Derek Jeter breaks his ankle
Sports Saturday
Schedenfreude among many baseball fans has been running wild and free ever since the Detroit Tigers swept the fabled New York Yankees to win the American League pennant. So which poem better captures Detroit’s win? Is it William Blake’s “Tiger, tiger burning bright, in the forests of the night”? Or “Mighty Casey has struck out”?
Outside of the Detroit area, the second narrative appears to be prevailing given the horrendous hitting performance of the Yankees. Their superstar Alex Rodriguez played the role of Casey and has taken most of the heat, but some of his teammates were just as bad. Here’s Roger Angell’s account in The New Yorker:
Granderson went hitless over eleven at-bats. A-Rod was one for nine, or .111; and Swisher, with three hits, managed a lordly .250, but scored no runs. Cano, who was batting .615 over a nine-game stretch before the start of the post-season, managed one hit in his eighteen A.L.C.S. at-bats, or .056. It’s well known that his white-hot streaks often end with a Wile E. Coyote plunge off the mesa, but this one brought no laughs. As for Rodriguez, TBS announcers John Smoltz and Ron Darling explicated that he was “in between,” which is to say that, at age thirty-seven and with nineteen seasons behind him, he can no longer get his bat around on ninety-seven-m.p.h. fastballs, and so was forced to start his swing before he saw the pitch, which left him pathetically vulnerable to breaking balls.
We’ll have more occasion to write about the Tigers—maybe I’ll even apply Blake’s poem—but right now I want to focus on the Yankees and something that felt even more momentous than the team’s batting slump: Derek Jeter’s broken ankle.
No one is saying that “the Captain,” as Jeter is known, has played his last game. Even at 39 one can come back from a broken ankle. Nevertheless, it felt like the end of an era. Put that notion together with Jeter’s nickname and it conjures up the famous Walt Whitman poem about the death of Lincoln.
Of course, there are differences. Abraham Lincoln died after he won his war whereas Jeter’s injury, coming at the end of the first playoff game, may have played a role in the Yankees losing the series. Furthermore, it’s melodramatic to apply lines like “bleeding drops of red” and “fallen cold and dead” to Jeter’s injury. Real death puts athlete injuries into proper perspective. But that being said, a little hyperbole is in order when one sees the Yankees’ foundational player–its rock that has weathered every rack–being carted off the field. Although I am a Baltimore Orioles fan whose team has been victimized time and again by “the Captain,” I felt real sadness when Jeter went down.
Before I share Whitman’s poem, allow me to mention another legendary captain who went down this past week and who could well have played his last game. The Baltimore Ravens’ Ray Lewis, one of the best and most charismatic linebackers of all time, tore an arm muscle and is out for the season. As aging players with dwindling skills, neither Lewis nor Jeter have been performing as they did in their heyday. Their teams will lose a key part of their identity, however, without them.
Here’s Whitman’s poem:
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
The arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.