Jeter may be MLB’s last true celebrity
Derek Jeter won’t be the first player elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame in unanimous fashion. His Yankees teammate, Mariano Rivera, beat him to that distinction just a year ago.
Yet as ballots are tallied in January and induction ensues July 26 in Cooperstown, Jeter, unanimous or not, will represent a final checkpoint in baseball’s shrine: the last Hall of Famer for whom widespread fame was truly a part of the equation.
While advanced metrics and a general sense he was merely an average defensive shortstop have haunted Jeter the past two decades, he is objectively, overwhelmingly qualified for Cooperstown. With 3,465 hits and a .310 batting average over 20 seasons, and a postseason dossier extensive enough to comprise a 21st season, Jeter has more than enough ammo to quiet the naysayers.
He will have his day at the Hall, and if his 2014 farewell tour is any indication, the grassy expanses of Cooperstown will be overflowing with pinstriped and gray No. 2 jerseys. As the
final single numeral in Yankees history enters Cooperstown, it in a way closes the book on an era when baseball – and its greatest stars – enjoyed a prominent place in the nation’s zeitgeist.
Oh, we’re not here to weep for baseball. With industry revenue approaching $11 billion, nobody is going broke. With countless ways to access the game – via mobile apps, social media channels or even still through the magic of television – today’s big-leaguers can touch many more corners of the world than their predecessors.
Yet since the time Jeter first stepped on the field in 1995 to this year when he’ll earn Hall of Fame induction, baseball has faced a vexing and ruthless dichotomy: As it stacks cash, it withers away cultural currency.
Much has been made of Major League Baseball’s inability to market its stars, and many of those critiques are fair. Yet consider the cultural landscape in 1996, when Jeter claimed American League Rookie of the Year honors and the first of five championships with the Yankees, and today.
Jeter and the Yankees’ Game 6 conquest of the Braves was watched by 30.4 million people, earning a 19.1 rating and 34 audience share, according to Nielsen. The four top-rated shows that week? World Series Game 5, Game 6, Game 4 and Game 3.
Game 2 ranked ninth that week but it drew 19.4 million viewers and a 14 rating, outdrawing Monday Night Football’s 17.8/12, and relegating MNF – entrenched on ABC for 25 years at that point – to a 19th-place finish.
This year? The Nationals and Astros provided a compelling and occasionally controversial seven-game drama that was a delight for baseball aficionados – but a relative blip at the proverbial water cooler.
Some 23 million viewers watched the decisive Game 7, but the World Serieswide numbers were cut almost exactly in half from Jeter’s Fall Classic debut: an 8.1 rating, a 16 share, with 13.9 million average viewers, compared to 17.4/29/ 25.2 million in ’96.
The head-to-head, over-the-air showdown with Big Football also flipped: This year’s Game 5 World Series notched a 2.4 rating and 10.2 million viewers, no match for Sunday Night Football’s Kansas City-Green Bay tilt that attracted a 5.1 rating and 16.9 million viewers.
Of course, this relevance drain is not unique to baseball, or virtually anything that’s not the NFL.
The same year the Jeter-era Yankees won their first title, NBC’s “Friends” saw its viewership peak at 29.4 million viewers per episode; even still, its 18.7 rating was only good for third place that year, behind “ER” (22) and “Seinfeld” (21.2). Yet even as “Friends” climbed to No. 1, its audience dropped from that point onward, a harbinger of what all media would face in coming decades.
Like World Series ratings, TV’s megafranchises aren’t what they were; CBS’ “The Big Bang Theory” finished first, second or third in its last four seasons, but its best rating was just 12.7 in those four years leading up to its 2019 finale.
Same for Jeter, whose good looks, benign manner and placement on one of the world’s most iconic franchises made for a near perfect storm of marketability.
Never mind the decades-long relationships with Gatorade and Nike – where he ranked just below MJ himself on the Jordan Brand masthead. Jeter’s borderline A-list status looks even more stark in this era when baseball stars starve for recognition.
He guested 11 times on David Letterman’s show. Sat down with Barbara Walters. Remains the only baseball player ever to host an episode of “Saturday Night Live.” Made an appearance on “Seinfeld” and acted alongside Jack Nicholson and Adam Sandler and Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell on the silver screen.
Little wonder, then, that at the time of his retirement, Jeter ranked second to only Peyton Manning among active athletes in name recognition, according to Forbes.
Today’s stars are far from that lofty status, even if they’re better baseball players than Jeter.
While the Q Ratings system is not a perfect science, it’s nonetheless notable that three-time AL MVP and burgeoning all-time great Mike Trout is familiar with just 22% of the public, and 50% of sports fans, according to an August survey. (Steph Curry and Drew Brees doubled his number in the former category, and Tom Brady and LeBron James in the latter).
There’s a multitude of reasons why baseball – with its slower pace and structure that makes star-making far less conducive than the NBA or NFL – struggles in this environment. TV ratings tell one story; social media followings tell another.
Trout and the occasionally brash Bryce Harper each have 1.7 million Instagram followers. Mookie Betts, an MVP and World Series champion on the highly popular Red Sox, has 691,000.
For context: LeBron James has 54 million Instagram followers; his 15-yearold son, Bronny, has more than double Trout’s total, with 3.9 million. Trout might mean the world to baseball, a far more significant figure than, say, the Jazz’s Donovan Mitchell is to the NBA. Yet even Mitchell (2.7 million) enjoys a far healthier social media presence than Trout.
How would a young Jeter fare in this environment if he debuted in 2016 instead of 1996?
Would his high-profile relationships (Mariah Carey, Jessica Biel, Minka Kelly, etc.) help him win the proverbial internet and burnish his fame?
Or would his reserved public manner, combined with baseball’s overall challenge to maintain its foothold in a buzzier, busier world, confine him to fringe celebrity?
Regardless, it still feels as if he’s the last of his kind.