Adios El Capitan

[Edgy MD]

But come on. He TOTALLY plays into it.

Cashes in that stupid CLASSY brand for all it's worth, giving more time, effort, and thought to massaging the image than actually living up to it.

[Guest d'Kong76]

He probably has a staff that massages it as well.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Edgy MD wrote: But come on. He TOTALLY plays into it. Cashes in that stupid CLASSY brand for all it's worth, giving more time, effort, and thought to massaging the image than actually living up to it.

Oh, this. So VERY much this.

Far be it from me to condemn a guy for creating/running a charitable foundation. But I'd just like to note that his is ALL about "healthy activities" for teens (instead of, say, disease eradication, hunger, helping people recover from disasters, or-- hell-- actual teen counseling), that all their messaging spends a lot of time carping about the brand, and that the foundation tends to model its activities-- "Jeter's Leaders," baseball clinics teaching "the right way to play," and vague self-esteem promotion, e.g.-- on the planks of the brand platform.

[Ceetar]

d'Kong76 wrote: He probably has a staff that massages it as well.

And a different staff for a different sort of massage.



But he's so self conscious about his image he says as little to the media as possible and retreats, drops "This is the only time I'm talking about this" ultimatums (AND THEY LISTEN?!) and bans cell phones from his friends when he has parties at his house.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Edgy MD wrote: But come on. He TOTALLY plays into it. Cashes in that stupid CLASSY brand for all it's worth, giving more time, effort, and thought to massaging the image than actually living up to it. Oh, this. So VERY much this. .

Yes, yes. But the success of this bullshittery depends in large part on a medium willing to swallow it -- or unwilling to reject it. And maybe his success at selling it is what they reward in contrast to Arod whom they gleefully shoot down for the crime of desiring to be percieved as Jeterian.

[Edgy MD]

They shoot down Mets on the same terms. Tejada, Harvey, others. Some who I imagined have expressed Re2pect for Cheter, some who I imagine couldn't give 2 shits.

By the way, wtf is Re2pect? An S doesn't look like a 2 and a 2 doesn't look like an S and when I read it, I mentally say "Retwopect," and I sound like a drunk Castillian.

There's brand advancement, there's brand management, and there's brand massaging, but that's like... brand enforcement, or something. Something... far more coercive.

[Ceetar]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Edgy MD wrote: But come on. He TOTALLY plays into it. Cashes in that stupid CLASSY brand for all it's worth, giving more time, effort, and thought to massaging the image than actually living up to it. Oh, this. So VERY much this. . Yes, yes. But the success of this bullshittery depends in large part on a medium willing to swallow it -- or unwilling to reject it. And maybe his success at selling it is what they reward in contrast to Arod whom they gleefully shoot down for the crime of desiring to be percieved as Jeterian.

People are stupid, and they buy what the media sells. Especially before the social media age. It's a lot of chicken/egg stuff, they swallow so the media covers it that way, and the media spews the stuff because they swallow it, etc. And at the time there wasn't a lot of blogs/twitters/etc preaching other lines of though, it was just the mainstream guys. And then he won, which is sorta which Deadspin mentioned, that it reinforced a narrative about how ballplayers are supposed to behave and holds up guys who have won to a different standard.

And like Edgy said, they shoot down Mets, in part because the Mets being losers is the narrative right now. But just wait, if the Mets go to the World Series next year with Harvey being a brash out-going Seaveresque asshole, you might as well deify him.

[nymr83]

Ceetar wrote: And like Edgy said, they shoot down Mets, in part because the Mets being losers is the narrative right now. But just wait, if the Mets go to the World Series next year with Harvey being a brash out-going Seaveresque asshole, you might as well deify him.

I'll sign up for that storyline please!

[Edgy MD]

Seaver-in-his-prime could probably be better described as a cold fish than an asshole.

But he sure was ahead of his time with regard to carefully planned image management.

[Ceetar]

Edgy MD wrote: Seaver-in-his-prime could probably be better described as a cold fish than an asshole. But he sure was ahead of his time with regard to carefully planned image management.

well my impressions of Seaver are mostly filtered through his work as a broadcaster.

I was thinking of a quote that I can't find that Seaver uttered about acting like winners or not tolerating losing or something like that in 67 or 68. It was portrayed like Seaver willed the Mets to be winners with bravado.

[Edgy MD]

Yeah, but that was spun generally positively, a la Jeter. Certainly a negative spin would have been just as valid, and if Seaver went through a struggle early in his career, those words might have blown up in his face.

[Guest Mets Guy in Michigan]

Edgy MD wrote: Seaver-in-his-prime could probably be better described as a cold fish than an asshole. But he sure was ahead of his time with regard to carefully planned image management.

Tom could ruffle a feather or two. Check out the quote from Swoboda in the story.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1906&dat=19710416&id=0NcfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ItkEAAAAIBAJ&pg=664,6476455

Harvey will be fine as long as he is a stud pitcher.

[Guest Mets � Willets Point]

Baseball needs to start again so the Jeter thread is not always at the top.

[Edgy MD]

Mets Guy in Michigan wrote: Edgy MD wrote: Seaver-in-his-prime could probably be better described as a cold fish than an asshole. But he sure was ahead of his time with regard to carefully planned image management. Tom could ruffle a feather or two. Check out the quote from Swoboda in the story. http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1906&dat=19710416&id=0NcfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ItkEAAAAIBAJ&pg=664,6476455 Harvey will be fine as long as he is a stud pitcher.

I have no doubt that's true. There was an incident where Seaver didn't pitch the last game of the season. The Mets had been eliminated, but it could have made the difference between (I think) second or third place and the standings bonuses that represented, and his teammates were pissed.

I just mean to say that GTS had a well polished public image. Middle aged guys like I am now loved the guy. They wanted sons like him --- handsome, athletic, going to college to work instead of to get high, a marine, with a pretty and demure wife, of the hippy generation but apart from them.

This recent bio pretty much sums up all that bullshit, and unfortunately buys it and continues to push it all 30 years after we should have all woken up from the dream. But it's pretty clear the Seaver and DiMaggio and others have been savvy antecedents of Jeter long before the social media world arose.



Dick Young throwing him under the bus may have been a hatchet job that is to his eternal shame, but it's a dark shadow of what made Young a rebellious hero decades earlier, standing apart from the sportswriters who painted characters onto players rather than capturing what was really there.

Nonetheless, I'm totally not ashamed to say that I want Harvey to be less of a douche.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Apropos of nothing, it wasn't a full-page ad in the Times but one of those small, bold-bettered messages at the low margin of the front page, that Tom & Nancy bought.

By the way,a player standing up against the war today is almost unimaginable with the camo unis and everything. The last such "controversy" we may ever hear of this was Castillo being grossed out by blown-off limbs, or Delgado's anthem thing. I thought it was not one of Jeff Wilpon's better moments to unilaterally announce to the press that Delgado would not be doing that as a Met.

[Edgy MD]

Also worth noting is that it took a Puerto Rican living in Canada and playing for a Canadian team to take the step that Delgado did.

That story also gets Seaver's service wrong, identifying him as a soldier instead of as a marine. A serious faux pas with some. Freakin' Fort Scott Tribune.

[Farmer Ted]

A-Rod, not to be outdone...

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/e7a2ded7bb/f13k-a-rod-re2pect-parody

[HahnSolo]

Bad enough teams are falling over themselves to give him gifts on Jeter's last visit to their towns, but the Reds decided (you know, with all that history Jeter has playing against Cincinnati) that they absolutely had to give him a gift on their visit to the Bronx this weekend. Yeesh.
http://cincinnati.reds.mlb.com/news/article/cin/gm-walt-jocketty-todd-frazier-present-derek-jeter-gift-from-reds?ymd=20140719&content_id=85259860&vkey=news_cin

[batmagadanleadoff]

Roger Angell's latest New Yorker piece is also the cover story.

[fimg=444]http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/140908_r254591-320-426.jpg[/fimg]

[Guest d'Kong76]

Not the most flattering caricature.

[Guest Trachsel My Tears]

d'Kong76 wrote: Not the most flattering caricature.

But the butt is there for you to kiss or kick, as you choose.

[Edgy MD]

Additionally makes the Yankee Stadium audience look like the shadowy minions of darkness fluttering around the heights of Bald Mountain. Smokey figures of midnight and murk that are incompatible with light.