Sporting News: Vitale Calls Jones' Effort 'embarrassing'

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Dick Vitale called Terrence Jones’ effort vs. IU ’embarrassing.’

The Sporting News reports Vitale as saying:

“I’ve been doing games for 33 years. I can’t ever remember a great player in a game where I ever had to talk about (not) playing hard. I’ve had guys have bad games. Obviously, that happens to everybody. I was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he’s sick. It was really embarrassing, to be honest with you.”

Click over and read the rest. This article has it all: Vitale, basketball, Calipari, Kentucky, Terrence Jones and Chattanooga.

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OK, that was really just a front for what I wanted to post about today: Derek Jeter. I like the Yankees just fine, but this isn’t just about Derek Jeter the baseball player. This is about Derek Jeter being one greatest game changers of our time.

New York magazine reported today that Derek Jeter gives his one night stand house guests a ‘gift basket’ when they leave his apartment the next day:

Instead he has a gift basket prepared for the car service he sends them home in. It usually contains autographed Jeter memorabilia, often a baseball – just a little souvenir by which they can remember the Derek Jeter Experience. The Post says they found out about it when Jeter accidentally had a two-night stand, and he sent her home with the same gift twice. Maybe if she’d gotten something new and fun (collect ’em all, ladies!) she wouldn’t have blown up his spot, but he failed to change things up properly. “While the parting gift may seem cold, signed Jeter memorabilia sell like hotcakes on the Internet, with an autographed baseball fetching hundreds and even thousands of dollars,” explains the paper. It’s a profit opportunity, really. You know, in case you want to feel less like an interchangable hookup and more like a prostitute.

Don’t miss this, “Jeter accidentally had a two-night stand.” These gift exchanges happened so frequently that he honestly had no idea that he ever “held hands” with the woman before. Do you know why amusement parks place gift shops near the exits of roller coasters? They do that because people want to buy products bearing the name of the ride so that they can relive the experience and brag to others that they did it. Derek Jeter obviously understands this, as he is creating hundreds, maybe thousands of brand representatives annually. By creating the ultimate “but wait, there’s more!” moment, Derek Jeter knows he is giving his new friends something that will memorialize their time forever: a souvenir. I’ll bet they don’t teach that at your fancy Harvard business school.

A grown, thirty-seven year old man uses his fame and fortune to bring women back to his residence to “hold hands,” all the while making no commitments. When the fun times are over, he sends them home with a gift basket containing goods bearing his signature. To some, it is dirty, bizarre, immature and inappropriate behavior. To others, he is a revolutionary.

But he is hardly the first to change the game. Chet “The Rocket” Steadman despised the way the old timers allowed women to embark on the “walk of shame” the morning after, so he he began leaving quarters on his kitchen table for bus fare. Rick Vaughn raised that bar even higher when he began the practice of paying for an actual cab ride the next morning. Steve Nebraska had a closet full of women’s sweatshirts, sized from “Extra Small” to “Large Medium” to hand out before the early a.m. commute. Nuke LaLoosh, the reported inspiration to Eldrick Tont Woods, was known to give his PYTs the same phone number his wife used to reach him.*

Of course, without these men, Derek Jeter would be ostrasized.  Because of them, he is celebrated.

*This is a joke. Cheating on your spouse is inexcusable.