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Kevin S.
14 years ago

What’s a theif?

And how dare you besmirch the good named of the bestest shortstop to ever don the cleats?! wink

Jason @ IIATMS
14 years ago

I can’t be baited.  Don’t know, don’t care.  102nd victory with Kyle Farnsworthless self-imploding in glorious fashion can do that to me…

Craig Calcaterra
14 years ago

Dear God, I’m a can’t-spell-nothin’ dumbass.  Fixed now.

I can guarantee you that everyone negative comment on that post over at NBC will be along the lines of “Jeter is the bestest evar!!! U suk, dood!”

YankeesfanLen
14 years ago

This whole thing was staged to Cecil B. DeMille standards.  Everyone knows (or should know) that carte blanche was given to players for dibs on OYS. Yesterday’s extravaganza was hawked as a surprise by Waldman when even people on LoHud knew what was happening that morning.
I guess we’re supposed to believe that Jewelers’ Row is quiet when Hal comes shopping for baubles.
Thanks for re-posting over here Craig.  Too early in the day to be jostled.

Matt M
14 years ago

You could also rile up your friends with another post complaining about the stupidity of celebrating a Wild Card berth backed into in the midst of a 5-game losing streak. Or you could defend it by arguing that the Red Sox put themselves in the position to clinch in spite of their poor play lately. Either way, you’re bound to get some traffic. grin

Grant
14 years ago

Couldn’t bring myself to read the comments over there. The first comment on the bit about Mike Schmidt was bad enough.

Yurg.

Simon DelMonte
14 years ago

I thought you take a perverse and sadistic pleasure in baiting Mets fans (which being a Braves fan makes perfectly normal).

MJ
14 years ago

As I posted on CTB, troll of the year smile

Kevin S.
14 years ago

Although, after reading that thread… Craig, do you just do this to convince the rational among us that something when terribly wrong when we became Yankee fans?

YankeesfanLen
14 years ago

The Blue Network Gang is at it again, deriding your jpurnalistic skills because they don’t like the subject matter.
Establish some street cred Craig- Let them know you write book reviews for the New York Post! Even though they don’t publish them as they’re written at over third grade level.

John_Michael
14 years ago

Brilliant.

The best joke is the kind where the subject didn’t even know that there was a joke.

Chris Kash
14 years ago

Wow Craig? Are you feeling feisty today.It’s like you have a death wish provoking those morons.

Brian
14 years ago

I was hoping for some references to Cap’n Jetes’ tax issues, too.  You might have caused some brains to explode in Yankeeland.

MooseinOhio
14 years ago

I love the fact that you seem to take pleasure in poking the animals every once in awhile just to see how they will react.  Maybe next time you could use an even sharper stick and Photoshop Jeter into the picture of A-rod kissing himself in the mirror to see how much poo gets thrown your way.

Getting compared to Perez Hilton has to be a highlight of your day.

Detroit Michael
14 years ago

So do you make fun of the THT posters over there when you are talking to the NBC posters?  I don’t read enough of their comments to find out on my own.

smile

Craig Calcaterra
14 years ago

Moose: I love it. Perez Hilton makes, like, $900,000 a year, and he has to risk liability for defamation and physical assault to do it. If all I have to do for that kind of scratch is to say true yet mildly unflattering things about Jeter, sign me up!

Detroit: I used to slag on you guys all the time over there. I don’t anymore, though, because multisyllabic words tend to make people’s heads asplode over there.

Ryan
14 years ago

Holy crap! I was almost cringing reading that comment thread. If I were you I’d almost take it personally, if not for the overwhelming vapidity and cluelessness of the NBC posters.  Where do they get the ideas that you A) can’t comment on the news B) went to journalism school C) call yourself a journalist?  Man, that’s something.  Keep it up!

MJ
14 years ago

You should change “Baseball.Blogging.Whenever” to

Brian
…“the Ambulance chaser of journalism.”

smile

bigcatasroma
14 years ago

I love the discrepency in the time it took to read the article – apparently anywhere from 30 seconds (comment 37) to *ten* minutes (comment 38). 

Even the readers of the Derek-Jeter-is-a-liar post are liars!

The Common Man
14 years ago

You, sir, are quite the fisherman, catching 118 fish on one worm.

Daniel
14 years ago

My favorite types of comments over there are the ones who feel that they are entitled to some sort of grand meaning or relevance in each post that goes up. 

Thought process: “I could be working on this report for my boss…nah, I’ll go check out Circling the Bases.  Oooh, here’s something about that studmuffin, Derek Jeter.  [Reads, growing angrier]  Hey!  This isn’t flattering worship, this is criticism!  And meaningless criticism at that!  How dare a random blogger waste my time by making me read this!  I demand more substance from free internet blogs!”

The beauty of it is that Craig knew this would happen, so the post itself is almost irrelevant compared to the response.  I see your subtle machinations, Shyster.  Good work.

Mark
14 years ago

Whenever someone twangs Jeter in some funny way that gets the True Believers frothing at the mouth, an angel gets his wings.

Jack Marshall
14 years ago

Wow! I don’t get the venom at all. If Yankee players were given carte blanche to loot old Yankee stadium, that’s news. If Jeter stole something of value without permission, THAT’S news. If he lied to the Times about it, that’s news too….and if he stole it, then had it given back to himself as a phony honor, that’s hilarious. Plus, all of these tell us something about Jeter’s character and integrity that can weaken his candidacy for the Hall of Fame. (Kidding! KIDDING!!!)

It’s a perfectly responsible post.

(Matt: Red Sox fans are far from happy with the team playing so crappy on the way to clinching, but are also used to Tito’s pre-playoff rope-a-dope ways. And they’ve worked out pretty well.)

Steve A
14 years ago

I’m just waiting for Jim Ross to post the following over there.

“OH MY GOD!  Is that Cap’n Jeter’s music I hear?!?!?!”

YankeesfanLen
14 years ago

Of such stuff did William Randolph Hearst get his start.

Mode
14 years ago

I’m going to try to write this without sounding like the fanboy.  I am a Yankee fan.  I am a Derek Jeter fan.  I recently bought his book “The Life You Imagine” for my daughter.  It’s full of everything you want your child to emulate. 

Could it all be true about the sign, but the Yankees asked him to give it back so that they could give it to him properly?  Could he have said “no”?  I suppose, but that wouldn’t make sense.

He obviously doesn’t need me defending him, but it does tweak me some that most of the overly good and overly bad press he gets is not born out of the way he talks and acts.

/steps off soap box he didn’t really want to be on in the first place

Chris Simonds
14 years ago

bigcatasroma –

You lack understanding and need to cut the NBC audience some slack.It takes a lot longer than 30 seconds to read one of Craig’s posts when you have to follow the words along on the screen with your finger and mouth the syllables under your breath.

Jeff
14 years ago

Wow!  Those are some real knuckleheads over there. People like that make it tough to admit to being a Yankee fan.  What percentage of Yankee fans are complete morons?  Or is the small percentage just very vocal?

Chris H.
14 years ago

OK, admit it Craig, you’re not even trying to just blog over there anymore.  You’re just all about baiting the mouth-breathers, now.

The best bit is that either NBC hasn’t figured it out or doesn’t care.

Money for nothing, baby.

Mode
14 years ago

Ok, I decided to read some of the comments on the NBC site.  My favorite by far was the commentor that asked if you could be guilty of “liable”[sic]
Good stuff.

But I do believe that it’s possible that he took the sign and gave a wink and some words to the reporter. At some point later, the Yankees told him they were going to have a ceremony giving players some stuff from the old stadium and wanted to present him with the sign.  He would have no choice but to agree.

Obviously this is hypothetical, but also at least, I think, a conceivable story that would prove that it wasn’t Jeter himself that was trying for self promotion/aggrandizement.

Bob
14 years ago

When will the people who get such a big kick out these silly little anti-Yankee pokes and jabs realize they’re no better than the Yankee fanboys who overreact to them?

RP
14 years ago

Craig, thanks for that post.  My immediate thought was that in the battle of wits, the attackers would be bringing knives to a gunfight.  Over the first 50 or so posts, I realized they were bringing, at best, rotten tomatoes to a gunfight.  Now I realize that’s an insult to rotten tomatoes.

Attention villages everywhere—if you’re missing an idiot, please check the CTB comment threads.

Yankee Fan
14 years ago

Some Jackasses will smear anyones good name to get recognition. Well I cecognize this guy is a fool.

YankeesfanLen
14 years ago

Hey, that last post was definitely not me, and I doubt if the imposter knows the secret handshake.
This has been a fun day and from the start a lot of people fell for the old editorial trick of offering 2 choices in response to a debate when “something else” is the proper answer.
The Times article was a feel good feature piece that reviewed what OYS meant to various players over an 85 year history. Nothing more, nothing less. The bulk of Yankee fans support our team for it’s traditions, busness-like atmosphere with a spirit of comradary among the players and dedication to the fans.  Those who appreciate quality realize this goal.
The average mind talks about people
The thoughtful mind talks about events
The superior mind talks about ideas

Jacob
14 years ago

Congratulations, Craig.  You just passed 200 comments on the Jeter post at CTB.

Craig Calcaterra
14 years ago

Today . . . I consider myself . . . the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.

mike in brooklyn
14 years ago

Craig—I rarely stay over at that other site to read your NBC stuff.  But I saw so many articles that refused to glorify the Yanks or Red Sox, that I stayed to read a bunch.

And I read the comments too.  I really don’t know how you deal with it, man.  I’m guessing you just don’t read them.  As far as I can tell, if you aren’t willing to bow at the feet either team, it is because you are jealous.  This doesn’t even make sense.

Also, you are a loser, bitter, and—my favorite—a Mets Fan! (?)  I think they somehow got you mixed up with me.

Craig Calcaterra
14 years ago

I actually read every single comment. I get them automatically emailed to me. Sure, if it’s just a screed I skim and delete it pretty quickly, but I see it all.

The negativity really doesn’t bother me. Unlike here, I really don’t write there expecting a meaningful dialogue. I get one from time to time and when I do I’m very happy, but I keep my expectations low and don’t let the bad stuff bother me. I know, based on the numbers, that the people who are reacting negatively are dwarfed by the number of people simply reading.  I don’t set out to be a jackass (most of the time anyway), but the day I write something provocative and fail to get a reaction is the day I’ll start feeling bad about things.

Loren
14 years ago

The thought that kept coming up for me reading those 200 comments was,
“so if this post were the best one ever written in the history of blogs, could I then somehow get those 30 seconds of my life back?”

Mode
14 years ago

Wow, my third comment here, I must really care about this, and that’s a little sad.

I want to take you a little to task on cherry-picking the comments that you responded to today.  It seems you responded to easy marks and/or compliments when there were many (gasp, even better than mine) very well articulated arguments against your post.  I realize you can only respond to a fraction of them, but I would think you would respond to those that spent some time thinking before responding.

One more angle.  I do think “thief” is too strong a term, and yes, I know what the definition is.  In this situation, I still don’t think it holds. 

Question. At the end of the year, if Joe Mauer takes his name plate from his Metrodome locker and puts it in his trophy case at home, will you think of him as a thief?  I wouldn’t, and for the same reason I don’t think Jeter is a “thief”.

And since he admitted taking it, that makes him a truthful person.

So my answer(opinion) to your question, “Derek Jeter: a liar or a thief,” is “no”.

Jack Marshall
14 years ago

Mode, I’m curious: why is it you think “thief” isn’t an appropriate term? The object taken has value, probably a lot of value. He did not have permission to take it, unless you assume (and by your Mauer example, maybe you do) that contract employees of baseball teams have presumed consent from their teams to lift any part of the team’s physical plant for yuks, to put up on Ebay, to give to a mistress, or to hang in his Cave of Treasures. “Thief” is the correct word for an employee of a bank who takes an office chair home, and even office supplies appropriated without permission make one a thief at some point between a paper clip and a Rolodex. Exactly what part of the “thief” concept would Jeter be missing, unless you subscribe to the “if you’re a big enough shot that you know nobody will have the guts to object when you rob them, then it ain’t thievery” theory?

Jack Marshall
14 years ago

Mode…a quick follow-up: while you are at it, I’d also love to know which of the responses you consider “well-articulated arguments.” I just plowed through that mess. “He’s a great guy, and can take it if he wants,” “Maybe the Yankees said he could,” “It’s nothing compared to what other people steal,” “It doesn’t matter” “The principles of conversion don’t apply to great shortstops,” “He deserves it”—-the BEST of these are called rationalizations, not arguments, and they are all invalid, every single one. (A lot of them, interestingly, are identical to the “arguments” being made online elsewhere about how it’s unfair to arrest poor old Roman Polanski for drugging a 13-year old and then raping her. He’s such a great director, after all. And after all this time, what difference does it make, really? And if the Yankees—-oops, I mean the girl—says it’s OK now, it isn’t still rape, right?)

Mode
14 years ago

Jack, in your world there are blacks and whites.  In my world there are grays.

You are entitled to your say a thief is a thief no matter what.  This is what I see. 

White = People who steal lives
Very light gray = People who steal money
.
.
.
.
.
.
Almost totally black = Baseball players who take momentos from stadiums that are about to be demolished.
A little blacker = people who steal a sliver of wood off someone’s wood pile to pick their teeth.
Black = People who don’t steal.

In your world all but the pure black would get the monicker “thief,” and literally you would be right.  In my world, I just wouldn’t use the word thief because I think its connotation is too strong for the actual deed that transpired. 

That’s my opinion.  Please feel free to continue to patronize me on the definition of thief.

The real question is, where does it fall on your list of baseball transgressions?  I think it won’t be in the final tally.  I’ll be watching.

Mode
14 years ago

Golly Jack, patronize much?  Did any of my comments make you believe that you can lump me in with the moron commentors.

There were a few good comments.  I have to go coach my kids soccer practice right now.  So your response will have to wait until tonight or tomorrow.

Can’t wait, can you!!!???!!!

Here’s some fodder for your next comment.  I live in Santa Cruz County, CA and I voted for Bush. OOOOOHHHHH, On a silver platter for you.

Jack Marshall
14 years ago

Mode: So your answers are 1)“I don’t believe stealing makes you a thief” and 2) “How dare you?”
Got it. Next, you can tell me what your definition of “patronizing” is. I didn’t say you were a moron; if you were a moron, I wouldn’t have asked. I was genuinely curious which of those arguments you would call “good” (I know you never actually said “good,” you said “articulate.” There were quite a few articulate comments. If you didn’t mean to suggest they were good as well, I misunderstood you. But based on the above, I gather you agree with some of them.)

I have no idea why you think where you live and who you voted for years ago has any relevance here at all.

RP
14 years ago

I almost feel obligated to stir the pot and asking Bob what was wrong with voting for Bush, when the alternative was Kerry and John “It’s Not Mine” Edwards… I think South Park correctly analogized the choices in that elections to one between a douche and a turd.

Jack Marshall
14 years ago

Mode: I too will apologize for using your comments as a springboard to make a point, and for sounding snotty in the process. I admire Jeter in every respect, including his character. Yeah, he has a smug presence that drives me nuts, but only because I root against his team. I don’t think his theft (and it was one, though I’m certain he didn’t see it that way) is “harmless”—if you or I did exactly the same thing, with exactly as much right to do it (none) as he had, we would be prosecuted. What he took had value (some Yankee collector would have paid many thousands for it on Ebay, I bet.) Jeter was acting on a perception of privilege—obviously the team would never go after him—-and such an attitude is almost inevitable for any human being in Jeter’s position. But it is dangerous, to Jeter, because he can begin to think the rules don’t apply to him. And most of the comments to Craig’s post would push him there: their main argument was that the theft didn’t matter because it was Jeter, and Jeter is great. Let’s ask Bill Clinton where this gets you.

RP
14 years ago

Mode, your argument may make more sense if you acknowledged that what Jeter did was theft, yet harmless.  I think that’s the argument you’re making.  But Jeter is still a thief under that definition, which you seem reluctant to admit.

Don’t worry—when it comes out that Jeter was Bernie Madoff’s partner in crime and helping Iran hide its nuclear weapons program, all of this will be forgotten.

Mode
14 years ago

I think this may get lost in the night and under the new news of tomorrow, and maybe that’s for the best.

Mr. Marshall, here are 2 comments from the NBC side that made sense and could have used a response:  Fred @ 1:51 and Jim @ 2:44.  Oh, and mine from this site (maybe).  None of them were the ones you mentioned.  And really, they’re not about the thief part, as I didn’t even go into that until my third comment.

I will also apologize about the tone of my last comment as I got a little frustrated.  For whatever reason, I often read your comments as if from someone who is angry, which is wrong of course.  You actually may always be smiling while you type.  But I felt I was being attacked, not your fault.

Maybe RP is right, I should agree that the incident can be called a theft, but harmless.

I am a poor debater and I probably tried to defend my words without success.

What I’ll do instead is just say that I admire Derek Jeter for what he’s done and what he seems, to me, to stand for (albiet, through pin-stripe emblazened glasses).  I also think labeling him a thief or a liar under these circumstances feels, to me, like an attempt at muddying his reputation without due cause.

I will end with another poor argument, that I tried to use before.  After the last game in the Metrodome, will someone be labeling all the Twins that leave with a memento, thieves?

dlf
14 years ago

I love it when Craig stirs the pot.  It makes for good reading on a slow morning.

I was at the game on Tuesday in seats provided by a client—right behind home, one row up from the “legends” seats.  I’m no Yankee fan (go Braves!) but thought parts of the ceremony were fun.  It was great seeing old Yanks like David Cone, Tino Martinez, Bernie Williams, Tim Raines, Stick Michael, Dave Winfield (the only one not in a Yankee jacket), and Reggie Jackson come out to present little tidbits—the seats Jeter dove into in that Red Sox game, the bullpen bench, etc.—to Mariano and the Dreamy One.  It was even better listening to the ovation Yogi Berra got when he came out.  (Which leads to the question: who has bigger ears, Yogi or Posada?)

By the way, lumping Melky Cabrera hitting for the cycle into the celebration was odd and rather forced.  One guy sets the franchise record in hits, another becomes the second to have 500 saves, and the third … legged out a triple when Jermaine Dye misread a fly ball and jogged to the warning track.

The sign theft?  Great subject for a blog post if only to bring out the best in the supporters from the Bronx.