COOPERSTOWN, New York – Derek Jeter visited Cooperstown when he was a boy four decades ago and says he doesn’t remember much about the trip. Come back this week and you will surely not forget any moment.
After a delay of more than a year, the former shortstop and captain of the New York Yankees will be exalted Wednesday in the Baseball Hall of Fame, accompanied by three others who were included in the 2020 class – Ted Simmons, Larry Walker, and the late Marvin Miller, managements on the labor front transformed the sport.
Last year’s ceremony was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. No one was selected this year after the reporters voted and the Hall of Fame committees postponed their election until the next winter recess due to the pandemic.
“As strange as this sounds or might sound, I try not to think about it,” said Jeter, who at 47 serves as owner and executive director of the Miami Marlins. “I just want to go and experience it. I try not to be thinking about it, because I don’t want to go with a preconceived notion of what could happen. I want to experiment and enjoy it. A long time waiting.”
In 2007, Cal Ripken Jr.’s exaltations. and Tony Gwynn generated a record turnout, estimated at 82,000 people, on the vast lawn of the Clark Sports Center on the outskirts of this small town in upstate New York.
When Jeter was elected in January 2020, it was believed that this record would be in jeopardy due to its popularity and proximity to New York, and fans rushed to make reservations.
With a ceremony in the middle of the week, instead of the traditional Sunday afternoon, the resumption of classes and risk of bad weather, the Hall of Fame does not dare to make a forecast.
After the deaths of eight members of the Hall of Fame in the last year and a half, including Hank Aaron and Whitey Ford, and a never-ending pandemic, the number of members attending the ceremony would not exceed 31. All just two years ago, a total of 58 made an appearance.
Simmons, 72 and a brilliant receiver and first baseman in the 70s and 80s with the St. Louis Cardinals and Milwaukee Brewers, found him a benefit in the long run.
“The wait has been good and bad – bad in the sense that you had to wait an extra year for that to come true, but good because it extended it for a year,” said Simmons, who grew up on the outskirts of Detroit. . “It has been a difficult period these last two years across the country and for society at large with this pandemic. What this can crystallize brings us closer to having a certain normalcy, which is what we want.”
The ever-pleasant Walker, 54, said the delay served to somehow accentuate the unreality of his choice.
“I’ve been caught so many times signing something, they get it back and they give it back to me because I forgot to write HOF2020,” said Walker, who will join Ferguson Jenkins as the only Canadian players at the Hall of Fame . “The truth is, I still don’t assimilate reality. It’s just that I don’t consider myself a Hall of Fame for nothing.”
Jeter was the 57th player to be elected in the first attempt at the North American Baseball Chroniclers Association vote. He missed a vote to be the second to be elected unanimously, being included in 396 of the 397 ballots. Panamanian Mariano Rivera, his former Yankee teammate and excellent locksmith, remains the only one to enter unanimously.
A cornerstone of five teams that won the World Series, Jeter played with the Yankees throughout his career, from 1995-2014 – two decades in New York, the benchmark of a historic franchise.
“The most important thing during my career, what I wanted was for me to be remembered as a Yankee. Just that,” he said. “It was the only team I wanted to play for since I can remember. And when you pour. in your career, as one begins to think about the legacy. It goes beyond what has been done on the ground. It is the legacy you leave out of oneself. “
Donald Fehr, executive director of the Major League Players Association from 1983-2009 and now with the same role in the hockey league, will accept Miller’s plate and speak on his behalf. Miller hired Fehr as a union lawyer in 1977.
“In the end it’s valued how our house was built,” said Tony Clark, the union’s current executive director. “In other words, how he built our house, our association, our union. For the house to withstand the passage of time, it had to be built with strong foundations.”