Derek Jeter Isn’t The Best Ever, But Keith Olbermann Is The Worst

With a Hall of Fame career that spans nearly two decades coming rapidly to an end, on Thursday Yankees great Derek Jeter played his final game at Yankees Stadium. The hometown crowd, brimming with adulation for their departing captain, were treated to a storybook ending that only Jeter could write.

In his final at-bat in the Bronx, Jeter connected on a walk-off single that drove the winning run home for the Yanks. He rose his arms in triumph as he rounded second base, before making a beeline for his teammates. Showing a rare bit of emotion, Jeter celebrated on the field before facing the unavoidable media gauntlet awaiting him.

The emotion may have been rare, but the media’s insatiable thirst for all things Derek Jeter has been a daily reality for the Yankees longtime shortstop since February, when he announced the 2014 season would be his last. At times coverage of the season-long victory lap seemed excessive, but demand for the Jeet never waned.

The last few months haven’t even really been about celebrating Jeter’s career, they’ve been about giving fans, not to mention the institution of baseball, a time and place to say goodbye to an athlete so beloved that he transcends the game. It’s easy to hate the Yankees, yet almost impossible to hate the Jeet.

Media coverage of the long goodbye has been almost universally positive, particularly in Jeter’s final weeks, with one loud, glaring exception.

Keith. Olbermann.

The name alone is enough to inspire disgust and disdain in the hearts of millions—maybe even tens of millions. Though he worked as an anchor for ESPN early in his career, today Olbermann is better known for the decade he spent as a partisan flamethrower on MSNBC, working nightly to cement himself as the left’s answer to Rush Limbaugh.

A call that never needed answered to begin with.

As a recovering former politico, I worked in Democratic politics through most of Countdown with Keith Olbermann’s run (2003-2012). My political leanings actually aren’t terribly out of line with Olbermann on most issues, but I always considered him as repugnant as any of his counterparts on the right, which he was so fond of publicly feuding with.

These days Olbermann picks fights with decidedly smaller fish

Body shaming a shirtless teenage boy is probably one of the highlights of his career

Much like Limbaugh embodies almost every negative stereotype about conservatives, Olbermann does the same for liberals. He’s condescending and mean, rarely uttering a single statement that isn’t dripping with disdain or generously padded with sarcasm.

Olbermann believes that he’s better than 99 percent of the population—people like him are how the GOP gets away with stigmatizing higher education. Aside from frantic and repetitious self-promotion, Olbermann uses Twitter predominately to let people know just how ignorant he believes them to be.

You’ve got to appreciate the personal touch.

Every mocking RT deserves its own introductory condescending declaration

Typo. BURRRRRRRRRRN.

He should invest in one of those ridiculous insult books

You’d think he’d get tired of this petty nonsense, but he never does

Olbermann is a hyperbolic alarmist who speaks mostly in platitudes—that’s in addition to being unforgivably unpleasant and unrelentingly loud. He lives on a soapbox and is perpetually outraged because there’s nothing he loves more than the sound of his own exasperated voice.

Judgmental, self-aggrandizing blowhards with a natural flair for the dramatics usually succeed in the hateful world of cable news. Olbermann, however, was unceremoniously fired from MSNBC in 2010 after years of butting heads at the network.

Do some “research” and you’ll find Olbermann’s claim here is nothing but semantics

He was then hired as chief news officer for Current TV, a position he held for just over a year before being fired. It was an especially ugly split.

Unemployable in the political realm and deemed too toxic for cable news—a dubious distinction indeed—Olbermann returned to ESPN in July 2013. Olbermann is essentially the same show he hosted for years, but instead of ruining political discourse, he’s ruining sports.

An unapologetic narcissist to his core, Olbermann has always been better at injecting himself into a story than telling someone else’s. Say what you will about the guy, just don’t say he’s not good at what he does.

Viewers tired of the NFL scandal? Needlessly shitting Derek Jeter will certainly attract attention

Olbermann’s ability to craft and deliver a line puts him in an elite class of oratory agitators—like the mouthy bastard child of Charles de Gaulle and Joan Rivers.

Moralizing through the salacious and scandalous are Olbermann’s bread and butter, but any headline grabbing event will do. Not only does he have a knack for ferreting out stories that provide the highest platform (and loudest microphone) for his trademark brand of snide admonishment, his sense of timing is also impeccable.

You’d have thought Olbermann invented this ‘wrong needing righting’ just to attract attention to himself

Take, for instance, Olbermann’s recent segments aimed at dressing down Derek Jeter. Sensing the public interest in the recent NFL scandals beginning to dip, this week he changed course. Though Jeter’s impending retirement has been a big story for months, Olbermann waited until two days before his Yankee Stadium sendoff to launch his attack.

Yes. Because all of the terrible things about Derek Jeter couldn’t possibly be crammed into a single day. Not when shitting on him makes Keith Olbermann momentarily relevant.

A lifelong Yankees fan, Olbermann suddenly decided he had a bone to pick with a man that has been playing for his favorite team since 1995. In two different segments Olbermann delivered almost 15 minutes worth of vitriol, all of which was based on the assertion that Jeter is the best Yankee ever.

Olbermann’s official response to the publicized opinion of ONE of Jeter’s teammates

This was tweeted less than an hour later, surely after one of his writers suggested this “clever” hashtag

Never mind that it was the month-old assertion of Jorge Posada, who has been Jeter’s teammate and friend in New York for the last 19 years. Never mind that it was opinion clearly based more on sentiment than statistics.

Olbermann “responded” (as if Posada’s kind words were nothing more than the opening statement of a polluted political debate) with statistics, all of which were aimed a systemically proving something that damn near nobody believes to be true isn’t true.

Don’t enjoy delivering bad news? Farm it out to Olbermann, human misery is like oxygen to him

So unnecessary was Olbermann’s two day devotion to the subject that it really makes you wonder if he spends his downtime revoking “#1 Dad!” mugs and t-shirts from strangers after they were unable to substantiate the ranking with official statistics.

You don’t think I’m good at my job? WELL YOU’RE OLD, LOSER!

His commentary was both mocking and gleeful, as if he’d been waiting his entire life to tell the world what a devastatingly average baseball player Derek Jeter has been throughout his career. He chided fans and media alike for worshipping an “overrated” Jeter, a man, Olbermann says, whose legacy will die with him, while that of truly great Yankees will live on forever.

Olbermann said Jeter wasn’t a great leader either, discounting his five World Series championships, which he believes are easily overshadowed by various postseason failures. Beyond that, there’s no reason to pick apart the rest of his rant. The overarching message is basically that Derek Jeter is no Babe Ruth.

So take THAT, Jorge Posada!

What’s interesting about all this—perhaps the only interesting thing—is the irony of a vindictive media whore like Olbermann waging war against someone as respected and well-liked as Jeter. The juxtaposition of Olbermann and Jeter is particularly stark when the discussion turns to legacies.

Using the same conversion formula, 1 Dan Patrick = 100 Keith Olbermanns

Despite Olbermann’s passionate declarations to the contrary, Jeter’s baseball legacy is set in stone. He isn’t the greatest Yankee ever, but he is mentioned among them in the annals of franchise history, forever immortalizing his name. And keep in mind, Jeter is only 40 years old, which gives him a lot of time to pad his already stellar resume.

Like Jeter, Olbermann’s legacy is also set in stone. It’s one of a cruel and culturally corrosive windbag who has devoted his life to the denigration of others, not just because it pays well, but because it’s the only thing he’s truly passionate about. He is soulless by nature, obnoxious by nature, and spiteful just for fun.

Big surprise.
A graduate of the Ivy League’s only safety school gets his jollies by mocking people he deems undereducated.

When Derek Jeter dies, he will forever be remembered as a baseball player and a leader—someone whose contributions in life require far more than the 15-minute rant of a glorified lunatic to adequately quantify. Rank him wherever you want among the game’s greats, but there’s no question that Jeter’s existence made baseball better.

When Keith Olbermann dies, his passing will be a minor story for a single news cycle. A few forced kind words will be spoken by those who knew him, while those who hated him most will probably take to Twitter, assuming it’s still the best place to anonymously say the horrifying things you’d be too embarrassed or scared to say in person.

Olbermann isn’t even the 27th best personality on his own network, but yeah

And that will be it. His legacy will have nothing to do with any of the terrible things he said or did while he was alive. The sad truth is that Keith Olbermann’s greatest contribution to the world will be leaving it.

Something nobody will ever say about Derek Jeter.

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