Letter to the Editor:He's trying to sew the seeds of discontent in our clubhouse

Buffalo News (New York)
July 10, 2011 Sunday

Dear Editor,

Mike Harrington writes that Derek Jeter is "nowhere near the player he once was, both at the plate and in the field." I agree with most of what Harrington writes. None of this takes away from Jeter being one of the great players of all time, but his pride and refusal to recognize his own decline does.

When A-Rod came to the Yankees, Jeter should have volunteered to move to second or third (this was before Cano had become a star) because just about everyone in baseball said A-Rod was the better SS. But Jeter not only refused to move, the story coming out of New York was that he told management A-Rod had to agree to move to third and also take less money from the Yankees than they were paying him (and A-Rod agreed to both terms, with Texas making up the difference on his contract where it exceeded Jeter's pay).

Harrington grossly exaggerates Jeter's lack of range at short, but his range -- especially to his left -- is sub-average. If Nunez improves his fielding, keeping Jeter at short will become harder to justify.

Now that Jeter has reached 3,000 hits, as Harrington writes, reality will begin to set in and some awkward situations develop. Perhaps the way out for the Yankees is to go after Jose Reyes in the offseason and get a new star for shortstop -- the guy A-Rod

recently called the best player in the game.

Richard F. Teetsel

Tonawanda