For some reason, it is very important for Mike Lupica to convince Yankee fans to abandon their team.

Baseball is not basketball.

Keep in mind as you read this weird attempt to convince Yankee fans to abandon their team:

"The Yankees had Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte and Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams, and for a time it was as storied a five as the Knicks once had in the old days. One by one they all left, and now it is only Jeter left."

Like sands through the hour glass ...


"And when he is gone at the end of this season, the Yankees will go on, the brand of the Yankees will go on, the big business of the Yankees sure will."

The Yankees are very successful financially despite the decades-long barbs from New York sportswriters.


"Oh, we will continue to hear about how the pinstripes and the uniform and the place will transform the new hired guns they bring in. That will happen just by hype and old glory, like the kind we get about Madison Square Garden still being a mecca of basketball after one victory in a playoff series in the past 14 years."

I think the Yankees will have to win ballgames. But why are you mentioning basketball again?


"But once Jeter is gone, there is no one who connects to any of that. There really is no one. It is why the notion that Jeter got too much money in that last contract scrum he had with the Yankees a few years ago was always so chowderheaded, and short-sighted. Or it was just people just thinking and saying what the people running the Yankees wanted them to think and say. You could never properly quantify what Jeter has meant to the brand, and still means."

I think Mark Teixeira is the obvious choice to carry on the Mr. Clutch tradition. Nothing to worry about whatsoever.

As for properly quantifying what Jeter means to the brand, the Yankees quantified it at $20 million per year.


"Tim Duncan will never be treated or considered the way Jeter has been, like that kind of surpassing and iconic star of this time in American sports. Duncan never had New York, never had the Yankees, never was marketed that way because he frankly didn’t want to be. But the two of them are remarkably the same, and not just because they have each won five championships.

Duncan came along in 1997, one year after Jeter became the Yankee starter at shortstop. Only now, after all the winning he has done with the Spurs, he still is part of the Core Three in San Antonio along with Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker. They just won another NBA title together a month ago, and thrilled us all the way they did. The supporting cast in San Antonio, incidentally, has been replenished without spending a fortune year after year — after year — on hired guns."

Let's see ...

1) Why basketball again?

2) Tim Duncan is highly regarded, thank you very much.

3) The Spurs are better than the Yankees for sure. The Spurs play a different sport. So what is your point?


"The current manager of the team is a good guy. CC Sabathia seemed to embrace the culture before he broke down this way, and the back end of his contract became the pitching version of Alex Rodriguez's. We will never know how Robinson Cano's presence and excellence — and the fact that he was actually the first star, homegrown position player since Jeter — would have factored into all of this, because the Yankees chose not to give him 10 years at a time when they gave Jacoby Ellsbury seven."

Before Cano signed with Seattle, Lupica spent a lot of time pre-emptively criticizing the Yankees' signing of Cano. To act like Cano 10 years and $240M is worth it and to act like Cano was poised to take over the leadership reins is a nonsensical fabrication.


"The Yankees will go on, and will win again. It just won’t be like the winning they got from Jeter and Bernie and Mo, Pettitte and Posada. And Paul O'Neill. There will never again be a time like this. Jeter takes that with him. They can buy a lot at Yankee Stadium, maybe even one more postseason for Derek Jeter.

But when he goes, in all the ways that matter at the Stadium, there is no one."

Is Jeter retiring, or something?

Thanks for the heads up. The Yankees and MLB should probably look into this. It would be a shame if he went through the entire season without recognition of some sort.


"I don’t know how long this all can last with the Mets, but they have sure been fun to watch lately.

And for a couple of weeks they’ve been a whole lot more fun to watch than the Yankees."

Right. You have been saying this for 15 years ... an observation build on the premise that Mike Lupica actually watches baseball games.

Like, the Mets were 11 games under .500 and he gathered the family in front of the TV on a Friday night and got a big bowl of popcorn. "Everybody get ready. They're about to win 9 out of 11 and it's gonna be great!"

Besides, the 2014 Yankees is a very low bar to set in terms of excitement. Unless leaving men on base is your idea of excitement.

One afternoon, I almost watched soccer instead ... but soccer was even worse.