Published: September 13, 2009 12:02 am      

Hail! to the victors valiant; but why are you here?

Normalcy has seemingly returned now that we’re fully entrenched in another football season, and that’s a good thing you say? Hate to say it, but yeah it is, given the dreadful straits in which local baseball fans continue to find themselves as far as the Orioles and the Pirates are concerned.

And speaking of baseball, did you see Lou Gehrig took another hit this past week from another member of the Cal Ripken Jr. Shortstop Tree? That’s right, Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter, like former shortstop and PED user Alex Rodriguez, who grew up being told he was too big to play shortstop, but who knew he could because Cal Ripken proved that he could, broke Gehrig’s record for most career hits by a New York Yankee Friday against, of all teams, the Orioles.

It was a nice thing to see, actually, because other than 1996 and 1997, Jeter’s first two seasons in the big leagues, the guy has really grown on me. Of course, that my favorite team, the Orioles, haven’t had a winning season since 1997 probably has something to do with my allowing myself to appreciate what a truly great player Jeter is. Well no, it has everything to do with it because, frankly, in the heat of battle, I never had too many kind words to say about Derek Jeter, the beady-eyed punk playing shortstop for the beady-eyed Yankees.

But when your team stinks for so long, as mine has, you look to wherever you can to find great baseball, and Jeter has certainly provided us all with plenty of that. Not only that, he seems as though he’s a genuinely good guy.

No doubt about it, Derek Jeter is legit. He’s the goods. A true and very real Pride of the Yankees.

So where would he rank on the list of the greatest Yankees of all? Oh, he’s up there about as high as anybody can go anymore, which is to say No. 6 on the list, because Ruth, DiMaggio, Gehrig, Berra and Mantle have to rate as my top five. But having said that, Mantle was the only one of the five I even saw play, and that was at the end of his career. So that would certainly make Derek Jeter the greatest Yankee that I ever saw, and will likely see again.

But speaking of football, I certainly have no idea what happened during yesterday’s Michigan-Notre Dame game because I’m just now watching the pregame show yesterday on TV.

In other words, it’s 3:16 p.m. now yesterday, Radar.

Certainly in Michigan and Notre Dame you have the two coaches who are under the two biggest and most loaded guns in college football today, because basically Rich Rodriguez looks to be a fish out of Big House water at Michigan, and Little Big Fat Parcells, despite what his raging ego tells him, is no more a part of the Notre Dame football legacy than I am a candidate to succeed Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Sentate.

Who’s to say? Maybe Charlie Weis (Little Big Fat Parcells’ real name), will one day become a big part of that Irish legacy. Certainly he doesn’t appear to be afraid of the job, so you have to give him that. It was, however, the look in Rodriguez’s eyes a couple of weeks ago when he and his staff were ratted out from the inside for exceeding weekly football time limits (and, no, nobody in the SEC would ever do that), that, honestly, had me feeling kind of sorry for him — not because he may or may not be in over his head, but because they don’t want him in Ann Arbor, at least not to coach the Wolverines, and he knows it.

That look in the eyes of Rich Rodriguez, as he stood behind the podium to answer the charges, wasn’t fear; it was hurt feelings. I truly believe that. Here’s a guy, invents an offense, climbs the ladder of success to his alma mater, succeeds there, burns all bridges, comes to Skip-and-Muffy Ann Arbor from West Virginia as an outsider, and is made to feel as though he needs to leave Ann Arbor as soon as possible as that same outsider.

Don’t let the door hit you on the way back to the dusty trail with the rest of the Joads!

It’s kind of the same way I felt about Bob Davie when I was a Notre Dame fan: Nothing personal, pally, but who invited you?

Football coaches love nothing more than to rally the troops with the old Us-Against-Them. But unless Michigan wins, and wins quickly, that fight’s going to be a tough one for Rodriguez to secure enlistments. For from where Coach Rich Rod seems to be standing in Ann Arbor, it would appear Us is Them.

Mike Burke is sports editor of the Cumberland Times-News. Contact Mike Burke at mburke@times-news.com.