Shocker: Derek Jeter decides to become a St. Petersburg Squawker!

Of all the things Derek Jeter could do after retirement, he is going to be a blogger? Hey, that's my territory! And guess what? After less than two days in the biz, he is already doing damage control. Good grief.

Anyhow, I read with great interest Jeter's announcement Wednesday that he was starting his own blog, or as he calls it, a "platform," called the Players' Tribune, where athletes could get to speak their minds with "no filter." He also gave sportswriters a big ol' middle finger after they kissed his tuchis for the last two decades, basically saying that he avoided saying anything of interest for 20 years to avoid being misquoted or having his quotes taken out of context. Now he says, "I do think fans deserve more than 'no comments' or 'I don’t knows,'" he said. "Those simple answers ave always stemmed from a genuine concern that any statement, any opinion or detail, might be distorted."

He also announced to the world that he is "not a robot." Who knew?

So Derek has started his own blog platform to, as he puts it, for athletes to have the tools they need to share what they really think and feel," so that they can "connect directly with our fans, with no filter."

Obviously, I have more than a few opinions on this endeavor:

First of all, this is not a new idea. In fact, didn't Curt Schilling do this, like, a decade ago with his 38 Pitches blog, way before social media? And don't athletes already have Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and their own web pages these days to communicate with fans? Heck, Richard Sherman even has his own weekly column with MMQB.com!

Second, there actually will be a filter -- the "editors" and "producers" Jeter acknowledges will be involved with the product, making decisions on everything from proofreading to choice of article topics. There will also be PR professionals involved, no doubt, to protect these players' brand and make sure they don't say anything interesting. Not to mention smoothing out those rough edges. It will be the verbal equivalent of Kim Kardashian's and Beyonce's "candid" Instagram shots that are actually Photoshopped to death.

Do you know what happens to athletes with no filter who "share what they really think and feel"? They usually get in trouble with the public. Heck, even with editors involved, athletes can get in trouble. Remember how David Wells got fined for daring to write in his autobiography that he was still half-drunk before his perfect game? Remember how Charles Barkley claimed he was misquoted -- in his own autobiography?

Heck, Jeter is already having to do damage control with sportswriters after his initial manifesto, telling Jimmy Fallon that the site "is not trying to eliminate sportswriters," and that "sportswriters are what make sports great and fun to watch." Heh.

I also would like to know exactly when/where Jeter thinks that reporters misquoted him. Because he literally received 99% positive coverage over the past 20 years. Also, thanks to televised post-game press conferences, players already have the ability to communicate to the fans directly. Yet Jeter still didn't say anything interesting in that spot.

Also, if Jeter is going to speak out now, he had better answer more interesting questions than he did in his snoozeworthy #AskJeter Twitter live chat. Maybe if I were 12 years old, I might want to know #2's favorite flavor of ice cream or whether he preferred chicken to beef. But I think people are more interested in things like how he really felt about A-Rod, a question I and many others asked him online in the chat, yet were ignored.

Something else Jeter is not acknowledging when it comes to being allegedly unfiltered is this: celebrities who talk about real issues stir up controversy and can suffer a financial hit. After Oprah Winfrey campaigned for Barack Obama for president, she lost a good chunk of her audience who never came back to her show. Rosie O'Donnell lost millions of fans and her reputation as the "Queen of Nice" when she got involved with political hectoring.

As Michael Jordan allegedly put it at one point when asked to wade into politics: Republicans buy sneakers, too. Are Jeter and other athletes going to risk potentially damaging their endorsement contracts, or their product sales, by truly saying what they really think? I doubt it. Heck, they are not even going to have a comments section on their articles!

In fact, Jeter also told Fallon while other athletes "like to share with the people, everything about them. I, personally, have not done that, and I personally will not do that." He insisted, "this is not about me, this is about an avenue for the players.” So even with his own blog, Jeter still isn't going to say anything interesting. Move over, Richard Neer. We have a new Sir Sominex!

So why didn't the 1996 Yankees ever visit the White House?

There's a whole slew of stories about how the New York Yankees are heading to the White House today, to be honored by Barack Obama for their 2009 World Series win. And most of the articles say that this will be the fifth time that the Core Four have been honored that way, saying they were honored in 1997, 1999, and 2000 by Bill Clinton, in 2001 by George W. Bush, and in 2010 by Obama. But these numbers are  wrong.

The Yankees never visited the White House after the 1996 World Series, and that non-visit was very controversial at the time. Who knows what the real story was, but the rumor of the day was supposedly that John Wetteland, who was very conservative politically, either instigated teammates to threaten a boycott, or was planning on confronting Clinton on his political views. And so the visit never happened.

That was in the early days of the internet, so I could find very little online about it. But the Washington City Paper wrote in 1997 about the story. You know it was a long time ago, because they described the Yanks as a "loveable bunch," instead of as the face of evil! The paper wondered about what happened:

There are any number of conspiracy theories as to why the visit never took place. The juiciest rumor out of New York was that a band of reactionary Yankee players, led by World Series MVP John Wetteland, asserted that they could not in good conscience break bread with President Clinton. The players, according to this rumor, didn't want to in any way assist the incumbent in the then-current presidential campaign....

Wetteland couldn't be reached for comment, and although his agent, Adam Katz, admitted that the player throws from the right side in politics as well from the mound, Katz denied that the reliever led a Yankee rebellion against an invitation.

"Yes, John is conservative politically, but he wouldn't impose his will on the rest of the club like that," said the L.A.-based Katz. "Didn't happen."

The paper also asked the Yankee front office for the scoop:

"We've heard those stories, but the truth is the players had nothing to do with this," said Yankee spokesman Rick Cerrone. "Going to the White House to see the president, well, that sounds like a great honor, and there's no way a few players would get up and tell the owner, 'We are not going to the White House!' That's ridiculous."

OK, then, Cerrone was asked, why didn't the Yankees ever visit with Clinton?

"We didn't go because we were never invited," Cerrone said.

Not invited? What?

According to Mary Ellen Glynn,  a White House spokesperson quoted in the article, the Yanks didn't get an invitation at the time "because they won the World Series in the middle of a campaign." (Back then, such sporting event visits happened within weeks of the event, not many months later as they are now.) But the Clinton spokesperson  told the Washington City Paper that "the president is a big baseball fan, and we love the Yankees, and we'd love to have the Yankees visit the White House if we can arrange it."

When Cerrone was told that (this article was written in January 1997), he effectively said "thanks, but no thanks" to the offer:

"Realistically, I don't see how a trip like that could happen at this point," he said. "It wouldn't even make too much sense now. I mean, we're not even the same team any more as the one that won the World Series."

Ironically, given the rumors of the instigation, John Wetteland was one of the Yankees no longer with the team.

Anyhow, it took until 1999 for the 90s-dynasty Yankees to get that White House visit. This one happened in June of that year, when lifelong Cubs fan Hillary Clinton, who was starting her campaign for the New York Senate at the time, put on a Yankee hat and announced that she had also been a lifelong Bombers fan.

At any rate, I would still love to know what the full story was with the 1996 Yankees not getting the chance to visit the White House. Considering how many stories we hear about those years, it's curious that this is such a forgotten chapter in Yankees history!


What do you think? Leave us a comment!