I always liked Leyritz, but we all have to take responsibility for our actions. He f'ed up big time and needs to take the punishment. That poor woman and her kids are victims of his stupidity. Can him up for a long time.
I know drunk driving is horrible, but I'd love to see a poll here on how many people on this board have honestly never drank and drove. I've seen lives ruined on both sides of the spectrum, obviously the drunk driver is at fault, but I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who have made one mistake like that. News media would have you believe he only played for the Yankees...
Oh now don't start that. He played 7 of 11 seasons as a Yankee and had his only noteworthy accomplishment there. If he'd drunkenly saved a litter of puppies from terrorists the media would do the same thing.
This thread just reaffirms two things for me: 1. Sports fans easily forget that professional athletes are still human beings (and usually human beings of below-average intelligence, at that). 2. Probably because of #1, the actions of professional athletes (whether good or bad) are judged at levels far, far above a level that we would ever expect our own actions to be judged, and on a scope that is far, far, larger than rationality would demand. I feel sorry for that woman's family. Drunk driving... never a good idea.
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/b...woman_who_died_in_jim_leyritz_-2.html?ref=rss Blech. Just goes to show you, even if you don't think you're plastered, get a cab.
This post is complete nonsense. ANYONE who gets behind the wheel while drunk is committing a criminal act, and ANYONE who killed someone while doing it should go to jail. That's what virtually everyone in this thread has said, and it is the way ANYONE's actions should be, and are, judged.
Pardon me? Yes, anyone who is getting behind the wheel drunk is committing a criminal act, and yes, Leyritz should go to jail. Did I say something different? I thought my point was a rather simple one. This is a tragedy involving a former baseball player's stupid, criminal mistake. But it's one that (some) people talk about in terms of "Ha ha, ex-athlete on your old team killed someone." Really funny stuff to joke about, no? Before this accident, I bet 99% of you thought of Leyritz in terms of his accomplishments on the baseball field and that's about it. Well... this just shows what we so often forget. Leyritz's driving drunk is no more or less wrong than anyone else that does it, and no more or less surprising... if anything, I'd say it's less surprising, because most pro athletes - while incredibly gifted physically - tend to be lacking in the brains department. My second point was that people seem awfully quick to judge based on a results-oriented outcome. Now, maybe it's different where you are, but nearly everyone I know has gotten behind the wheel when they likely were legally over the limit, myself included. Although, this was years ago, and if I had ever been over the limit, I doubt I would've blown more than a 0.08, and it was never for a greater distance than half a mile. Literally half a mile. This is not an excuse, and it's not something I'm proud of. Quite the opposite. But it's reality.... a reality that's more prevalent than some people want to admit. The people I know were lucky, because it doesn't matter if we were "okay" to drive. If an accident happened, we'd be just as f'd as Leyritz is right now. Stupid of us? Yes. Unimaginable or even rare? Unfortunately, no. Different than being "stinking drunk" and driving, when you're so hammered that you'll run a red light? Legally speaking, no. Call me an asshole if you must. And like I said in the original post, the fact that most people probably never thought about Leyritz off the baseball field just makes it that much easier to say something more harsh because he was a part of a team you didn't like, if you weren't a Yankee fan, or to judge him less harshly if you were a fan of the team.
There was exactly one post in this thread that said something harsh about Leyritz because he was a baseball player, and it came from someone who has a history of making nasty comments about anything related to the Yankees. There were, however, quite a few comments saying that if he did this he deserves to go to jail. Your response to that pattern was to make a post condemning the way people were posting. This was, as I already said, nonsense, and it's insulting to the people who made those comments without any thought as to what Leyritz used to do for a living. The entire basis of the legal system is obviously "results oriented" - no one gets convicted of a crime until it happens. The fact that you or anyone else got behind the wheel of a car drunk and didn't kill someone doesn't in any way excuse what Leyritz is accused of doing, and doesn't in any way invalidate people commenting on it. Take a look at the BS Forum - you'll find plenty of threads about these sorts of stories, and people are always very quick to comment on the behavior of the people involved, even though they have nothing to do with baseball. That's what an internet message board is all about, after all. This story was posted here because it's a Baseball Forum. People commented on it in that context because it's a Baseball Forum. There isn't the slightest evidence (except in one case, as I already noted) that anyone took a harder line on what Leyritz because he was a baseball player than they would have in any other case.
hey douchebag get a life and get off the yankees dick. seriously i pray that one day you make a post that is actually worth reading.
As long as we're being so cavalier with this kind of issue, let's hope for similar circumstances for yourself.
Excuse me, but please tell me where I was "condemning the way people were posting." I think you're reading too much into my post. What I said was that this thread reaffirmed two things for me: One, that it's easy for sports fans to forget that athletes are human beings as opposed to numbers on a uniform, as indicated by the fact that people can talk about it in such a cavalier fashion (and it's not just davecrazy's post... it's the fact that we are all pretty frikkin' removed from the people involved, and would be very unlikely to be discussing this tragedy if it weren't for the fact that Leyritz is/was semi-famous). And two, that it's easy for us to (sort of) side with/against against famous people -- people whom we know nothing about -- based on the team that athlete played for. Although my post didn't need more than the one comment by davecrazy to be valid (but thanks for excluding that one comment when drawing your conclusions), there were additional examples of Yankee fans saying "this sucks," other people laughing at the comments of davecrazy, or a poster kinda sorta implicitly trying to lessen Leyritz's association with the Yankees, while someone else tried to put it back on... thus reaffirming my position that this tragedy is all viewed through through the context of team association, and can be distorted in ways that the thousands of non-famous-person-involving DUI fatalities cannot. Capice? These are all valid statements... valid statements that had nothing to do with my point. I'm not in any way, shape, or form trying to excuse what Leyritz did, and I'm not trying in any way, shape or form to say that people shouldn't comment on it. What I AM saying is I find media-worthy tragedies involving celebrities or athletes to be reminders of how differently we treat famous members of society. Britney's teenage sister is pregnant! OMG!! Guess what? There are probably three dozen pregnant unmarried teenagers in your town right now. But no one is judging them based on anything aside from personal knowledge of that person and their action. And they certainly aren't talking shit about that person regarding transgressions that they themselves are guilty of. These are not condemnations of anything someone else wants to post. Just a statement of fact. I'm not sure if I can be any more clear than that. And it's news because it's a baseball player. Jesus H. Christ, dude. I'm not saying people shouldn't talk about it here, or that they're wrong to do so. I'm saying that it's hard for fans to remember that the players on the field aren't just numbers on a uniform. They make ridiculously stupid life-altering mistakes, too, just like the rest of us... except our mistakes aren't usually newsworthy. This is something that sports fans often forget when we get to sit here and talk about their actions, as opposed to (sadly) countless number of DUI homicides that occur each year without nearly the same amount of fanfare. Are there any additional conclusions you'd care to jump to about the intent of my posts? Sheesh. In the future, if you're going to give me shit, please give me shit for things I actually say instead of things you'd like to pretend I'm saying.
The sum total of what I said was that your continued distinctions that this has anything to do with Leyritz being a baseball player were nonsense. If you call that "giving you shit" you need to grow thicker skin, and if you call that jumping to conclusions about the intent of your posts you should try reading them, since that is all they have been about.
Which I refuted, and I stand by my claim, and have provided evidence to support it. The fact that any of us (outside of Florida) are aware of this tragedy has EVERYTHING to do with Leyritz being a baseball player. I call it giving me shit, because shit is precisely what you've offered in terms of an argument. You're putting words in my mouth and making invalid assumptions about what I claim. I don't need thicker skin, because it's not under my skin. It's just a mistaken point of view, which I am attempting to remedy. Please read them again, and if you're still confused, then read my clarifications again. Really, I'm not sure what the issue is here. ETA: Incidentally, I noticed that you didn't have anything to say about the meat of my post, and instead replied to the more or less one-off comment at the end. I only bring it up because your claims of my supposed "nonsense" were adequately addressed in the last post. I gave my reasoning. Refute that if you can. But repeating your mistaken assumption doesn't make it more true.
Obviously the fact that he is a baseball player is the reason people know about this, but that was the never the point of your posts, so please don't insult all of us by now trying to claim that that has even the slightest relevance to the point. Here is the post I responded to: You took the comments of about 20 internet message board posters and turned it into a sociological treatise about how fans don't view athletes as human beings (although they also apparently don't view them as none-too-bright human beings, as you apparently do) and therefore judge them in a way that is both unfair ("at levels far, far above a level that we would ever expect our own actions to be judged") and irrational ("on a scope that is far, far, larger than rationality would demand"). I thought, and still think, that that is unsupported nonsense, and said so (other than that one nasty post, there is not the slightest evidence here that anyone did either of those things; rather, they said that if he is guilty of this crime, he should go to jail, and you have no reason to assume that they would feel any differently if it was the postman or their next-door-neighbor who did it). That is not only the meat of the post, it is the entire text of the post, other than your quite laudable comments that you feel sorry for the victim's family and think drunk driving is never a good idea. Since I certainly don't disagree with that, I didn't comment on it. If your followup posts are saying that you no longer feel that your original post has much merit (since it was a conclusion you jumped to on the basis of your own beliefs, not the behavior of anyone in the thread, and therefore couching it as something "this thread reaffirms for you" was disingenuous at best, and a load of crap at worst), then we have nothing to disagree about; if, on the other hand, they were supposed to provide some evidence that posters actually feel those ways, I certainly don't agree that they do, since there was only one post critical of him that even referred to him being a baseball player. You can hardly take posts that were more favorably oriented towards him as being evidence that fans expect behavior far better from athletes than they expect from themselves. Please don't bother to come back and highlight every sentence of this reply and "prove" how you're right and I'm wrong. We already have one poster on this board who thinks that that is somehow winning an argument, and we don't need any more. I've stated as clearly as I can why I said what I said, and have no intention of saying anything more about it. If you think that that is "giving you shit" or is "offering shit for an argument," that's your problem, not mine.
