The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter (46 page)

Beyond the pitching, Bernie Williams was in a deep state of decline, and one of the new recruits, Tony Womack, was equally ineffective on both sides of the ball.

At 95-67, the Yankees won the division from the Red Sox on a tiebreaker, and if Jeter did not match his 2004 power numbers, he did add 17 points to his batting average to finish at .309. But it was a bumpy journey on the way there.

In June, with his team having already lost seven of nine games on a tour of middle America, Jeter was caught on a YES Network camera throwing a cup and yelling in his Busch Stadium dugout after the Cardinals scored five runs in the third inning in the Yankees’ first trip to St. Louis since the ’64 World Series.

Jeter had never been caught on or off camera throwing anything other than a ball, but he was as angry over the Yanks’ effort as Torre, who was embarrassed on this return trip to the town where he was last fired.

Torre ripped into several players in the clubhouse, and in a rare public rebuke, Jeter chastised his team to the reporters who surrounded him. “We were just going through the motions,” he said. “It seems like we don’t care.”

One of those players Torre ripped, Gary Sheffield, was later quoted in
New York
magazine as suggesting that he was the team leader and the Yankee hitter opposing teams needed to stop, and that the media portrayed Jeter and Alex Rodriguez “in a positive light, and everyone else is garbage.”

The Yankees moved past it. Besides, Sheffield had admitted to using a couple of BALCO potions that later proved to be steroids—unbeknownst to him, Sheff insisted. The slugger had his own problems.

The same could be said for Jeter in September, after the disclosure of a racially charged threat the shortstop had received in the Yankee Stadium mail. The threat said he would be “shot or set on fire” if he continued dating white women, and the FBI and the New York Police Department’s hate crimes unit were moved to investigate.

Jeter appeared more upset that the issue went public than he was by the letter, and he tried to downplay its impact. “It was just a stupid letter,” he said. “I’ve gotten stupid letters before.”

The son of a black father and white mother, Jeter never wanted to give a racist satisfaction by reacting to bigotry and hate in an emotional way. He never wanted to show vulnerability to anyone, whether he was subjected to the ignorance of strangers, or merely to the hard opinions of fellow athletes who did not see greatness in his game.

In 2006, early in what would be one of his best seasons, Jeter was named baseball’s most overrated player in a
Sports Illustrated
poll of 470 of his peers. The shortstop did not welcome criticism that was constructive, never mind criticism that wasn’t, and human nature said this poll had to hurt.

Only Jeter did not show it. “I don’t care,” he said. “I guess anything I do now is a plus.”

Torre said he could understand A-Rod’s third-place finish in the poll—people were jealous of his landmark contract, the manager reasoned—but could not see how Jeter was anywhere near the top. One respected longtime veteran, Brad Ausmus, explained that Jeter was merely a victim of his marketplace.

“Before I ever played against him,” Ausmus would say, “I thought he was overhyped because of the New York media. . . . But after playing against him, I think he’s one of the best players of his generation. I think the players in the anonymous poll who said he was overrated are probably the same people like me, who didn’t know until you played against him. Many times New York players are overhyped, but not in Jeter’s case.”

Yet major league clubhouses were filled with players who were not as enlightened as Ausmus. Tino Martinez found out the hard way when he ended up in St. Louis and then in Tampa Bay, places where he had to constantly defend Jeter to teammates.

“They did have an appreciation of Derek, but they were really jealous of him,” Martinez said. “You know, like, ‘What does he do that’s so spectacular?’ And you have to explain to them that you have to play with this guy every day to see how great he really is. You see him in a game or two and you’re not going to know.”

Martinez was asked to name the most popular misconception about Jeter that existed in these other clubhouses. “Probably that he’s cocky,” he said, “that he thought he was better than everyone else. That was way off track.

“He wants to win the World Series every year. He’s not worried about hitting 30 home runs or who he’s going to date and how many commercials he’s going to get. I’d tell them that stuff comes to Derek in the off-season, that he does none of that stuff during the year. His whole focus during the year is to win, and when that’s over he’ll do a commercial or two. But [the jealousy] goes along with winning the World Series and all the awards and all the beautiful women he’s dated.”

Yes, the beautiful women. By 2006, Jeter’s lineup was more impressive than the ’98 Yankees’. To the previous roster of Mariah Carey, Miss Universe Lara Dutta, actress Jordana Brewster, and singer Joy Enriquez, Jeter had added Brazilian supermodel Adriana Lima, model Vida Guerra, MTV personality Vanessa Minnillo, and the two acting Jessicas—Alba and Biel.

Yet Jeter was almost never photographed with a high-profile girlfriend—or low-profile girlfriend, for that matter—in a nightclub. “That’s why the Vanessa thing didn’t work out,” said Jeter’s former teammate Jim Leyritz. “He didn’t want to be seen out. . . . The only [picture] I ever saw was when he went on a trip with Jessica Biel to Puerto Rico.”

Jeter grew weary with the fascination over his love life, and some of the tabloid tales were priceless. One woman claimed Jeter bought her an island (he did not even buy her a drink), another wrote about her night with Jeter (he only posed for a picture with her), and two others claimed he did not pay for their parking after an overnight romp in Miami (he said he was not in Miami).

One time Jeter walked into the Yankee clubhouse, threw down a newspaper with a measure of disgust, and asked the PR man, Rick Cerrone, “Can you explain to me why every woman I’ve ever dated is in the paper?”

Cerrone quickly scanned the article and photos in question and asked Jeter, “You really did date Scarlett Johansson?” The shortstop did not fill in the blank.

For the record, Johansson denied she dated Jeter, though it was not what anyone would call a vehement denial. It would not be long before actress Gabrielle Union also refuted reports she was dating Jeter, though her denial said it all.

“Trust me,” she said, “if I were dating Derek Jeter, I would hold my own personal press conference to announce it to the world.”

To the average red-blooded, testosterone-fueled American male, Jeter was living out the ultimate fantasy. During a road trip, one teammate walked into a nightclub and found Jeter and another Yankee in a private room surrounded by fifteen to twenty women. Turned out the shortstop had sent an associate into the crowd of clubbers to pick out the most attractive women and invite them to the party.

If Jeter looked like a judge backstage at a beauty pageant, it was not the first time. He could not get away from the hopefuls if he tried. When Jeter allowed
Sports Illustrated
’s Rick Reilly to open his fan mail, only to have Reilly discover a letter, a revealing photo, and a more revealing cell number from a Miss Universe, the baseball star who had ditched Dutta actually said, “No way, dude. I’m not going down that Miss Universe road again.”

This was the life. Fame, fortune, a lavish apartment in Trump World Tower, and enough attention from assorted starlets and sexpots to tell a Miss Universe to go find another solar system.

But something critical was missing in Jeter’s vision of a perfect world. Winning. October winning. World Series winning.

Jeter had gone five full seasons without seizing a fifth title, and it was eating him alive. On the flight home from Anaheim after the Division Series loss to the Angels, Jeter sat in the back of the plane with the veteran pitcher Al Leiter, who was ending a nineteen-year career.

“Derek was completely dejected and down,” Leiter said. “We were in the last row, alone, and I was trying to pump him up. I was telling him he had a good year, but he said, ‘You don’t understand. It’s about winning a championship,’ and it was totally genuine. That really is all it’s about to him.”

In his short time with the club, Leiter had noticed the impact of A-Rod’s presence on Jeter even before their broken friendship became a constant talk radio topic. “I know it wasn’t comfortable,” Leiter said. “It was pretty obvious after what Alex said; he betrayed Derek. . . . If you have your captain and your big [acquisition], it was probably uncomfortable enough to have had an effect on that team.”

But Jeter was doing everything in his on-field power to move beyond an invasive public conversation he could not escape. On his way back to the playoffs and another division title in 2006, Jeter became the second-fastest Yankee to reach 2,000 hits, making it in his 1,571st game (DiMaggio secured number 2,000 in his 1,537th game).

With Sheffield and Hideki Matsui missing big portions of the season, and with Pavano gone for the entire year because of a bizarre run of injuries, Jeter did not allow the Yankees to fall apart. His three-run double on the eighth pitch he saw from Boston reliever Mike Timlin, who had owned him, allowed for the five-game sweep in Fenway, as did the tying two-out bloop in the ninth off closer Jonathan Papelbon two nights later.

The following week, after the Yanks lost the first two games of a three-game series in Anaheim, leaving players, coaches, and fans to wonder if they would ever beat the Angels, Jeter closed out that series with two homers and one of his traditional high-jump throws from the hole in an 11–8 victory. Rodriguez went 1 for 15 with 10 strikeouts in those three games, picking up right where he had left off in the Division Series.

The captain pieced together a 25-game hitting streak, the Yankees’ longest since Joe Gordon’s 29-game streak in 1942. Jeter finished with a .343 batting average, 97 RBI, 118 runs, a career-high 34 stolen bases, and a .381 average with runners in scoring position. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Jeter became only the fifth man in seventy-five years to hit at least .340, drive in at least 90 runs, and steal at least 30 bases in a single season (Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson, Ellis Burks, and Larry Walker were the others). And no stats were needed to validate Jeter’s standing among the very best and brightest base runners in the game.

Jeter would be good enough to win a third consecutive Gold Glove award, his first Silver Slugger award as the best offensive player at his position, and his first Hank Aaron Award as the best hitter in the league. But he would not win his first Most Valuable Player award; he would lose a close vote to Minnesota’s Justin Morneau.

In September, Jeter had swatted away the claim by Boston designated hitter David Ortiz that he was not MVP-worthy. The eventual third-place finisher in the MVP derby, Ortiz praised the shortstop but channeled his inner A-Rod by adding, “Jeter is not a 40-homer hitter or an RBI guy. It doesn’t matter how much you’ve done for your ball club, the bottom line is, the guy who hits 40 home runs and knocks in 100 [Ortiz would hit 54 and knock in 137], that’s the guy you know helped your team win games.”

The Yankee captain would not take the bait, of course, even when hearing Ortiz’s challenge that he should “come hit in this lineup, see how good you can be.” Jeter responded that he did not have to hit in Boston’s lineup, and that he was not focused on individual awards.

That much was true: Jeter never focused on individual awards. But he did want to win the MVP, a lot; it just was not his top priority at season’s end.

That priority would be winning a first-round playoff series, something the Yankees had not done the previous year. And on October 3, before 56,291 fans in Yankee Stadium, Derek Jeter looked as ready to win a first-round playoff series as he had ever been.

In the third inning, against Detroit’s Nate Robertson, Jeter doubled to center to move the first-year Yankee Johnny Damon over to third, before another first-year Yankee, Bobby Abreu, doubled both home. Jason Giambi’s two-run homer two batters later made it 5–0, and afterward the 8–4 winners savored their near-flawlessly executed game plan.

Damon, the former Red Sox leadoff man and center fielder signed as a $52 million free agent, had scored two runs. Abreu, acquired from Philadelphia at the trade deadline, had driven in four. Chien-Ming Wang, the 19-game winner with a cruel sinker, had held the Tigers to three runs over six and two-thirds.

Jeter, batting behind Damon, had delivered five hits in five at-bats. He had homered, scored three runs, and knocked in one. Everything was perfect about a lineup that bottomed out with twenty-three-year-old second baseman Robinson Cano, who hit .342 and, according to Elias, became the first player ever to bat ninth in a postseason game after finishing among his league’s top three hitters.

“Murderers’ Row and then Cano,” Detroit manager Jim Leyland called the Yanks.

Everything was ideal about that lineup, except this little $252 million quirk: Alex Rodriguez was batting sixth, behind Sheffield and Jason Giambi.

Rodriguez was about the only ballplayer in history who could hit .290, slam 35 homers, and drive in 121 runs and then feel the need to apologize for it. Torre could not hide the obvious: he was losing faith in his third baseman.

Game 2 was postponed by a late-night rainout, and when the Tigers showed up a little bleary-eyed at the Stadium—they had scrambled to find Manhattan hotel rooms after checking out of the Grand Hyatt—they gave off a Jack Lemmon vibe from
The Out-of-Towners
.

The tourists were down 3–1 after Damon’s three-run blast in the fourth inning, inspiring thoughts of a sweep. The Tigers had all but imploded at the end of the regular season and appeared anxious for a long winter’s nap.

Only Mike Mussina could not hold the Game 2 lead, allowing a Carlos Guillen homer and a Curtis Granderson RBI triple in a 4–3 loss that cost his team a chance to put the Tigers on the brink of elimination.

But Mussina was not the story. Alex Rodriguez—now he was the story.