Support for Derek Jeter

Here's the straightforward news: Yesterday I read that New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter had received a piece of threatening, racist hate mail, sent to him because he sometimes dates white women. The threatening letter to Jeter, one of many similar ones mailed from the Cleveland area to prominent African Americans across the country, warns him "to stop or he'll be shot or set on fire." Jeter, whose mother is white and father is black, joins Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, actor Taye Diggs, Miami Dolphins' star Jason Taylor, tennis player James Blake and others as recipients of similar threats. The FBI is investigating.

Now the personal touch: I hate the Yankees and Jeter. For my money [full disclosure: I'm from Boston] Jeter is the most overrated athlete in the history of sport. Any sport. (Apologies to Nolan Ryan, Patrick Ewing, Isiah Thomas, Mia Hamm and Muhammad Ali, and to this ESPN list and this one, too.) His only redeeming quality is that he's named after one of my dad's favorite Boston Bruins players.

I fucking hate Derek Jeter, yes, but it pains me not at all to say that I would gladly wear a #2 pinstriped jersey to Boston's Fenway Park -- in earnest -- if it would do anything to stop this racist asshole from targeting him and others. (Since I'm not a leftist, I know that such knee-jerk, feel-good reactions don't do a lick of good.)

My support for Jeter the man -- and hatred of Jeter the athlete -- is a matter of perspective. Sport matters, but it's not what's truly important in life. As Bob Costas pointed out in an excellent commentary recently on his Costas Now show on HBO, it shouldn't take an incident like this one -- or disaster, death, sickness, etc. -- to put that in perspective. When tragedy strikes, says Costas

...your local or network prompter jockey is certain to solemnly intone, "Well, I guess this really puts it all in perspective."

Well, here's my perspective on that: No it doesn't. Here's the deal: No thinking person needs illness, death, or natural disaster to place the Padres-Rockies game in perspective. Reasonable human beings have it in perspective already, thank you. They know just where it fits. They've figured out that every now and then, something or someone in sports touches something meaningful in us. But overwhelmingly, sports are there for our amusement, distraction, and shared experience. In good times or bad, they lift our spirits, and that's more than good enough.

While I think Costas is being too generous if he's discounting that more than a handful of spectators have indeed lost (or, maybe, never had) perspective about the place of sports in our society -- I recall a good friend of mine blasting Michael Jordan for crying after he won the NBA title in 1993, even though my friend realized he was doing so because it was Father's Day and Jordan's dad had recently been murdered -- I commend Costas for advancing the notion that the goals of every sports fan should be equal parts enjoyment and exhilaration, grounded in enlightenment and perspective.

[Cross-posted at The Agitator.]