Every now and then you run across a true role model – not one that you admire as a kid because you do not know any better, or the one that you look up to until they give you a reason not to. A true role model is someone who you continue to emulate; who never lets you down, but instead gives further cause for admiration.
On Feb. 12, my hero announced the end of his reign.
While it was effectively his 40-week notice, Derek Jeter made public his intention that the 2014 season would be his last as a ballplayer.
There are very few in the game whose retirement announcement can reverberate throughout the game as deeply as this, but the grief that has stricken the realm of baseball since only speaks to further Jeter’s character.
You do not have to look far to find a shortstop wearing the No. 2, but this trend truly began in Kalamazoo, Mich. For as long as Jeter has been able to throw a baseball, he has wanted to roam as shortstop for the New York Yankees. The dream was not so unique – how many millions of kids have said at one time or another that their dream was to be the shortstop for the Yankees? For the past 20 years, however, Jeter has fulfilled that dream.
With the same grace that Jeter displayed so often on the diamond, he described perfectly his pursuit of that vision.
“From the time I was a kid, my dream was always very vivid and it never changed: I was going to be the shortstop for the New York Yankees,” Jeter wrote on Facebook. “It started as an empty canvas more than 20 years ago, and now that I look at it, it’s almost complete. In a million years, I wouldn’t have believed just how beautiful it would become.”
Maybe the greatest compliment I can give Derek Jeter is that he never let me down, but yet, it seems to sell him short. I do not believe that role models are formed so much through avoidance of wrong as they are the pursuit of right.
Jeter endured baseball’s infamous steroid era without ever gracing the list of those in suspicion. Jeter is ultimately loyal; he has been a Yankee since day one and was never one to exploit free agency or jump ship for more money. You never read Jeter’s name in the tabloids and you never saw him explode on the field. In fact, to this day Jeter has never been ejected from a game.
Derek Jeter taught me how to play baseball, in more ways than one. He taught me how to play the game, but also taught how the game is played.
The game of baseball will be missing its greatest ambassador come 2015.
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