Opinion

Picture a baseball prodigy. Maybe it's the next Bryce Harper; maybe it's the next Stephen Strasburg. He's young, nervous, fidgeting with his tie and sweating slightly under the heat of bright television camera lights.

It’s never easy to predict when a professional athlete will break down physically. Chalk it up to genetics perhaps. Some players are freaks of nature. Who can explain how Brett Favre played one of the most physically punishing positions in sports with Lou Gehrig-like durability?

Why is it that the quarterback Favre played 19 seasons and never missed a start, while basketball player Greg Oden is like a man made of salt left out in the rain?

The Philadelphia Phillies have had a great season so far. They have three aces, a strong bullpen and a good, but sometimes inconsistent, offense.

Like most teams, there are a few players that are really helping the team stay on top of the National League.

Domonic Brown and John Mayberry have been recently holding up the Phillies. Some others have done the same, and yet others have been holding up the team since the start of the year.

Whitey Ford didn’t know he had been treated with cocaine in an attempt to alleviate the pain in his left shoulder during the 1957 season.

The New York Yankees ace spoke to his friend, Toots Shor, who recommended Dr. Milton Reder. Ford visited the good doctor, received the treatment and reported his shoulder felt better the next day.

The Pittsburgh Pirates are in first place in the NL Central.  In July.

Take a minute to let that sink in.

July is the month when rival GM's are usually calling Neal Huntington to see which established major league players are available for trade.  Not this year.  The Pirates are in a position to be buyers rather than sellers at the trade deadline.

Derek Jeter deserves all the praise in the world today.

The New York Yankees captain, who has spent the past decade serving as the de facto face of Major League Baseball, joined the exclusive 3,000-hit club in thunderous fashion, with a solo home run to left field at Yankee Stadium off of Tampa Bay Rays All-Star David Price.

When it comes to seizing a moment, it’s hard to beat Derek Jeter.

Criticism was swirling, calls mounting for him to be moved to eighth in the order in the midst of the chase for a historic milestone. But Saturday, Jeter did what he does best, captivate once again.

It wasn’t so much about the game, a July afternoon contest between AL East foes pretty commonplace. This was Derek Jeter’s day.

Yes, sir, let the praise begin.

Derek Jeter just put every hater to shame. Every person that said for the past three weeks that the New York Yankees would be better off without Jeter was made to look foolish once again as they doubted him.

We all knew the captain was a first-ballot Hall of Famer. It was without question. On July 8, 2011, he cemented his place as the greatest position player to ever grace the hallowed diamond. Period.

More than the Toy Story trilogy, Nickelodeon and perhaps Yankee Stadium itself, Derek Jeter was my childhood.

As a New Yorker growing up in the late '90s and throughout the '00s, my sports fandom and the Yankee captain’s career are inexorably linked. He was my first connection to professional sports, the superhuman shortstop whose face adorned the walls of my bedroom, whose number was displayed on the back of my Little League jersey, whose patented “jump throw” was imitated to minimal degrees of success.

Derek Jeter made history today in the most dramatic fashion possible. He knocked his 3,000th hit over the left-center fence at Yankee Stadium on his way to a 5-for-5 day at the plate. It was a legendary performance by a legendary Yankee.

But it also showed why he's being selfish.

I'm not saying that he is selfish. In fact, I've been as big of a Jeter supporter as a non-Yankee fan can be. But his decline to play in the All-Star Game before his game today was selfish as hell.