Bronx Bummer: Is Derek Jeters Hits Record Worth All the Hubbub?
In Los Angeles, as far as Major League Baseball gets from the Bronx, there was very little talk of Derek Jeter’s quest to pass Lou Gehrig as the New York Yankees’ franchise record-holder in number of hits. Yet on the other coast, from Chi-Town to Charleston, from Tampa Bay to Boston’s Back Bay, news of the Yankee captain’s search for greatness was a headline. Thanks mostly to ESPN’s East Coast bias, the story of Jeter’s climbing to the highest rung of the Pinstripe ladder became an important one. What was once a 10-second factoid on the Yankee Stadium scoreboard became a nationally anticipated event. But is it truly worth all the fanfare? After all, the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown has a very loose policy, but a policy nonetheless: Franchise records are of little to no consideration in regards to a player’s credentials for the Hall. Jeter’s eclipsing Gehrig happened in the same week that NFL football kicks off, and in the same week that Yankees rival David Ortiz became the all-
