Derek Jeter standsalone in the spotlight, ashe so often does, exceptthat now, as he brandishesa 7-iron on the 17thtee of Avila Golf and Country Club insuburban Tampa, a swarm of butterfliesflutters in his gut.
"It's not like we're atYankee Stadium," he will say later. "I'mnot that nervous then. This is different."
Jeter swings and his tee ball whistlesalong the ground, possibly a hard base hitup the middle in another milieu butnow just an embarrassing worm-burner,the kind that most of us have hit whena gallery, uninterested or otherwise, isin observance...and this one is mostdefinitely interested.
"Ooooh!" he says,grimacing.
Sports Illustrated's 2009 Sportsman of the Year gamely teesup another ball, and this time his shotrises majestically, bound for the dancefloor, neither faded nor drawn. It plopsdown softly about 15 feet from the pin,175 yards away.
"Did you get that?" he says to a crowdof photographers, flashing the famousgrin that has liquidated a thousandfemale hearts.
The New York Yankees captainsays he doesn't play much golf.In fact, the Yankees aren't knownfor having many golfer-playerssince management, as is the case with afew other major league teams, bars playersfrom bringing their clubs on the road.
But that hasn't stopped Jeter from usinggolf as the cornerstone rainmaker for hisTurn 2 Foundation. The seventh annualDerek Jeter Celebrity Golf Classic tookplace several weeks ago, attracting not onlythe world's Alpha Golfing Guest — Michael Jordan, fresh from hosting the eighth annualMichael Jordan Celebrity Invitational in theBahamas — but also several baseball-playingcompatriots past and present, includingteammate Jorge Posada, ex-teammate TinoMartinez, Yankee legends Reggie Jacksonand Goose Gossage, Phillies stud RyanHoward, and retired players Andres "BigCat" Galarraga, Ron Gant, Carl Everett andFred McGriff.
"Golf is the best way to get peopletogether for your cause," Jeter says. "Evenif you're not very good, everybody likesgolf, right?"
It's also, of course, the easiestway to separate corporate sponsors fromtheir money. That fact aside, there haslong been an organic connection betweengolf and baseball, both being pastoralactivities best pursued in warm, dry weather.Those old harbinger-of-spring newspaperphotographs that showed the bats andballs being loaded for spring training?They should've included golf bags. Take afew swings in the ol' cage, make a coupleof indolent jogs in the outfield and go play18 or even 36 — that has long constitutedthe dirty-little-secret daily workout formany veterans.
And though Jeter's clubs are packed awaynow, that doesn't mean the golf season hasended for all big leaguers. Particularly fora certain genus of the baseball subspecies,as Jeter notes with humorous sarcasm.
"Pitchers show up to play ballonce every five days," he says,"and play golf the other four."
There is sometruth to that, as wewill see later. But thegenesis of the golf/baseball nexus can be tracedto two baseball players knownfor hitting (Babe Ruth andTy Cobb) and one player notknown much at all.
The latter isSamuel Dewey Byrd, the onlyman to have played in a WorldSeries (the Yankees reserve outfielder appeared in the 1932 Fall Classic)and the Masters (he finished third in 1941and fourth a year later). Byrd won six Tourevents between 1942 and '46 and advancedto the final of the '45 PGA Championship,where he lost 4 and 3 to Byron Nelson.
Byrd the baseball player was knownprimarily as "Babe Ruth's legs" because hepinch-ran for the great man toward the endof Babe's career. It has also been written thatthe Bambino helped Byrd's anemic hittingby instructing him to hold a towel underhis left elbow in batting practice to makehis elbow stay down, thus promoting a flatswing; decades later, that drill became aDavid Leadbetter teaching tool. Ruth's golf game may not have beenanywhere near the level of Byrd's, but itpredictably commanded far more attention.
The May 15, 1920 edition of The New York Times — Babe was thenin the seventh year of hiscareer and his first with theYankees — carries an accountof Ruth playing a round atEnglewood Country Club in suburban New Jerseywith Yankees teammate BobShawkey (yes, a pitcher)and legendary sports writerGrantland Rice. Ruth shot51-47 — 98. But he improvedas he pursued golf with vigor,which is not surprising sincehe, like John Daly, was asfond of the extracurriculars as he was of the game that brought him fame.
In one of those absurdly silly set-up newsreelsfrom the 1920s, Babe can be seen instructinga group of "sorority girls" on the similaritiesbetween the golf swing and its baseballcounterpart. "The follow-through in both isexactly alike," says the Babe as the girls oohand aah at his expertise.
With less fanfare, Cobb, eight years olderthan the Babe, had also picked up the gameand played it avidly after he retired frombaseball in 1928. That wasn't surprising;he lived in Augusta, Ga., from 1904 to '32.Though Cobb had earned a measure ofrespectability by making millions in Coca-Cola and befriending Bobby Jones, he wasnever invited to join Augusta Nationaldespite having played there frequently as aguest, perhaps because the membership wasapprehensive that the fiery Cobb would comeinto the clubhouse spikes-high should he endup on the losing end of a $10 Nassau.
Like many superstar competitors, theSultan of Swat and the Georgia Peachexchanged trash talk about their golf gamesand were inevitably drawn together on thecourse. In the summer of 1941, as the windsof war swept toward America, these twoenemy combatants, arguably the two finestbaseball players ever, engaged in three 18-hole matches organized by golf promoterFred Corcoran. Published reports, includinga Time magazine account, have the 54-year-old Cobb closing out the 46-year-old Ruthon the 16th hole of the first match, at theCommonwealth Country Club in Boston, and Ruth winning on the 19th hole in thenext one (safe to say not the first time theBabe had won at the 19th), at Fresh Meadow Country Club on Long Island.
The rubbermatch was held at Grosse Ile Country Clubnear Detroit, with Cobb prevailing 3 and 2.The contest raised money for United ServiceOrganizations, though it's highly probablethat purveyors of distilled beverages madeout better than anyone.
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