An analogy
I contend that David Beckham is to football (soccer) as Derek Jeter is to baseball.
Both were the most popular players on the most popular and succesful teams in their respective sports in the late 1990s. Also, both are considered to be very attractive and the ladies love them. Furthermore, while both are excellent players, they are also both somewhat overrated as to how excellent they really are. It just makes sense to me.
Both also became stars in 1996. Coincidence, I think not.
Beckham is bigger than Jeter.
ReplyDeleteI'd say he's Ken Griffey Jr.
beckham is a bigger worldwide star than jeter without a doubt. griffey never won anything like beckham and he never played for the yankees. the manchester united/new york yankees correlation is VERY strong in my mind.
ReplyDeletei also like the jeter analogy still because both are really good in similarly important, but not dominating ways (crossing the ball, free kicks for beckham; hitting for a high average, making routine plays look spectacular for jeter). they are not as good in the traditional ways like scoring tons of goals or hitting tons of home runs.
I like your thinking, Rich, but Beckham has never won on the global stage (and has in fact been disappointing in key games), wheras Jeter won those four World Series back in the day, and has gotten his team back twice also. So though Beckham is a bigger, he's also a different kind of star than Jeter... I'm not sure who a better analog is but I'll think about it.
ReplyDeleteNostra, you are selling Beckham seriously short. He was the main attraction on a Manchester United team that won everything for a few years.
ReplyDeleteThe highlight of course was the treble season of 1999 (FA Cup, Premier League, and the all-Europe Champions League). Becks never won the World Cup, but there is no baseball equivalent so it's hard to compare(not counting WBC...).
On the whole, Becks won the Premier League 6 times with Man U. An incredible record that certainly compares favorably with Jeter's 4 World Series titles in 5 seasons.
Clearly the analogy is not perfect, but the reason I wrote it was because I don't like the idea of people comparing Beckham to Michael Jordan because that just doesn't make much sense at all (except in the sense of overall celebrity status).
You're right Rich. I stand corrected.
ReplyDelete