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Three commercials dominated my between-innings in the first weeks of the season. In one, famous athletes pretend to be commentators in a documentary about a sandwich menu. Tony Romo is shown in a television studio. Patrick Mahomes is shown on a golf course. Steph Curry is shown in a well-decorated home office, with framed photos, art, a book, a bottle of water and a lampstand. Derek Jeter is filmed in a living room, or perhaps a purgatorial nothingspace where souls are sent to slowly acclimate to the afterlife.

Subway must’ve paid several million dollars to get these stars into their commercial, and so presumably would have been willing to spend the $600 necessary to decorate the off-campus apartment where this universe’s Derek Jeter lives. They didn’t. They made a choice: Just one pillow, to match his pants. Scooch the couch slightly so the power outlet is visible. And the couch should blend in perfectly to the wall. He lives on a void being consumed by a larger void.

Are we meant to believe this is where this universe’s Derek Jeter entertains in-laws and plays board games with friends? Are we meant to believe he comes home each evening to flop down on this couch and stare at that wall?

We are. To understand this, a very quick look at the other two commercials in heavy rotation in my between-innings:

1. Pinch Hitter, by Capital One Bank.

It’s the bottom of the ninth inning of some amateur-league game and the manager says “we need a clutch hit.” He calls out for Derek Jeter, who homers. Derek Jeter had been left on the bench until the bottom of the ninth inning, and he doesn’t seem to have spoken up about this fact. When he is finally allowed to play, he is smiling delightedly, not bitter at all, just happy to finally get a chance.

2. Jazz vs. Jeter, by MLB The Show 23.

Jazz Chisholm Jr., playing MLB The Show, calls some sort of customer support line. Derek Jeter answers, and guides Chisholm through some of the game play. Jeter is working the graveyard shift, alone in a large warehouse, doing one-on-one customer support. The company doesn’t even keep the lights on for him, and Jeter seems fine with this.

The Derek Jeter who appears in the Derek Jeter Commercial Universe is, obviously, not really Derek Jeter. It’s a version constructed to make us want stuff. This constructed Jeter lives in an undecorated starter home, plays hobby baseball for a manager who incompetently underrates him, and works a service job with horrible hours.

You’d be tempted to think this constructed Jeter is supposed to evoke a non-threatening everyman. But he’s also definitely the legendary athlete Derek Jeter in all of these ads. He’s alongside Curry and Mahomes in a documentary. He obliterates the baseball. Chisholm recognizes his voice. So no, the constructed Jeter is not simply an everyman. Rather, he’s somebody who doesn’t really understand who he is. Despite decades of incredible achievements, he still doubts whether he deserves to start on his Sunday team. Despite lifetime earnings of perhaps a half-billion dollars, he is too insecure to turn down work. He’s still not settled enough to put a nail into his wall so he can hang something up.

Commercial Universe Derek Jeter has a gap in his sense of self that simply will not fill. The appeal of advertising is that I, the viewer, probably have a hole in my life that I haven’t been able to fill by myself. Commercial Jeter reinforces that we can’t fill it with accomplishment, fame, championships or jump throws. We might only be able to fill it by trying all 12 of Subway’s new specialty sandwiches.

*****

This is a reader engagement issue. Nobody emailed me about Derek Jeter’s living room, so I had to write that email to myself. The rest are from you, and I’m grateful for them; send more to pebblehunting at gmail, please and thank you! Today:

1. AARON ASKS!

My favorite baseball genre to track this year will be how pitchers and/or catchers respond to pitch-clock-violation strikeouts. Forever, there has been an established protocol on how to handle a strikeout with no runners on: After a strikeout for the first or second out of an inning, the catcher will throw the ball around the horn. After a strikeout for the third out of the inning, the catcher will throw to the first or third baseman, depending on which side the defensive team's dugout is on—at least, that is what I’ve observed.  

But now, there is a new kind of strikeout—the pitch-timer automatic third strike with the pitcher still holding the ball—and nobody seems to know what to do. So far I’ve seen three examples of how this is handled between the batterymates: 

1) The catcher (William Contreras) throws a pretend ball around the horn:

2)The pitcher (Julio Urías) starts a fake around-the-horn and just points the ball at each person:

3) The pitcher (Zac Gallen) just completely confused about what to do with the baseball after the third out: “uhhh…what do I do with this…do I throw it to you…maybe to you?”

I cannot wait to see how these all play out and track them.  

SM: Thank you for bringing this to my attention!

Most people assume the traditional purpose of going around the horn after a strikeout has been to keep the infielders loose and alert. But the Dickson Baseball Dictionary offers an alternate explanation, which is that it is for practice and/or show. Dickson suggests it dates back to an 1877 exhibition tour, where we might figure the crisp throw-around served as a demonstration of skill to entertain the crowd. So Contreras and Urías (above) are kind of consistent with that here; they’re putting on a show, with their little jokes. But, as with all baseball humor, those jokes would not be funny more than twice. So, how to regularly put on a show after a no-pitch strikeout? In my opinion, the best way would be for the pitcher to simply lean back and huck the ball straight up into the air, as high as he can, and then the infielders all race in to try to be the one to catch it.

Here’s another detail to wonder about in this new era, though: Let’s say that a batter strikes out on a real pitch. Normal strikeout. The catcher throws the ball around the horn, as catchers always do, but the throw is wild, as throws occasionally are. The ball rolls down into the corner and it takes some time for the left-fielder to go get the ball and get it back in to the pitcher—longer than the 30 seconds the pitcher is allotted to throw his first pitch to the next batter. A first-pitch ball is worth about 1/25th of a run, according to linear weights models. That’s something like a $50,000 penalty, by free agent salary-per-WAR averages.

So, you’ll rightly wonder, could the risk of a clock-violation Ball 1 mean teams will stop doing the around-the-horn show, to avoid any chance of a penalty? Could the clock rules kill this tradition entirely, making your original question moot?

Probably not. I checked with the league, and this would fall under “umpire discretion.” In most instances, the umpire would simply provide the catcher with a new baseball and reset the timer with no penalty. There would be a penalty only if the umpire thought the defense was deliberately throwing the ball away to stall or reset the timer. There’s a clock carveout for wild arounds the horn. Phew!

2. MATTHEW ASKS!

Let's say the devil showed up and presented a bargain to every major league player: the devil guarantees the player 1 additional WAR in exchange for reducing the player's life span by six months. How many players make the deal, and how many WAR do they choose?

SM: SIX MONTHS!

I know the devil is, you know, a bad guy, but that's exorbitant!

Matthew: I think we have a wide range of uncertainty in our lifespan. I am now at midlife-crisis age, which means considering both my own mortality and living through end-of-life progressions for loved ones that range from relatively quick and easy to a decade of hell. Maybe taking 20 WAR (enough to change a replacement-level player to an everyday player) would be worth shortening things up by 10 years.

It isn't explicit, but I think we all make these choices, via physical labor, stress, mental health, hours worked—we are all trading hours and days of our lives for our careers. For that replacement-level player above: If he takes the deal, when he retires he can spend all of his time with family and doing what he wants to do; if he doesn't, he's starting a second career as a car salesman or a history teacher or a collegiate baseball coach and making a second round of decisions about how to prioritize his career vs. his family and passions.

Six months may be steep, but I bet the devil could sign a full team.

SM: Huh. It's interesting how 1 WAR for six months struck me as monstrous but 20 WAR for 10 years hit me as plausible. Twenty WAR could probably get even me to league average major leaguer for two seasons; I’d consider that.

But I think the deal needs to be disguised somehow. This particular decision is too psychologically jarring to approach so directly. You're right that we make decisions like this all the time. But those are indirect decisions, they're often driven by inertia, habit and denial, and/or the cause and effect is a complex interplay of variables and uncertainties. I remember, for example, a sociology course in college teaching me that the severity of punishment is far less effective as a deterrent than the likelihood of punishment. That's because (it was explained to us) most criminals do not think they're going to get caught, so it doesn't matter to them how severe the penalty is. Is "doing a crime" similar to this hypothetical? It's both very similar and, psychologically, quite different.

This devil would have to disguise it. By, perhaps, offering a magical elixir that makes players several WAR better but with a higher risk of stroke and heart attack. Was this question intentionally a steroids metaphor?

Matthew: No, this question was not an intentional steroids parallel—I'm in the group that remains skeptical of steroids' effectiveness and have no interest in revisiting the steroid debates. This question was inspired by me attempting to come to grips with what parts of me I am giving up for my career and whether or not I have a choice.

SM: So here are my answers to your two questions:

In your direct-offer scenario:

In my more indirect scenario (magical elixir with expected WAR benefits, at the cost of expected years of life on an actuarial table)

But, having walked around with this question for a while, I have to tell you: I think the devil’s offer is a trap. Shocking, probably. In your hypothetical situation, the fringe player is making a decision that will enable him to live a post-retirement life free of worry and full of satisfaction. Of course we’re never free of worry, never fully satisfied, or at least those of us attracted to devil’s bargains aren’t. The 10-WAR player will still regret that he wasn’t an 11-WAR player, especially if he explicitly had the choice. (A person who needs 10 WAR to feel satisfied will never be satisfied with 10 WAR.) The player who “can spend all of his time doing what he wants to do” after retiring will, in some likelihood, be disappointed to find that he spends it worrying, fixating, regretting, and still failing to come to terms with his own finitude. This player will spend the rest of his life wondering whether he took too many WAR or not enough WAR. The toll the devil ultimately collects in this scenario isn’t the years, but the player’s sense of peace.

3. MATT ASKS!

I assume you saw the video of the guy who tried to propose on the field at the Dodgers game on Opening Day. I also assume you saw him get totally crushed by the linebacker/security guard for doing so.

This got me thinking about people going on the field. Most of the time, they get caught pretty quickly by security. Proposal guy wasn't even trying to not get caught. But what would happen if an elite marathon runner ran out onto the field? Presumably no one would be able to catch him. Not security, not the players. Maybe if there were like, 100 security guards, they would catch him, but what if they don't have that many guards? Would they just have to resume the game with this guy out there on the field?

Maybe as a related question, what's the weirdest reason a baseball game has been postponed?

SM: I don't have a ready answer to the weirdest reason for postponement, but one of the oddest old-time newspaper articles I ever came across was about an outfielder who chased after a ball deep in the outfield and fell into a pit of snakes. And his teammates had to bat the snakes away from him! If I can find it again, I'll send it to you.

[60 seconds pass]

SM: Ah, the snakes DID postpone the game.

Matt: Why did they have to postpone the game because of this? They already killed all but six of the snakes, and presumably the others left.

Sam: Why would they have to postpone the game?!? The man fell in a nest of snakes! Give him the rest of the day off!

Matt: It's almost unbelievable. Why is there a nest of 32 snakes on a baseball field? Or maybe I'm just underestimating how often snake encounters occurred in the old-timey past, before progress and highways and Costco forced all the snakes out into the nether regions that people go hiking in but don't play baseball in.

Sam: Oh, it’s definitely almost unbelievable, or at least it’s very believable that a 19th century newspaper writer just made it up. That said: It’s a big grassy field! Snake heaven. Not like snakes broke up a hockey fest. And, doubling the chances that “snakes break up game” really happened, here’s a different game that was also reportedly broken up for snake reasons, about 20 years later:

4. KEVIN ASKS!

Who's the third-most-famous baseball player in history (assuming Jackie and Babe are 1 and 2)?

SM: Oof, I was watching the NBA playoffs this week and they showed Barry Bonds in the crowd in Sacramento. “You all recognize this guy,” the broadcaster said, and I started to get very tense, thinking about the average hip young basketball fan sitting at home not recognizing him at all, this baseball player who was the center of our little baseball universe for so many years. Finally, the announcer said “Barry Bonds,” and my tension resolved.

Anyway: I assume we're ruling out, like, Michael Jordan?

Kevin: Ha, yes, it has to be someone most famous for playing baseball.

SM: I couldn’t even conceive of it being anybody other than Willie Mays, Derek Jeter or Shohei Ohtani.

Kevin: I suspect the entertainment landscape is just too fragmented now for it to be Ohtani?

SM: Oh, almost certainly. He was apparently known to only 13 percent of Americans as of last September. But the main baseball countries only make up about a billion people, so somebody who had crossover reach into non-baseball countries could theoretically dwarf that. That seemed like something I might have to worry about for Ohtani—cable news coverage is often regional, so maybe his celebrity had reached non-baseball countries in Asia—so I asked several friends in Singapore whether Ohtani is famous to them. The answer is: No. Not at all. Nobody had heard of him. He has not crossed over in any meaningful way.

(One friend, Sonia, who knows almost everything, did work hard to come up with three baseball players she knew. She looked at ESPN’s list of the top 100 players of all-time to see whether she recognized any of them. She recognized Babe Ruth; Joe DiMaggio, from the song; and Lou Gehrig, because ALS is widely known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.)

So, yes, eliminate Ohtani from the conversation. Mays or Jeter.

Kevin: Jeter was my best guess, but that may be skewed by living in the Northeast + growing up around the turn of the century.

SM: No, I think you’re right. He’s in a Subway commercial with Steph Curry and Patrick Mahomes, for goodness sakes! When just-regular-famous baseball player Ryan Howard was in Subway commercials, he was with a football player I’ve never heard of; a light heavyweight boxer I’ve never heard of; and post-retirement/pre-Good Morning America football player Michael Strahan. Jeter, by contrast, is grouped with probably the second-most famous active basketball player and the most famous active football player. They didn’t have to put a baseball player in the commercial at all—Simone Biles and Rob Gronkowski are also Subway spokesfolks—but they put Jeter in it. That tells us something: His fame is at least somewhat comparable to Curry and Mahomes. I suspect he’ll be re-passed by Mays someday, and perhaps by Ohtani eventually, but as long as he’s still in commercials Derek Jeter is, currently, the third most famous baseball player ever.

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