Grant, Grant, how can you be so indignant about the NY Post headline regarding the way Derek Jeter was cheated out of the MVP by a cabal of rustic sportswriters eager to take the Yankees and Our Captain down a peg? The headline was just telling the truth in the Post's inimitable manner. Justin Morneau is a nice player, and he managed to drive in more RBIs than Derek, but he plays for the Minnesota Twins!!! How significant can anything be that he, or any other Twin, does? A Twin driving in 130 RBIs is like the proverbial tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it. It might as well not have happened. Derek Jeter's achievments on the hallowed field of Yankee Stadium, the Shrine of Baseball, the Center of the Basenall Universe, are by definition more important. And how can the writers forget the magical aura that surrounds the Kid from Kalamazoo? -- far more important that BA, OBP, OPS and RBIs.Some may ask whether this is an appropriate argument for dotCommonweal, devoted as it is to topics relating to religion and Catholicism in particular. Actually, Catholics should understand what it means to be a Yankee fan -- indeed, I would say that all Catholics should be Yankee fans. The equivalencies are remarkable: St. Peter's/Yankee Stadium; 26 World Championships/2006 years; Ratzinger/Steinbrenner; Ruth/St. Mary's reform school; Berra,Rizzuto,Torre/Italian Catholics; Ruth, Gehrig, Dimaggio, Mattingly, Jeter/The Apostolic Succession. I could go on, but I think my point is clear. And I happen to know that every Pope since Pius XII was a HUGE Yankee fan! (Actually, I don't ,but they should have been).The Post's crack about "yokels" was a bit unkind, but it does express the bitterness that the devotees of the One True Team feel when someone who embodies Yankee-ness is so cruelly disrespected. We can only hope that someday the scales will fall from their (the yokels') eyes.

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