A Throwback

Ripken was definitely no LeBron James.
image from judaslebron.com

This week I'm writing about an athlete who was drafted straight out of high school. He played for the professional team of his hometown, won the rookie of the year award for the league, and several MVP awards in the seasons following. Sound familiar? Scroll down a few posts.

But this time I'm not talking about LeBron. Carl Ripken, Jr. was born in Maryland and never played for a team outside his home state. Although the only World Series ring he won came in 1983, his third season in the major league, he stuck with the Baltimore Orioles for all 20 seasons of his career.

According to this bleacher report article, the difference between Carl Ripken, Jr. and LeBron James is that Ripken "never felt the need to put on a one-hour prime-time special to announce that he was leaving the only place he'd ever called home."

That's not to say that ESPN played favorites - the network may have granted an entire hour to James just to talk about himself, but when Ripken played his 2,131st consecutive game in 1995, breaking Lou Gehrig's record for the most consecutive games played, ESPN did not break for commercials during the entire 22-minute standing ovation Ripkin received. Now that's good publicity.

Ripkin's 2131st consecutive game
image from baltimoreoriolesfansite.com

Ripken didn't need to be on a super team or play with other super stars to make a name for himself. He didn't fake injuries when his team was losing. He didn't chase his goals around the country, and he was rewarded when the honors came to him instead.

A list of the awards Ripken received while playing for the Orioles can be seen here. Even though he only has one ring to show for it, he made himself one of the most respected athletes of all time and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2007. And he managed to do it all without turning his back on his home team and fans.

image from orioles.gearupforsports.com

His retired number 8 has been displayed at Camden Yards for 10 years now. And I think it would be pretty safe to assume that not a single #8 Ripken jersey was ever burned.

Manny Being Annoying

Back when Manny Ramirez was on the Red Sox, he gave the franchise and its fans more than enough reasons to be annoyed at him. Red Sox Nation put up with "Manny being Manny" while he risked missing easy catches to be fancy and show off, wasted time high fiving fans instead of throwing the ball to the infield, lazily jogged around the bases, socialized at night when he was too sick to play during the day, peed in the Green Monster in the middle of an inning, faked injuries, or worst of all, was a Yankees fan.

image from bostoncondoloft.com

For Manny to have left with a vendetta against the Red Sox seems ridiculous to me. True, maybe the franchise was so horrible to him from the start that they drove him to behave so poorly. But with his $160 million deal and World Series ring, it seems unlikely that he had much good reason to be so pissed off. Still, the only thing that Manny and the Red Sox ever seemed to agree upon was the decision to trade Manny in 2008, described in this article from projo.com.

After being traded to the LA Dodgers, Manny wasn't happy enough just being off the Red Sox, he wanted to punish the Red Sox. According to this New York Post article, Manny wanted "to sign a free-agent deal with the Yankees this offseason [after the 2008 season] and get 19 chances a year to punish Boston".

Manny grew up in New York City, so it makes sense that he would have dreamed his whole life of playing for the Yankees. But why did it have to be about punishing the Red Sox? Really, I think he punished the Red Sox enough when he was in Boston.

image from aerocinema.com

Clearly, the Yankees did not sign Manny. He remained with the Dodgers until 2010, where he pulled some of the same stunts as he did with the Red Sox, until the Chicago White Sox took him on. This past January he signed with the Tampa Bay Rays. He's too scruffy for the clean cut Yankees anyway. Over the years he has threatened retirement quite a few times, and now is on this Bleacher Report list of the top 25 players who might retire after 2011, but not by choice.

Manny had a good eight-year run with the Red Sox, where the fans supported him even with the way he treated the team when he was Manny being Manny. Too bad he had to ruin everyones respect for a great ball player, even though the way he talks to reporters has always made it clear that his own love and respect for Manny Ramirez remains very much intact.

LeTraitor James

LeBron James had every right to choose to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers last summer and go play for the Miami Heat. He was a free agent, and if he wanted to leave his hometown of Cleveland where he was revered by all and played for a team that did everything in its power to keep him happy and get him a winning team to surround him he could. If he wanted to go to Miami to play with his superstar buddies because in his own words it was "what would make LeBron James happy," he could, and that is exactly what he did.

James Cavaliers jersey burned by Cleveland fans
photo from hoopsjournal.com

Well, lets hope LeBron was happy with his decision, because no one else from Cleveland was. How making hundreds of thousands of people hate him - from his home town no less - was going to make him happy is beyond me. Must be nice to think you're a king.

A lot of players abandon their teams. A lot of players let down their fans. Not a lot slap their cities in the face quite like LeBron did.

First of all, he is FROM Cleveland. Being from Akron, he had fans that had been his fans his whole life, who remember watching him in highschool. He was really a part of Cleveland, not just someone brought in by the Cavs from who knows where. So while fans are for the most part realistic and know that players can always leave their team, LeBron seemed like a special case.

Second, most players don't announce that they're leaving the team they've been with for seven years in a LeBron James special on national television. He got as many viewers as he possibly could to hear him publicly diss Cleveland. Some thanks for seven years of LeBron worship.

photo from waitingfornextyear.com

And third, he screwed over the Cavaliers by not telling them that he wouldn't be returning. According to this AolNews article, Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert could not get LeBron to return a phone message or even a text since the end of the season. Probably, this was so that his big TV special wouldn't have the ending spoiled. By the time the Decision came out, all the key free agents that the Cavs could have pursued had signed with other teams.

The Cavaliers have definitely suffered this season, but they did beat the Heat (and LeBron) last night, which somehow seems to make the whole thing at least a little bit better.

Derek Jeter: Always a Yankee

Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter
image from whatisthetrend.net

Derek Jeter has never played for a MLB team other than the New York Yankees, and he intends to keep it that way. When the franchise didn't immediately renew his contract at the end of last season, allowing him to become a free agent, there was worry that the Yankees did not feel as strongly about keeping Jeter in pinstripes. But through the coverage of the negotiations, much negativity somehow wound up on Jeter himself.

With so many players not caring about their teams, it's easy to forget that sometimes teams don't care about their players. My friend Blake's blog Clutch talks about exactly that this week.

The Yankees did finally sign Jeter to a three-year guaranteed contract. In this USA Today article from December, just after the announcement of the deal, Jeter talks about how he was most annoyed by the way the media portrayed him in the negotiations. He makes it clear that he was always loyal to the Yankees and did not play hardball to get the franchise to meet his demands. "I basically said this is where I wanted to be. So, what could I demand?" he said.

The assumptions that Jeter was greedy and demanding undoubtedly are reflections of the trend of professional athletes becoming more and more focused on nothing but their salaries. The greedy ones are having a poor reflection on the entire industry, and loyal players like Jeter are suffering the consequences in the public eye.

With Jeter's batting average dropping to a .270 for the season there might have been a few less "Yankees suck, Jeter blows" shirts selling outside Fenway Park, but he is still the quintessential Yankee, and the team captain. Even Yankees Manager Joe Girardi said that Jeter "embodies what the Yankees are all about," after Jeter signed his new contract according to the USA Today article. Hopefully this is what people remember, not Jeter's "huge ego" and "greed" that was implied by all the media speculation.

Just to be clear, as a Red Sox fan, writing this post putting Jeter in a positive light was very difficult for me.

Starting at center, ___________!

image from celticsstore.seenon.com 

Earlier this season, I decided that I needed to own a Celtics jersey. As I began my shopping, I started thinking about what would be the best name to represent.

With all the trading and players moving from team to team in professional sports these days, knowing whose name you can wear on a green jersey for more than a season or two can be difficult. And with jerseys being as overpriced as they are, I wanted to be sure that I won't have to toss mine anytime soon.

But it is almost impossible to know which athletes will stay with a team. Do I have to buy the jersey of the player whose contract expires last? And even if I took that approach, how could I anticipate trades? How many jerseys were thrown away (or burned) by Cleveland fans last summer when the heart of the Cavaliers decided he would have more fun somewhere else?

In this time of free agentry, have professional athletes lost all their team loyalty? Sure, there are still a few loyal players in the professional leagues like Tim Duncan of the San Antonio Spurs, but they are surrounded by so many athletes that put their own wants so far above their team that it is easy to forget that true team loyalty by athletes like Jackie Robinson, who is believed to have chosen retirement over being traded to the New York Giants, ever existed.

So, would I be better off getting a blank green and white jersey? After all, isn't that all that makes a player a Celtic? I thought about getting a Larry Bird jersey, or even one that just said "Lucky." But in the end, I decided to represent my team (of the moment) with a Ray Allen jersey. Lets just hope he continues to represent us, Boston.

In this blog, each week I will pick a different athlete from any professional sport and examine his loyalties, or lack there of, to the franchise for which he plays or has played for in the past. If anyone has a player suggestion or request, please post it in the comments.