have a black man as president.

So I thought about how similar Jeter and Obama are in many respects. Well, in some important respects; both children of white mothers and black fathers, both talented but also extremely driven to succeed (i.e. successful because they WORKED for it) and both poised and controlled to the point of being considered ‘cold’ at times. But the comparison is what it is; what I was thinking about, obviously, was the racial aspect.

If asked, I believe, the average Yankee fan would actually honestly be able to say that they have never even thought about Jeter’s race; that they aren’t sure whether they think he’s white or black. That is, it doesn’t even enter their thought process and it’s irrelevant to the question of whether he’s worthy of their admiration, as it should be. The question then remains: why does Obama’s race matter? I think most Americans take sports more seriously than politics, so why does Obama’s race matter and Jeter’s does not?

Is it because the presidency, unlike baseball, hasn’t been integrated yet? Can it actually be the simple fact that it matters because it just hasn’t happened before? Or is it just that the bigotry is always there and, ugly as it is, people instinctively and sub-consciously, don’t want to taint their beloved baseball with the smell of it, but don’t mind making it an issue in the presidential election, a “sport” they care less about and hold, comparatively, less-closely to their collective heart?

I sense that I’m being naïve, but intellectually there seems to be a disconnect that warrants “discussion.” There’s a cutesy argument I use sometimes that inspires a loss for words when I use it (I think because race is still such a taboo in our culture) but isn’t Obama just as white as he is black? Isn’t Jeter? Does it matter? From here all the questions will be rhetorical:

Is Jeter “blacker” than Obama because he actually HAD a black person in his life, raising him and contributing to the person he is whereas Obama ‘only’ had his white mother?

Would Jeter have been perceived as more black now had he been raised, as his own father was, the son of a single mother in Montgomery, Alabama as opposed to the son of two parents in a “whiter” Michigan suburb?

Is it actually skin color (or in this case tone) that makes the difference and are we therefore judging people by the most superficial measure there is?

Are the questions getting ridiculously offensive (or offensively ridiculous) yet?

Who’s whiter (or blacker), the kid from Harlem who’s in love with Mozart’s operas or the Jewish kid from Long Island who knows every 50 Cent lyric by heart?

The problem with these discussions is that the bigotry only really goes one way, despite Obama’s brilliant speech in which he had to hi-light both white-to-black prejudice as well as black-to-white. But isn’t it really only the white-to-black racism that results in economic discrimination, i.e. the only kind that really matters (calling someone a name is bad enough but what really matters is when you don’t pay him the same salary, or even give him the job to begin with, because of his race.)

Thus, the Jewish 50-Cent fan is still a white kid with interesting taste in music, but the black Mozart fan is, as Obama has often been criticized, not “black enough.”

So our only hope, (that hope which is in the soul of our nation and in no other way more about who we are as Americans) after all is to follow the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and others, and make “content of character” the yardstick. That’s really what we like about Jeter anyway; he’s a decent person, who governs himself and his behavior and has a very high standard for his own life, inspiring us, through his actions, to do the same. And Mr. Obama, who doesn’t have the luxury of leading quietly by example (you can’t be quiet and run for president), is the picture of republican responsibility, of religious virtue (no matter what you think his religion is) – a man who grew up in a middle-class family and who, through his mother’s drive to succeed, made the most of his life; went to school, educated himself, married, had kids and just happens to be running for president. Don’t we like all those things? Do we really want to be a nation that rejects everything we love in people because we can’t get over the brown skin?

It should be noted that Jeter has never made any reference to his race whereas Obama clearly identifies himself as black. But Jeter never comments on anything but the game and Obama, again, does not have that luxury.

All that Jeter is to the Yankees, the true leader of the team, widely acknowledged as the lesser player (to A-Rod and others) but the greater man, arguably one of the principal reasons the Yankees have won as much as they have in their recent history, and really the first person of color to join the elite pantheon of Yankee heroes (not a lot black men with retired numbers out there in monument park – Jeter is really the heir to an all-white throne: Ruth/Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle, Munson, Mattingly, Jeter), what if Derek Jeter wanted to play for the Yankees but we told him, sorry, you can only play in Triple-A – we’re just not “ready” for a black Yankee. Up until 53 years ago this would be the case (the Yankees, sadly, embarrassingly, nauseatingly took 7 years after Jackie Robinson to field a non-white player). Still that’s a long time to have passed to still be having this debate. What if we said Jeter can’t play but Sarah Palin can be our back-up first baseman, just in case something happens to Wally Pipp. She played some softball in college and she looks H-O-T in pinstripes, she should be able to figure out how to catch the ball, if it comes to that. But Jeter? Sorry, can’t help you. We’re not ready.