WHY A BOBBLEHEAD HONOR TOPS OFF JETER'S CAREER

"The Tri-City ValleyCats announced today that 1994 Albany-Colonie Yankee Derek Jeter will be the inaugural member of their brand new "Heritage Series Bobblehead Collection." The collection will pay tribute to those who have played professional baseball in New York's Capital Region."

That's a direct quote coming from MiLB.com. Read HERE. Personally, I love what Derek Jeter's become in his career... a true baseball icon and I like this idea that the Tri-City "Cats" are going to pull off. The plan is that on August 20th, when the Staten Island Yankees play the Tri-City ValleyCats, they will present Derek Jeter bobbleheads (not the one above) to the first 1500 guests. Very cool. Clearly this is to drum up publicity and get people to their ball park and I absolutely love it.

So what's the reasoning for this? According to the piece the idea to use Derek Jeter was because:
"Jeter was selected sixth overall by the New York Yankees in the 1992 Major League Baseball Draft, and in 1994 was a member of the Double A Albany-Colonie Yankees. Jeter played 34 games with Albany-Colonie, who played their homes games at Heritage Park in Colonie from 1985-1994."

(In Picture: Rick Cerone bobblehead, former owner of the Newark Bears)
I'm not afraid to admit that I too have several bobbleheads up in my attic. Some I purchased because I just liked the player, others were purchased when, for instance, Mark McGwire became the single season home run champ, or I was at the Newark Bears ballpark years ago and bought a Rick Cerone bobblehead on impulse or when Hideki Matsui came to the Yankees.

Then of course, you have to laugh when certain bobbleheads go bad and don't look like the person their supposed to be at all. I remember last June, Toyota and the Phillies did their Roy Oswalt bobblehead day. Read HERE. The problem was it looked more like a young Roy Rogers than Roy Oswalt. I mean, are you kidding?

These next 2 disgust me. It was clearly one of these things where the manufacturer said "Look, they're for kids and we need to make a thousand of these stupid things, just crank them out, the kids don't know what the hell their heroes look like." Wrong, kids DO know who their heroes look like, or let me rephrase; kids know if for instance Ichiro Suzuki is Japanese or not. This bobblehead looks American or maybe Hispanic? I don't know. One thing I do know if my son didn't know it was Ichiro.
And look at this Andy Pettitte bobblehead below. The next time they decide to use a picture of the Marlin's Mike Stanton to do a bobblehead of Andy Pettitte, maybe you should just call it a Mike Stanton Bobblehead. Look, who knows, maybe it doesn't even look like Stanton, the point is, it is clearly not Andy Pettitte.
Look, bottom line, anytime a ballplayer is honored it's nice and Jeter deserves everything good that comes to his way, that includes a bobblehead. Let's just hope they take their time and do it right. We don't want any mishaps and ridiculous likenesses destroying the Cap's rep, do we?

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