Been saying this for years.
Derek Jeter was a great athlete on the field.
And a nobody off it.
Samuel: Jeter honors Ali for living the life he never would
It was the most generic tribute possible, dripping of the exact platitudes we'd expect to hear about The Greatest.
So of course it had to come from Derek Jeter, the most generic superstar athlete of our time.
Oh, the irony. On Saturday, we all mourned the passing of the great Muhammad Ali, fondly recalling the legacy of a man who spent a lifetime transcending his sport, who dared to use his athletic platform to push for social change. It was Ali, dead at 74 on Friday night, who showed a generation of athletes that they could be more than stars, that they could truly impact the world if they so chose.
Jeter made a career of never choosing to truly impact the world. Yet there he was on Saturday, praising Ali for teaching him just that.
"He was one of the first athletes to speak his mind, and that opened the door for the many who do so today," Jeter wrote on his website,
The Players’ Tribune. "He always stood up for what he believed, no matter what the cost.
"Ali was also the first to bring real personality to sports, and by that I mean he was always himself, no matter who he was with or where he was. He freed us all in that way."
Never had such eloquent words of Jeter's PR flaks rung quite this hollow, the most inauthentic athlete of our time celebrating the most genuine. From LeBron James to Chris Paul to Serena Williams, plenty of athletes spent Saturday paying tribute to Ali, but none came off as insincerely as Derek Jeter, "real" personality for hire.
Freedom, Derek? Really? Jeter always had that, from the very moment he landed in the Big Apple spotlight in 1995, a superstar who could have addressed any issue he ever wanted. But Jeter, tone-deaf on Saturday because he never listened to the world in the first place, never understood what Ali really brought, that what he really did was offer a roadmap for today's athlete to be an activist.
Forget personality, Derek. It was how Ali utilized his personality and charisma that mattered. It was Ali's willingness to tell everyone that "No Vietcong ever called me n-----," (words that no journalist could ever spin) that made his "personality" so great, not his ability to use that personality to garner the endorsements of Jeter, the human MLB bobblehead.
For two decades in pinstripes, Jeter wanted no part of authenticity. He made a career out of not speaking his mind, unless Gatorade or Rawlings or the Steiner Sports memorabilia machine were paying him to speak on their behalf. For 20 years, he stood in front of his locker and addressed the media and stood only for his right to stand for absolutely nothing.
You could walk up to Jeter in the Yankee locker room and ask him about his stance on race issues, or his position on the presidential election, or his thoughts on the way Ken Griffey Jr. wore his baseball cap, but there was always a lot of "what am I supposed to say?" rhetoric.
You're supposed to say what you want and what you believe, Derek. That's how the great Muhammad Ali always spoke.
But Jeter was the anti-Ali, and on Saturday, he stood completely out of place paying tribute to Ali's greatness outside the ring. Ali was the forerunner for today's athlete, showing the way for James and Williams and so many others who have used their platforms to push real change.
There was James in 2012, with his Miami Heat teammates, donning hoodies in protest of the murder of Trayvon Martin. Two years later, there he was again sporting a "I Can't breathe" shirt in support of Eric Garner, who was strangled to death by the NYPD. And there was Chris Paul daring to call the racist rants of Clippers owner Donald Sterling "unacceptable" that same year. Later in 2014, there were the St. Louis Rams, opening games with the "hands up, don't shoot" sign in protest of the Michael Brown killing in nearby Ferguson, Mo.
These are the examples of Ali's influence, the continuation of Ali's legacy. Derek Jeter, the blank Yankee billboard who spent his career waiting to be bought, had nothing to do with Muhammad Ali's legacy at all.
But maybe that's not Jeter's fault. Because on Saturday, Derek Jeter, at his most tone-deaf and most generic, proved that he doesn't have anything useful to say, anyway.
