Rick Reilly Writing An Open Letter To Derek Jeter's Unborn Kids Might Be The Creepiest Thing Anyone Has Ever Done

ESPN - To Derek Jeter’s kids (whenever you come along):

You were born too late to know your father the way we did, so I want to take just a minute to let you know what he meant to us.

He was a kind of prince in baseball cleats, George Clooney in pinstripes, the guy every woman wanted to bring home to mom, and very few did. He was humble and handsome and yet hard to hate.

He was like a good magician. You could never figure out how he did it. He was the best player in baseball for a good 10 years straight and yet he never won a batting title, never won an MVP, never was the highest-paid player in the game. The only thing he did better than anybody else was excel: five rings, 13 All-Star games, the greatest New York Yankee since Mickey Mantle. He spoke to the media every day, yet managed to say nothing. He dated the most traffic-stopping women, yet never seemed to wind up on Page Six or TMZ or “Extra.”

He never showed up in the clubhouse with a black eye to explain, a headline to deny or a photo to justify.

“He could sense trouble coming,” said his best friend, former teammate and retired catcher Jorge Posada. “We’d be at a restaurant. He’d say, ‘That guy in the blue shirt. He’s going to come over here and ask for an autograph.’ And sure enough, 15 seconds later, the guy would be standing at our table.”

And he’d always sign. And look them in the eye. He got that from his parents, of course, your grandparents, Charles and Dorothy, who made him sign a contract every year promising to behave. You could swear he kept signing that contract every year he played.

How he was loved! In a league full of bloated steroid cheats, he kept the same body, the same weight, the same helmet size. In a game full of bat-flipping prima donnas, he ran out every ground ball, hard. In a world of my-agent-doesn’t-want-me-to-play multimillionaires, he played hurt more than we know. “Most of the time, he wasn’t 100 percent,” Posada said. “He’d come out of spring training and tell me, ‘I’m already hurting,’ but he wouldn’t tell anybody else. He just kept going.”

Your father was everything men wanted to be. The guy with the $15 million Trump Tower penthouse. The dude dating Miss Universe. The man with all of the talent and none of the jerk. He was everything women wanted, too. The elegant athlete who loved books, paid for everything, and had a limo waiting for them when it was time to go.

The stat-heads scoffed at him, but then the stat-heads never figured out a way to measure the things he did. Some guys would lean over the wall in foul territory to make a catch. Jeter would launch himself over it, sometimes two rows deep. He’d come out with a bruised face, a cut chin, and the ball.

Fourteen Yankees were captains, but none longer than your father, and that includes Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

Your father was like a rooster’s crow. You could always depend on him. The only way to make him mad was to give him the night off. “He hated to sit out,” says 39-year Yankees trainer Gene Monahan. “He’d drive me crazy. ‘What am I supposed to do all night?’ he’d say. I’d go, ‘I don’t know. Go run some laps!’ He’d just sit there hoping they’d pinch hit him in the seventh.”

Click here for the rest of the letter

Pardon me one second while I finish up cleaning the vomit out of my keyboard..

Hey Rick you’re one weird son of a bitch, bro. This is like all the Jeter ball washing combined with all the Rick Reilly corniness combined with perhaps the creepiest angle a sports column could ever take. “Your father was like a rooster’s crow?” If someone told me that about my dad I’d probably say “What the fuck does that mean? What are you talking about?”

“Your dad was a prince, a magician, a 1,000 point star, and an eagle riding the bus.” Alright for real get the fuck out of my face you creepy old man. The best part of all this weirdo talk is that the whole thing reads as a classic Rick Reilly humblebrag. “Let me tell these kids all about how I know their father better than they know their father.” You know Rick Reilly thinks him and Jeter are like best buds. Like he’s somehow different than all the other journalists and reporters that Derek Jeter does everything in his power to avoid his entire career. My favorite part of the “letter” was this:

He was hilarious, but he didn’t want you to know it. In his final goodbye season of 2014, I asked, “Who would you cross the street to avoid?”

“You,” he said.

You know Jeets 100% meant that and Reilly was just like “LOL! Great joke Derek! You’re hilarious. Its funny because I’m not that bad. Right? Right thats what you meant? You wouldn’t actually cross the street to avoid me? You wanna go to the Sizzler and get some grub?”

I wouldn’t be surprised if Derek Jeter gets a restraining order on Rick Reilly for him and his kids one day.

PS – Here’s how the open letter to Jeter’s kids should really read:

** Do Not Open Until You’re 18 Years Old **

Deep down your father probably resents you because he used to fuck super models on a nightly basis and now for the past 18 years he’s been raising your annoying asses instead. He probably sits around every night of his life pondering “what the fuck was I thinking?” Tell your mother I loved her in Friday Night Lights as Lyla Garrity.

- KFC