Derek Jeter is not a victory robot. He knows his last season was rough. And yeah, he's pissed at the Yankees about that contract negotiation. The most famous player in baseball sat down with Seth Mnookin to talk his private life, the press, and the specter of his final years in pinstripes
STORY BY SETH MNOOKIN
For almost two decades, Derek Jeter has spent his winters working out at the Yankees minor league complex in Tampa, Florida. He started these regimens shortly after moving to Florida from his parents' house in Kalamazoo, Michigan, so he could concentrate on his game year-round. Of course, a lot has changed since Jeter was chosen by the Yankees with the sixth overall pick in the 1992 draft: He no longer calls his folks every night in tears, no longer second-guesses his decision to turn pro instead of going to college, no longer wonders whether he's good enough to play with the big boys.
Today, Jeter is one of the most famous athletes the world has ever known. He's received plenty of personal accolades, starting with his unanimous selection as 1996's American League Rookie of the Year and continuing right through his eleventh All-Star appearance last summer, but he'll always be best known as a leader, a champion, a class act in an era when athletes are expected to be cheaters and boors. Come June, he'll have been captain of the Yankees for eight full years—which is longer than Babe Ruth, longer than Lou Gehrig—longer, in fact, than any other player in team history. Two years ago, he was chosen to lead the United States team in the World Baseball Classic—and of course, he's been a cornerstone of five World Series-winning teams. He's Tiger without the car crash, Kobe without the rape trial, Brady without the jilted pregnant girlfriend, A-Rod without the...well, everything.
Even today, after earning hundreds of millions of dollars in salary and endorsements, after building a 30,000-square-foot mansion in Tampa that the locals refer to as St. Jetersburg, after a string of famous girlfriends that stretches from Mariah Carey to Minka Kelly, Jeter comes across as a genuine, down-to-earth good guy. In September 2009, after Jeter became the Yankees' all-time hit leader, former Red Sox ace Curt Schilling described him as a player who'd "always been above the fray." As Schilling was quick to point out, he should know: "As someone who's 'foot-in-mouthed' it hundreds of times, it's refreshing. He's shown up, played, and turned in a Hall of Fame career in the hardest environment in sports to do any/all of the above."
So what's his secret? If you ask the man himself, it's nothing more than hard work. "My parents always told me, 'There's always going to be someone that's better,' " he says. "But there's no reason why someone should outwork you. That's just an excuse."
Of course, even with hard work it's impossible to outrun the realities of time, and there are signs that Jeter, who'll turn 37 in June, is just as susceptible to the ravages of age as the rest of us mortals. His 2010 season was, by far, the worst of his career—so bad that the onetime perennial MVP candidate was, by many yardsticks, worse than your average player. Out of the seventy American Leaguers with 500 or more plate appearances, he was thirty-fourth in batting average, thirty-third in on-base percentage, and fifty-eighth in slugging percentage. His defensive range was so limited—by one measure, he placed last among shortstops for his overall contribution in the field—that when he won his fifth Gold Glove award, a post on a widely respected baseball Web site read simply "My head just exploded."
His off-season contract negotiations with the only team he's ever wanted to play for provided yet another painful reminder that he's no longer the wonder boy shooting line drives with his inside-out stroke. In the weeks before Jeter and the Yankees came to terms on a three-year deal that will take him through the 2013 season, general manager Brian Cashman told reporters that he had "concerns" about Jeter's age and said if Jeter wasn't satisfied with the Yankees' offer, he was "free to test the market." It was the equivalent of the New York Philharmonic telling Leonard Bernstein he could go audition for the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra.
It's possible that Jeter will come back and have a year like 2009, when he hit .334, smacked eighteen home runs, swiped thirty bases, and was named Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year. It's possible that all the time he spent this winter reworking his approach in the batter's box will pay off. It's possible, but unlikely: The list of shortstops who have continued to make meaningful offensive contributions in their late thirties is, well, nonexistent. And what then? It's not hard to be gracious when you're one of the best hitters in baseball—but what happens when the Yankees ask their captain to switch positions or move down in the lineup for the good of the team?
Don't look to Jeter for answers: "My focus is always one year at a time. I don't go into 2011 thinking about 2010. I haven't met a person who can change what's happened in the past, and I haven't met a person who can tell the future, so my job is 2011. That's the only thing I'm focused on. That's the only thing I'm concerned with." (CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE)
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