Chapin: ESPN overlooked Konerko, Dunn

You may have heard that a longtime veteran baseball player finished up his career this week.

During an 18-year career, this player hit 439 home runs and drove in 1,412 runs with a batting average of .279. His career on base percentage was .354 and his slugging percentage was .486 for an .841 OPS mark.

What, that’s not the retired player you were thinking about? Well, how about this one.

He retired after 14 years as a swing-from-the-heels slugger who finished with 462 homers and 1,168 RBI but a .237 batting average. His slash line of .364/.490/.854 compares favorably to the numbers of the game’s second-tier sluggers.

I know, that’s not who you are thinking of either. For all the noise the national media (that means ESPN) made about the retirement of the guy you are thinking about, they pretty much ignored the fact that Paul Konerko and Adam Dunn also had pretty good careers.

The guy who did get all the attention, Derek Jeter, certainly deserves it. He had a Hall of Fame career covering 20 seasons in which he hit .310 with 3,465 hits, 260 home runs, 1,311 RBI and 358 stolen bases. His slash line of .377/.440/.817 shows his numbers were not just cumulative. Plus he was golden in the postseason, helping the Yankees to five championships during his career.

I am not going to argue that Jeter is not one of the best shortstops to play the game. My point is that if he had played his entire career in Kansas City or Houston or Minnesota, etc., baseball fans would be talking about his career like they do those of Barry Larkin or Robbie Alomar or Alan Trammell.

The gushing onslaught of praise that the media dished out toward Jeter as his career came to an end was ridiculous. Again, I am not denigrating Jeter. He had a great career, was reportedly a great teammate and never was in the news off the field for the wrong reasons. My beef is with the media and its continued favoritism toward all things New York/Boston or Los Angeles.

If Konerko, who had a long, solid career, had played for the Yankees all those years and Jeter had played with the Rockies or Mariners or some other blah team, it’s my opinion Konerko would have gotten more publicity than Jeter.

For those of you who remember George Brett or, more recently, Cal Ripken, can you imagine how the media would have dealt with them if they had played their careers entirely in New York? The media would have had them up there with Ruth and Gehrig, etc.

And what if Omar Vizquel or Ozzie Smith, both clearly superior to Jeter defensively, had been Yankees? Their defensive exploits would be the stuff of legend on a national basis, not just in Cleveland or St. Louis.

CATCH A BUS TO cleveland?

An Indians fan in Columbiana contacted me recently and asked about the possibility of bus trips from the area being organized to attend games next season in Cleveland. At his age, 74, he would prefer not to battle downtown traffic.

Anyone interested can contact me at the e-mail address below.

Write Vindicator sportswriter Doug Chapin at dchapin@vindy.com.