Last updated: 1:00 pm
August 17, 2008
Posted: 3:42 am
August 17, 2008
THE divorce rate in sports is getting higher and uglier, and we are not talking Alex Rodriguez and Cynthia.
Happily ever after has become tougher to find. In the last year, Joe Torre, Shaquille O'Neal, Manny Ramirez and Brett Favre not only left places they won championships. They left with the relationship in tatters. They left places where they should have been honored guests forever - think retired numbers and old-timer/reunion ceremonies - to needing brokered peaces in the future to ever return.
Who knew Mike and the Mad Dog would be a metaphor for our time in sports?
Which brings us to Derek Jeter, the Yankees and the union we once assumed was unbreakable. But if Favre started for the Jets last night, we must consider what not long ago would have been unthinkable. Jeter looks in decline. The Yanks look as if they want to get younger and - when possible - less expensive. And suddenly that expiring contract after the 2010 season becomes the elephant in the room of the Yankees' future.
Because Jeter is no more associated with the Yankees than Favre was with the Packers. If that marriage can end in such a nasty divorce, don't we at least have to consider that it can happen with Jeter and the Yanks - at least this version of the Yanks?
The involved parties, as you would expect, treated the subject like plutonium. Jeter told The Post's George King that he did not follow the Favre situation "very closely" and that he hasn't thought about his next contract. Sure he hasn't. Jeter's long-time agent, Casey Close, refused to discuss the matter, saying, "It is far too premature to answer that."
Yankees GM Brian Cashman said, "Who is to predict how things take place? We have problems in the present to deal with. Trying to anticipate the future is a waste of time and energy right now."
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