I want to keep it simple, though such things never are. Derek Jeters playing career ended today, after two decades. He was for me the best baseball player of his time and someone whose skills, or, really, whose presence, I admired more than those of any other figure in sports. An old Basque priest whom I was fortunate to know for a number of years up at Notre Dame parish in New York City, before he moved down to La Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, once preached that the basis of a satisfying and holy life lay within a combination of three attributes: dedication, joy, and tenacity. (And yes, the first and third are different....) When you have the privilege of seeing someone -- a cook, a bricklayer, an artist, an athlete -- do what he or she does so well that in their doing one can see the years and years of work, the distinct personality and the essentially human enacted together: in work: it is always beautiful, and always moving. Jeter was one of those rare players in whom one could see this every time he came up to hit, every time he touched the ball. He simply never let up. One never saw his gifts -- one saw his work. A characteristic image: he is throwing the ball to first base with his legs four feet off the ground. He had a strong arm -- but to do this accurately and with great force as he did it over and over and over -- and you can bet he was coached not to -- requires an unspeakable amount of practice. He would field a ground ball to his right and to make his turn toward first base, he would *leap* -- not like a player in a sport but like a figure from nature itself. You could see the joy, and the dedication in those soaring throws. Occasionally too youd be privileged to see the astounding tenacity. It is captured forever in this famous play. Watch his face. He knows whats going to happen. It doesnt figure into his thinking at all. https://youtube/watch?v=seC63AEk4-8
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 05:47:23 +0000
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