Knock them down
Crashes have come furiously throughout the first nine stages of the this year’s Tour de France. Even with the approaching drama of three climbs that are so steep and taxing they are rated ‘outside of classification’ (because they are harder to climb even then the hardest classification) the riders still wanted to get a jump on the real action.
Actually, it wasn’t just the riders causing pile-ups because of their desire to to hurl themselves ahead of the pack, to take their chances combining the perils of road conditions, the crowds and great speeds. The most grizzly of the crashes came during stage nine when a French television car swerved (while avoiding a tree?) into rider Juan-Antonio Flecha, who by chain-reaction caused fellow rider Johnny Hoogerland to crash into a barbed-wire fence, creating a spectacle that would have grabbed attention on any of the tour’s most treacherous of days. In fact the rest day after stage nine provided a decent occasion to tally up all of the barbed-wire brutality, cracked collarbones, broken wrists, helicopter rides etc., already sustained. The crashes are a big part of the early story of the 2011 tour because neither Luis Leon Sanchez, second overall and eventual winner of stage nine, nor Thomas Voeckler, currently wearing the yellow jersey, are contenders to win the whole race.
Similarly, there was no shortage of pile-ups at the Honda Indy in Toronto this weekend. With the drivers showing little love toward one another, crashes became the story for Canadian drivers Alex Tagliani and James Hinchcliffe, as well as Mike Conway, Will Power, Danica Patrick and various others. Dario Franchitti crossed the finish line for the win, surviving both accidents on the course and some ill-will as well. (The strangest moments coming off the track when Franchitti welcomed his sponsor ‘Target’ to Canada, and Dan Aykroyd was pulled over for speeding on his way to the race.)
To build them back up
But the biggest crash of the weekend didn’t happen.
Derek Jeter was prime for some backlash. With ever-increasing attention, Jeter’s climb towards 3,000 career hits seemed well within the cross hairs of popular opinion. As a New York athlete (not to mention the captain of the Yankees), Jeter is of course frequently in the spotlight. But the Yankees are one of those teams who are hated as much as they are loved wherever they go. They’re one of those celebrity teams that are a known quantity, but are probably too much of a known quantity for most non-New York based sports fans. Getting to the 3,000 career hits plateau is an individual accomplishment, it’s not a measure of team success, so it can easily be seen as just as selfish as arbitrary. The Yankees are good this year (53 – 35) but haven’t been completely remarkable. Jeter’s been good this year, but not great, and has faced mounting accusations of being over-rated (but propped up by the fact that he’s in the New York media market), that he’s over-the-hill (and didn’t deserve the sizable new contract he just got). And the tipping point to how tired everyone was really going to be of how Derek Jeter becomes the first player to ever get 3,000 career hits in a Yankee uniform seemed to be delivered in a story reported in the New York Times about bottling and selling the dirt from the diamond after he gets the 3,000th hit.
On Saturday, Derek Jeter finally became history’s first member of the New York Yankees to register 3,000 career hits. And surprisingly, nothing happened to sour the occasion. Nothing else crept into the story. Maybe all it took was for Jeter to be perfect for a day.
The actual 3,000th hit was a home run, prompting teammates and opposing players alike to laud Jeter with admiration. He got to be at home in New York to reach the milestone, in front of the Yankee faithful. He went a heroic 5 for 5 at the plate for the game, and lead his team to a come-from-behind win. It was glorious baseball. But because of how the story could have gone, Jeter’s performance might have prompted some into more of a sigh of relief than an exultant celebration. On the other hand, it inspired Roger Angell to write this thank you note to Jeter on the New Yorker‘s blog. Angell clearly wanted nothing to do with anything other than admiring Jeter’s accomplishments, not to mention the manner in which he pulled them off.
I can’t help but think that Lebron James somewhere should be taking notes.
