Christian Lopez was the lucky fan who caught Jeter’s 3,000th hit. And when he could have, ahem, played hardball with the Yankees, he did something that in today’s “me-first, celebrity-driven” world is astounding: he gave the ball back without asking for anything. The Yankees wound up giving him tickets to games, signed bats/balls and other trinkets.
Lopez, sitting in the YES booth with Michael Kay and John Flahrety, said, ”He’s worked so hard for this. I’m not the kind of person to take away something like this. He earned it.”
It’s great to see a fan - who sells cellphones for a living - not even think to cash in when he had the opportunity to and instead do the right thing.
#2 becomes #28 to reach #3000!! And with a HOME RUN. Amazing.
The selling of Jeter’s historic hit — he is six short of 3,000 as he waits to heal from a calf strain — actually has its own campaign name: “DJ 3K,” and a logo that will appear on much of the merchandise capitalizing on his achievement. It is quite a list: T-shirts, caps, jerseys, bobbleheads, decals, cellphone skins, wall murals, patches, bats, balls, license plates and necklaces made by two dozen M.L.B. licensees.
For a guy who has selected his endorsements very carefully and has always (at least in public appearance) put team above himself, this just feels weird.
I understand the marketing ploy for MLB and for the Yankees, and that Jeter is a product of circumstance and longevity and, of course, a feat rare in baseball: there have only been 27 other ballplayers, of the tens of thousands to play, to have reached 3,000 hits in a career. But, it just feels wrong to have so much marketing behind this.
Then again, I guess it’s the age we live in, where everything is marketable as long as people are willing to buy (into) it.
