What I Think of Derek Jeter...

...And what I think of Jim Rome are obviously two very different things.

In regard to the former, I believe that he is quite a good player--certainly one of the best at his position--and has been so throughout his career. That being said, he has rarely come close at any point in his career to being the best player in baseball, nor has he ever convincingly attained the title of best at his position at any given point in his career.

The point presented by the poll is not that he isn't good; it's that his celebrity outpaces his abilities as an athlete. It's the same story as with Michael "Mike" Vick, Carmelo Anthony, and a hoard of others.

Jeter, so much more so than the others, benefits from the rep as a "clutch player." Of course, when a guy plays an entire ten-year career on playoff-bound teams (many of which went the distance), he gets so many more "big stages" on which to be a hero. As we all know in sports, memories of game-tying dingers off B.H. Kim and outs at the plate on wacky infield cutoff flippy-throws tend to obscure all the just-plain-good or average moments in between. Just take a look at the career playoff numbers for Joe Carter (he didn't just suck as a broadcaster).

So is Derek Jeter good? Absolutely. Is he overrated? Yes.

As for Jim Rome, I know we're all emphatically unanimous on his overall suck. But for anyone else who isn't, that last post was meant not as a knock on Jeter but as an illustration of the rampant egocentrism not only present in the soul of Jim Rome, but in sports discourse and intellectual discourse as a whole.

Instead of actually defering to the opinion of a (presumably) large sample of guys who have played with and/or against the player (and incidentally of many critical baseball experts, not just sentimental ex-players with a soft spot for a "gamer"), he rests on his own ego.

So now that I'm done preaching to the choir...

(P.S.: What makes you think I mispelled "Sports" in my previous post? As a matter of fact, I was indeed speaking of Sporst Illustrated, the monthly publication on the traditional Russian fashion style known as "Sporst." I don't blame you for the mix-up; I was sort of curious myself why a Russian fashion magazine would have a poll about overrated baseball players. Hey, I guess whatever sells subscriptions.)