The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter

Every spring, Little Leaguers across the country mimic his stance and squabble over the right to wear his number, 2, the next number to be retired by the world’s most famous ball team. Derek Jeter is their hero. He walks in the footsteps of Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, and Mantle, and someday his shadow will loom just as large. Yet he has never been the best player in baseball. In fact, he hasn’t always been the best player on his team. But his intangible grace and Jordanesque ability to play big in the biggest of postseason moments make him the face of the modern Yankee dynasty, and of America’s game. In The Captain , best-selling author Ian O’Connor draws on extensive reporting and unique access to Jeter that has spanned some fifteen years toxa0 reveal how a biracial kid from Michigan became New York’s most beloved sports figure and the enduring symbol of the steroid-free athlete. O’Connor takes us behind the scenes of a legendary baseball life and career, from Jeter’s early struggles in the minor leagues, when homesickness and errors in the field threatened a stillborn career, to his heady days as a Yankee superstar and prince of the city who squired some of the world’s most beautiful women, to his tense battles with former best friend A-Rod. We also witness Jeter struggling to come to terms with his declining skills and the declining favor of the only organization he ever wanted to play for, leading to a contentious contract negotiation with the Yankees that left people wondering if Jeter might end his career in a uniform without pinstripes. Derek Jeter’s march toward the Hall of Fame has been dignified and certain, but behind that leadership and hero’s grace there are hidden struggles and complexities that have never been explored, until now. As Jeter closes in on 3,000 hits, a number no Yankee has ever touched, The Captain offers an incisive, exhilarating, and revealing new look at one of the game’s greatest players in the gloaming of his career. Photos of Derek Jeter from The Captain (Click on Images to Enlarge) Derek Jeter and teammates wave their caps to the crowd after Jeter delivered his postgame speech on Yankee Stadium’s final night. The captain salutes the fans after breaking Lou Gehrig’s franchise record for hits. The shortstop’s signature play – the jump throw from the hole – from start to finish. Photos courtesy John Angelillo/UPI Amazon Exclusive: A Q&A with Author Ian O'Connor Q: Why did you feel compelled to write a biography of Derek Jeter? A: As I say in the introduction to The Captain , the answer is found in my son’s closet, a mini-warehouse of youth baseball jerseys graced by the frayed number 2. With Derek Jeter nearing the end of his iconic career, not to mention a milestone (3,000 hits) no New York Yankee has reached, I thought it was the right time to do a head-to-toe examination of Jeter’s mass appeal. He is the DiMaggio of his time, a beloved but distant figure. My goal was to humanize Jeter. I wanted to paint a public portrait of a private man while celebrating his dignified approach and explaining why his number 2 is number 1 in the closets of kids everywhere. Q: How did you gather all the material in The Captain ? A: I’ve covered Jeter’s entire career as a newspaper and Internet columnist in the New York market, so I had a strong base of firsthand observations and knowledge and one-on-one and group interviews with Jeter to work with. I also conducted more than 200 interviews exclusively for this book, including conversations with Jeter and past and present teammates, coaches, friends, opponents, teachers, scouts, executives, admirers, and detractors. (I define his detractors as admirers willing to discuss the shortstop’s human flaws.) Q: What is your favorite anecdote in the book from Jeter’s early years as a Yankee? A: One of my favorites involves the period before Derek was drafted. As a child he started telling his parents and others he would someday play shortstop for the New York Yankees, and as a teenager he predicted to some that he would marry Mariah Carey (well, he almost went 2 for 2). But the surreal twists and turns of the draft of ’92, when Jeter dropped into the Yankees’ lap as the sixth overall pick, lends credence to the notion he was meant to be a Yank. Houston rejected the advice of its lead Jeter scout, a former Hall of Fame pitcher for Detroit named Hal Newhouser, who resigned because the Astros didn’t pick Derek at number 1 (they took college star Phil Nevin instead). Cincinnati scouting director Julian Mock rejected the advice of his own people and decided in the middle of a draft-day jog to select a college outfielder from central Florida (Chad Mottola) instead of the high school shortstop from Kalamazoo (Jeter) at number 5. To this day, Derek swears he was so convinced he was going in the top five of the draft, he didn’t even know that his dream team, the Yankees, were picking sixth. He knows now... I also enjoyed discovering how Cal Ripken Jr.’s decision to shake a young boy’s hand in 1993 ultimately put twelve-year-old Jeffrey Maier in the Yankee Stadium stands in 1996, when Maier deflected Derek Jeter’s home-run ball into American League Championship Series lore and helped end Baltimore’s season and Ripken’s indelible reign at short. Q: Jeter is often portrayed as the perfect athlete. Is he perfect? A: Jeter is about as close to perfect as a superstar athlete can get, but no, he is not an infallible player or person. As a product of parents who raised him on the strict terms of behavioral contracts he was compelled to sign, Jeter never put himself or his team in an embarrassing position. But he’s been overly sensitive to criticism, he’s terrible at forgiving and forgetting those he believes have slighted him, and at times he could have been a better captain to Alex Rodriguez, who craved Jeter’s approval in his early seasons as a Yankee. Jeter didn’t give it. "Jeter is the prince, the good son, the tireless worker. O’Connor uses baseball lore and the tropes and rhythms of folktales to limn Jeter’s family life and early career...essential for Yankees fans." — Booklist "O’Connor peppers the bio with enough hidden gems about the notoriously private ballplayer to make this the most thorough and intriguing work on Jeter so far. And O’Connor’s ability to reconcile Jeter the man with Jeter the ballplayer means that even Red Sox fans may enjoy this bio." -- Publishers Weekly "The most complete account yet of this signal player's life and career . . . Insightful about Jeter's minor league days and touching on his personal life, The Captain tantalizes with predictions about possible position changes and the length of Jeter's career. An excellent selection for those interested in baseball generally and in pinstripes particularly." — Library Journal "Long after Derek Jeter is inducted into the Hall of Fame, Ian O’Connor’s work will be viewed as the definitive biography of the captain. Jeter has always managed to keep it simple, but as O’Connor shows, the shortstop is a complicated superstar." — Buster Olney, author of How Lucky You Can Be and The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty "Ian O’Connor is an ideal biographer for Derek Jeter. Ian is the same kind of thorough pro." — Tom Callahan, best-selling author of Johnny U "Derek Jeter is undoubtedly the most talked about, argued about, cheered, booed and ultimately respected baseball player of his generation. And as public a figure as he has been, he is in many ways the least known. That changes now as Ian O’Connor, one of the best sportswriters anywhere, goes deep and does what no one has quite been able to do: tell us a bit about who Derek Jeter really is." — Joe Posnanski, author of The Machine "For years we’ve been telling young ballplayers to play and behave like Derek Jeter. Now we can tell them to read Ian O’Connor's The Captain. Finally, we have an inside look at the worthy successor to Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio and Mantle." — Dan Shaughnessy, author of Fenway and Senior Year From the Inside Flap Every spring, Little Leaguers across the country mimic his stancex97waggling the bat handle above the right earx97and squabble over the right to wear his number, 2, the next number to be retired by the worldx92s most famous ball team. Derek Jeter is their hero. He walks in the footsteps of Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, and Mantle, and someday his shadow will loom just as large. Yet he has never been the best player in baseball. In fact, he hasnx92t always been the best player on his team. But his intangible grace and Jordanesque ability to play big in the biggest of postseason moments make him the face of the modern Yankee dynasty, and of Americax92s game. In The Captain , best-selling author Ian Ox92Connor draws on more than two hundred interviews and unique access to Jeter that has spanned some fifteen years to reveal how a biracial kid from Michigan became New Yorkx92s most beloved sports figure and the enduring symbol of the steroid-free athlete. Ox92Connor takes us behind the scenes of a legendary baseball life and career, from Jeterx92s early struggles in the minor leagues, when homesickness and errors in the field threatened a stillborn career, to his heady days as a Yankee superstar and prince of the city who squired some of the worldx92s most beautiful women, to his tense battles with former best friend A-Rod. We also witness Jeter struggling to come to terms with his declining skills and the declining favor of the only organization he ever wanted to play for, leading to a contentious contract negotiation with the Yankees that left people wondering if Jeter might end his career without his pinstripes. Still, all along the way Derek Jeter has made his march toward the Hall of Fame look easy, but behind that leadership and herox92s grace there are hidden struggles and complexities that have never been explored, until now. As Derek Jeter closes in on 3,000 hits, a number no Yankee has ever touched, The Captain offers an incisive, exhilarating, and revealing new look at one of the gamex92s greatest players in the gloaming of his career. Advance Praise for THE CAPTAIN x93Long after Derek Jeter is inducted into the Hall of Fame, Ian Ox92Connorx92s work will be viewed as the definitive biography of the captain. Jeter has always managed to keep it simple, but as Ox92Connor shows, the shortstop is a complicated superstar.x94 x97 Buster Olney, author of How Lucky You Can Be and The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty x93Ian Ox92Connor is an ideal biographer for Derek Jeter. Ian is the same kind of thorough pro.x94 x97 Tom Callahan, best-selling author of Johnny U x93Derek Jeter is undoubtedly the most talked about, argued about, cheered, booed and ultimately respected baseball player of his generation. And as public a figure as he has been, he is in many ways the least known. That changes now as Ian Ox92Connor, one of the best sportswriters anywhere, goes deep and does what no one has quite been able to do: tell us a bit about who Derek Jeter really is.x94 x97 Joe Posnanski, author of The Machine x93For years wex92ve been telling young ballplayers to play and behave like Derek Jeter. Now we can tell them to read Ian Ox92Connor's The Captain. Finally, we have an inside look at the worthy successor to Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio and Mantle.x94 x97 Dan Shaughnessy, author of Fenway and Senior Year IAN O’CONNOR is a senior writer at ESPN.com, a nationally-acclaimed columnist, and the author of three previous books, including the New York Times bestsellers Arnie & Jack and The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter .xa0He has finished in first place in over a dozen national writing contests. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1 Like all good stories about a prince, this one starts in a castle.xa0Derek Sanderson Jeter spent his boyhood summers around theTiedemann castle of Greenwood Lake, a home near the New York/New Jersey border maintained by the Tiedemann family of Jersey Cityand defined by its medieval-looking tower and rooftop battlements.xa0In the 1950s, the Tiedemanns started rebuilding the burned-outcastle with the help of their adopted son, William “Sonny” Connors,who did his talking with a hammer the same way Charles “Sonny” Listondid his talking with his fists.xa0More than a quarter century later, Connors, a maintenance workerat a Catholic church, would preach the virtues of an honest day’s workto his grandson, who was enlisted as Connors’s unpaid assistant whenhe wasn’t playing with the Tiedemann grandchildren around the lake.xa0Derek Jeter was forever carrying his baseball glove, forever lookingfor a game. His grandfather was not an enthusiastic sports fan, but asmuch as anyone Connors showed the boy the necessity of running outevery single one of life’s ground balls.xa0Connors was a shy and earnest handyman who had lost his parentsto illness when he was young, and who had honed his workshop skillsunder John Tiedemann’s careful watch. Tiedemann and his wife, Julia,raised Sonny along with twelve children of their own, sparing him ateenager’s life as a ward of the state.xa0Tiedemann was a worthy role model for Sonny. He had left school inthe sixth grade to work in a Jersey City foundry and help his widowedmother pay the bills. At thirteen, Tiedemann already was operating asmall electrical business of his own.xa0In the wake of the Great Depression he landed a job inside St. Michael’sChurch, where Tiedemann did everything for Monsignor LeRoyMcWilliams, even built him a parish gym. When Msgr. McWilliamsdid not have the money to cover the scaffolding needed to paint St. Michael’s,Tiedemann invented a jeep-mounted boom that could elevatea man to the highest reaches of the ceiling. He ultimately got into thebusiness of painting and decorating church walls.xa0Around the same time, in the mid-fifties, Tiedemann was overseeingwork on a 2.7-acre Greenwood Lake, New York, lot he had purchasedfor $15,000. His main objective was the restoration of a German-stylecastle that had been gutted by fire more than a decade earlier.Tiedemann’s labor force amounted to his eleven sons, includinghis ace plumber, roofer, carpenter, and electrician from St. Michael’s— Sonny Connors.xa0“Sonny was a Tiedemann,” said one of the patriarch’s own, George.“We all counted him as one of our brothers.”xa0And every weekend, year after year after year, this band of JerseyCity brothers gathered to breathe new life into the dark slate-tiled castle,an Old World hideaway originally built by a New York City dentistin 1903. The Tiedemann boys started by digging out the ashes andremoving the trees that had grown inside the structure.xa0They did this for their father, the self-made man the old St. Michael’spastor liked to call “the Michelangelo of the tool chest.” The castle wasJohn Tiedemann’s dream house, and the boys helped him build additionalhomes on the property so some of his thirteen children andfifty-four grandchildren could live there.xa0“We weren’t a huggy, kissy type of family,” George said. “We weren’tthe Waltons. But the love was there, and it didn’t have to manifest itselfmore than it did.”xa0John Tiedemann was a tough and simple man who liked to fish,watch boxing, and move the earth with his callused hands. Long beforehe poured himself into the Greenwood Lake project, Tiedemann wasproud of being the first resident on his Jersey City block, 7th Street, toown a television set. He enjoyed having his friends over to take in theFriday night fights.xa0He finally made some real money with his church improvementbusiness and later bought himself a couple of Rolls-Royces to park outsidehis renovated castle. But Tiedemann was a laborer at heart, and hehad taught his eleven sons all the necessary trades.xa0As it turned out, none of the boys could match the father as a craftsman.None but Sonny, the one Tiedemann who did not share Tiedemann’sblood.xa0For years Sonny was John’s most reliable aide, at least when hewas not working his full-time job as head of maintenance at Queenof Peace in North Arlington, New Jersey, an hour’s commute from thecastle. Sonny would drive through heavy snowstorms in the middle ofthe night to clean the Queen of Peace parking lots by 4:00 a.m. Hewould vacuum the rugs around the altar, paint the priests’ living quarters,and repair the parishioners’ sputtering cars for no charge.xa0Sonny never once called in sick and never once forgot the familythat gave him a chance. Every Friday, payday, Sonny would stop at abakery and buy a large strawberry shortcake so all the Tiedemannscould enjoy dessert.xa0“Sonny was the spark that kept us going,” George said, “because henever took a break.” Sonny idolized Julia Tiedemann, and he liked tomake her husband proud. If John Tiedemann wanted a room painted,Sonny made sure that room got painted while John was away on businessso he would be pleasantly surprised on his return.Sonny married a Tiedemann; of course he did. Dorothy was a nieceof John and Julia’s, a devoted Yankees fan who loved hearing the crackof Joe D.’s bat on the radio, and who hated seeing Babe Ruth’s lifelessbody when she passed his open casket inside Yankee Stadium in 1948.xa0Sonny and Dorothy, or Dot, would raise fourteen children, includinganother Dorothy, or Dot. The Connors family spent some time inthe castle before moving to nearby West Milford, New Jersey, whereSonny served as the same working-class hero for his kids that JohnTiedemann was for him.xa0Sonny and his wife took in troubled or orphaned children and madethem their own, and it never mattered that money was tight. “Sonnywent back to his own experience as a boy,” said Monsignor ThomasMadden, the pastor at Queen of Peace. “The Tiedemanns took care ofSonny, so it was in his nature to take care of others. . . . And Dorothyhad just as big a heart as he did.”xa0One of their flesh-and-blood daughters, Dot, ended up in the armyand was stationed in Frankfurt, Germany, where in 1972 she met ablack soldier named Sanderson Charles Jeter, raised by a single motherin Montgomery, Alabama. They married the following year, at a timein America when the notion of a biracial president was more absurdthan that of a human colony on Mars.xa0Naturally, Sonny did not approve of the marriage. He worried overthe way the children would be treated, worried they would be teasedand taunted by black and white. “Sonny was very concerned aboutthat,” Msgr. Madden said. “He would ask, ‘Will they be accepted? Willthey have to fight battles?’ ”xa0His questions would start to be answered on June 26, 1974, whenDerek Sanderson Jeter was born at Chilton Memorial Hospital in thePompton Plains section of Pequannock, New Jersey.xa0If Sonny initially did not have a relationship with his daughter’s husband,that did not stop him from pursuing one with his daughter’s son.xa0Derek was four when his parents moved with him from Jersey toKalamazoo, Michigan, where Charles enrolled in Western MichiganUniversity to pursue a master’s and doctorate in social work. But everysummer, Derek stayed with the Connors clan in West Milford andmade almost daily visits to the castle in Greenwood Lake.xa0The Tiedemanns put down sand near the water to give the boys andgirls the feel of a beachfront, and Derek’s grandmother brought himover to play with the Tiedemann grandchildren and escape the heat.Derek was not looking for a chance to swim as much as he was lookingfor a partner in a game of catch.xa0“He was always talking about baseball,” said Michael Tiedemann,one of John’s grandchildren. They played Wiffle ball games and threwfootballs and tennis balls around the lake. “And no matter what weplayed,” Michael said, “Derek was by leaps and bounds the best athlete.He kept his eye on the ball and moved a lot faster than the rest of usdid.”xa0Despite the fact he was reed thin, Derek surely claimed some ofhis physicality from Sonny, a roundish but powerfully built man whostood five foot eleven and projected the body language of a dockworker— in other words, someone to be avoided in a bar fight. But itwas Derek’s father, Charles, who passed down the genetic coding of aballplayer.xa0Charles Jeter was a shortstop in the late sixties when he arrived atFisk University, a small, historically black school in Nashville. He wasa shortstop until the coach, James Smith, told him he was a secondbaseman.xa0Smith had a pro prospect with a throwing arm to die for, name ofVictor Lesley. Lesley was the reason the tall and rangy Jeter was movedto a less taxing infield spot.xa0Jeter was hardly thrilled with the demotion and yet never mentionedit to his coach. Though he did not have a male figure in hishousehold while growing up — Jeter never met his father — he knewhow to conduct himself as a perfect gentleman, a credit to the motherand housecleaner named Lugenia who raised him.xa0“Cordial, nice, carried himself the right way,” Smith said. “I neverheard Jeter use a curse word. Ever.”xa0On a strong team composed of African Americans from the Southand a small circle of Caribbean recruits from St. Thomas, Jeter was anexcellent fielder and base runner, a decent hitter who liked to punchthe ball to right field, and a selfless teammate who knew how to advancea runner from one base to the next.xa0Jeter was as reliable a sacrifice bunter as Smith had ever seen. “Youcould ask him to bunt with three strikes on him if the rules had allowedit,” Smith said.xa0The head coach was the son of one of Nashville’s first black policeofficers. Smith was only a few years older than his players, but he wasa strict disciplinarian all the same, a man unafraid of leaving behind acouple of important players if they were late for the bus.xa0The Fisk team, he said, “used to be the laughingstock of the league,”the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. He recruited bettertalent from American high schools, stumbled upon a pipeline to theU.S. Virgin Islands, and made sure his players were dressed in shirtsand ties on road trips.xa0“They needed to know that when you go to Fisk,” Smith said, “yourepresent something besides yourself.”xa0Though Fisk had its share of white professors and white exchangestudents, Jeter and his teammates forever understood they were membersof a predominantly black institution surrounded by a cultureoften hostile to African-American aims. So Smith took no chances. Hisstudent athletes were expected to be ambassadors of the school, thesport, and the cause of racial equity.xa0Charles Jeter fit the serious-minded mold. Only once did Smithhave to reprimand him, and that was after Jeter was thrown out tryingto steal second. Smith had never given him the steal sign, and whena teammate committed the same mortal baserunning sin the next inning,Smith went ballistic. “Gentlemen,” he shouted at his players, “thisis a team sport. Let’s not put individual statistics ahead of the team.”xa0Jeter was known for his hustle, for his willingness to run out groundballs, so he was the perfect apostle of this all-for-one, one-for-all approach.(Smith only heard of his dismay over being moved to secondbase through a relative years later.) Jeter did not play to inflate hisnumbers on the bases or at the plate. He burned to be part of a winner,so the demoted shortstop focused on being the best second baseman inthe league.xa0Smith shifted the incumbent to right field to clear room for Jeter,whose quickness and hand speed made him a natural at turning thedouble play. Jeter had a glove as flat as a pancake, “and we teased himabout it all the time,” said Ulric Smalls, one of his teammates from St.Thomas. “When Jeter put it on the ground it had no shape, but he wasflawless in the field.”xa0Jeter got his chance to return to shortstop after Lesley left Fisk, andSmalls remembered him outplaying a Vanderbilt star who had all thebig league scouts abuzz. Smith had left his coaching position beforeJeter finished his collegiate career, but he had scheduled the likes ofVanderbilt so the scouts fussing over the white boys in the SEC wouldbe forced to watch his players, too.xa0Buck O’Neil, the Negro League star working for the Cubs, was theonly scout who made regular trips to Fisk, leaving Jeter without thestage he needed to display his command of the game’s fundamentals.xa0Smith believed Charles had all the tools and talent to make it tothe big leagues. “If he was playing at a different time and a differentschool,” the coach said, “he might’ve made it. But Jeter just didn’t havethe opportunity.”xa0Charles Jeter made sure his son had the opportunity by providingthe strong and nurturing paternal presence he had missed as a child,and by embracing the same code of honor, decency, and hard work thathad shaped the Tiedemann and Connors homes.xa0Starting when Derek was in kindergarten, Charles competed againsthim in checkers and in card games and challenged him to guess thevalue of an appliance on the television show The Price Is Right. Charlestried to beat Derek at everything, and he told his wife their son “needsto learn how to lose and how to play the game the right way.”xa0Charles coached Derek when the boy was a Kalamazoo LittleLeaguer, when Derek loved nothing more than throwing on his uniform,standing proudly before a mirror, and marching in the openingdayparade with his chin high and his shoulders thrown back, so proudto be part of a team.xa0Only one day Derek decided he was too proud to finish on the wrongend of a Little League score. He refused to join the handshake line tocongratulate the winning team, and Charles got in his son’s face andmade a tough-love stand.xa0“It’s time to grab a tennis racket,” he barked at Derek, “since youobviously don’t know how to play a team sport.”xa0In fact, Derek knew how to play a team sport, baseball, better thanany other kid in Kalamazoo. He could hit, field, run, and throw the ballfrom shortstop with more power and accuracy than any pitcher couldthrow it from the mound.xa0Derek would play all day, any day, for as many weeks and months asthe Kalamazoo climate would allow. Of course, those summer days inWest Milford and Greenwood Lake were best spent throwing aroundthe ball, too, at least when Derek was not busy swimming in the lakewith his younger sister, Sharlee.xa0The alternative? No, Derek did not take to the alternative work withhis grandfather at Queen of Peace, especially when the chores involveda lawn mower and a wide-open field of unruly grass.xa0Over time Sonny Connors had grown close to Charles Jeter; thechurch handyman had gotten past his concerns for his biracial grandkids.But Sonny had a special bond with Derek, who lived to pleaseSonny as much as he lived to please Charles.xa0Sonny got a kick out of bringing his grandson to work. One day heasked Derek to mow a Queen of Peace football field that had the overgrownlook of a Brazilian rain forest. All elbows and knees and ankles,young Derek was no match for the job.xa0“The poor kid was going crazy with it,” said Madden, the Queen ofPeace pastor. Derek was pushing the mower, emptying the bag, andpushing it again, and it was so hot the nuns felt sorry for him. Theybrought him inside, gave him a cold soda, told him to relax.xa0As soon as Sonny found out his grandson was cooling offand catchinghis breath, he ordered Derek to get back to work.xa0Sonny did not believe in fifteen-minute breaks, weekends, vacations,or holidays. “We used to open presents on Christmas Eve,” Sharleewould say, “because our grandfather worked every Christmas Day.”xa0Sonny did not want his children using the word can’t in his home,and his daughter imposed the same ordinance on Derek and Sharlee.So when children laughed at Derek’s claim that he would be a Yankee,and when teachers advised Charles and Dot to steer their son toward amore realistic goal, the Jeters did not budge.xa0No, the black social worker from Alabama and the white accountantfrom New Jersey would not listen to people tell them Derek could notbe a big league ballplayer any more than they would listen to those whotold them they should not marry for the sake of their children-to-be.xa0Derek refused to acknowledge those who thought he was bankingon a fairy tale. “People laughed at it, and I just shrugged it off,” hewould say. “It just made me work harder.”xa0The Jeters built their social lives around the ball field, particularlythe Kalamazoo Central High School field just beyond the perimeterof their backyard. When Dot was not throwing Wiffle balls for Derekto hit in that yard, mother, son, father, and daughter were scaling thefence to take infield and batting practice. Derek hit his baseballs, andSharlee hit her softballs.xa0“Some people go to the movies for fun,” said Sharlee, who was Der-ek’s athletic equal. “We went to the field. It was all part of being veryclose.”xa0They lived something of a Rockwellian existence in their modesthome on 2415 Cumberland Street, where Charles and Dorothy enjoyedwatching The Cosby Show with their son and daughter, and where theymaintained order by signing their children to binding behavioral pacts.Derek signed his just before going offto high school, and the provisionscovered phone calls, television hours, homework, grade-pointaverages, curfews, drugs and alcohol, and respect for others.xa0Even back then Derek was one to live up to the terms of his deals.His teachers described him as industrious, self-motivated, and willingto lend a hand to a student in need.xa0“He epitomized what every mom wants in a son,” said Shirley Garzelloni,Derek’s fourth-grade teacher at St. Augustine.xa0Discipline and accountability were the laws of the Jeters’ land.Charles was a full-time student by day, a drug and alcohol abuse counselorby night, and even with Dot drawing her accounting paycheck,money had to be spent judiciously.xa0One day Derek announced he wanted a pair of $125 basketball shoeshe thought would improve his modest (at the time) leaping ability. Hismother agreed on one condition: Derek had better wear those shoesand work on his jumping 24/7.xa0Sure enough, Derek would run and hop all over the family’s smallliving room. “He knew it was important for us,” Dot would say, “that ifwe were going to sacrifice $125, then he was going to give us his all.”xa0On the field and in the classroom. By the eighth grade Jeter wasa straight-A student who maintained his popularity with students ofboth genders. The boys were in awe of his athleticism, “and the girlswere in awe of his personality and looks,” said Chris Oosterbaan, hiscreative writing and history teacher. “There were many crushes onDerek Jeter.”xa0The attention did not swell Jeter’s head beyond the margins of hissigned conduct clauses. Truth was, Derek would have signed anythingas long as he was allowed to play baseball for the teams that would havehim. And there was not an amateur team within a fifty-mile radius ofKalamazoo that did not want Charles Jeter’s boy as its shortstop.xa0Derek was not anyone’s idea of a braggart, but he had been tellingclassmates and teachers he would grow into a big leaguer as far backas fourth grade, inside Garzelloni’s class in the basement of St. Augustine.Garzelloni asked her twenty students to declare their futureintentions, and she heard the typical answers from most — doctor, firefighter, teacher, professional athlete.xa0Only Derek was not planning on being just a professional athlete;he had something far more specific in mind, a vision he shared with hisparents as a child. He told Garzelloni’s class he was going to be a NewYork Yankee, and the teacher told the student her husband — a devotedYankee fan — would be happy to hear it.xa0Derek did not make this some grand proclamation; he just said itas if he were announcing his plans for lunch. “And if he said he wasgoing to do something,” Garzelloni said, “Derek was the kind of kidwho did it.”xa0Derek told anyone who would listen that he would someday playshortstop for the Yankees, the team his father had hated in his youth.Before Charles started rooting for the local Tigers, he was a NationalLeague fan from the South who did not celebrate Yankee dominance;the Yanks were among baseball’s last all-white teams before promotingElston Howard eight years after Jackie Robinson’s debut at EbbetsField.xa0Grandma Dot converted Derek on those summer trips to the castleand lake. She took her grandson to his first Yankee Stadium gamewhen he was six, and years later Derek could not remember the opponentor the final score. “All I can tell you,” he would say, “is everythingwas so big.”xa0As big as the boy’s ambition. Derek would stir his grandmotherat dawn, throw on his Yankee jersey, and beg her to play catch in theyard. She always agreed, even if she knew Derek’s throws would nearlyknock her to the ground.xa0Soon enough Derek entered Kalamazoo Central High on a mission— to honor his own prophecy, the one laid out for him by his St.Augustine classmates in a 1988 graduation booklet that included forecastsof what the students would be doing ten years later. “Derek Jeter,professional ball player for the Yankees is coming around,” one entryread. “You’ve seen him in grocery stores — on the Wheaties boxes, ofcourse.”xa0As it turned out, Jeter made his ninth-grade mark with a basketballbefore he made one with a baseball. Around Halloween in ’88, Derekwas dribbling a ball up and down and around a Kalamazoo Centralservice road just when Clarence Gardner was starting a road trip withthe Central girls basketball team (Michigan girls used to play their basketballseason in the fall).xa0The players pressed their noses against the bus windows and expressedwonderment over the freshman’s commitment in the face ofa late October chill. “They were all saying, ‘You know he’s going to begreat,’ ” Gardner recalled. “Of course, some of them were talking abouthow cute he was, too.”xa0It was the first time Derek Sanderson Jeter was known to have impresseda busload of schoolgirls.xa0It would not be the last. Read more