DEREK, YOU BREAK MY HEART!
Gutting mascot a firing too far
THE Evil Empire has certainly left its mark on the nice guy formerly known as Derek Jeter. In his brief tenure as Miami Marlins CEO, Jeter has channeled his best George Steinbrenner, ruthlessly gutting his roster of its best young talent, including megastar Giancarlo Stanton.
Fine. Maybe he’s suffering from chronic sunstroke.
But the final, most sinister straw came Monday when Jeter callously tossed the team mascot — or at least the poor sap who’s sweated inside a fish costume for 14 years — into Biscayne Bay.
“Dad, he fired Billy the Marlin!” my 16-year-old son, Derek, wailed. “Why’d he do that?”
I had no answer for my son — who I now have second thoughts about naming after the future Hall of Famer.
The Yankees don’t have a mascot, but even Stein World brenner had the sense to keep Don Zimmer around.
Yet Jeter offered no explanation, and John DeCicco, the 42year-old guy in the fish suit, has clammed up.
In an e-mail to a friend that was shared with me, he simply said, “I am officially a part of the ‘Different Direction’ Club!”
Jeter’s bloodletting would make Michael Corleone proud.
I have a personal stake in Jeter’s behavior.
Following the 2000 Subway Series, Jeter was the King of New York and seemingly could do no wrong. When my son was born on Sept. 4, 2001, my Italian-American parents were floored when we didn’t name him Dean or Joey or Tony. We named him after the shortstop of the New York Yankees because Jeter
led by example — and everyone gushed how he did things “the right way.”
John Sterling, the voice of the Yankees, also named his son Derek, after Jeter.
Like countless other boys, my Derek idolizes Jeter and started playing baseball because of him. We were at the Stadium on that wonderful July 9, 2011, Saturday afternoon when he got his 3,000th hit off David Price. The wide-eyed then-9-year-old, believing Jeter could do anything, correctly predicted the historic hit would be a home run.
But it appears Jeter’s empathy has gone on an extended West Coast road trip.
Firing a longtime scout who has cancer? Kicking fan favorite Jeff Conine to the curb? They didn’t even get a gift basket.
As a Yankee fan, I’ll give Jeter a mulligan on Stanton.
But sacking the team mascot, whose annual salary amounts to what Jeter would make in one book signing? Pretty cruel stuff. These days, I wonder if I should have named my son Bernie, after my favorite Yankee, Bernie Williams — an assassin on the diamond and an artist off it.
But I didn’t want to stick him with the name Bernie Balsamini.