It's a life of mid-size cars, mid-level hotels and drive-thru dinners just off the interstate. Your best friends are talk radio and the USA Today box scores. Your worst enemies are a full bladder and a sign that reads "Next Service Area 56 Miles." You work a territory, usually three or four states, and you have to be prepared for all of nature's elements. You learn quickly never to leave home without long johns, a rain slicker and sunscreen.
The life of an area scout for a major league baseball team is a lonely one. High school game one day. College game the next. Juco game. American Legion game. Babe Ruth game. Pull up your folding lawn chair, point your radar gun, click your stop watch. Hundreds of games. Thousands of players.
Then it happens. As quickly as a coach can spank a fungo across a choppy infield in Flint, Mich., you remember why you got into this business. The ball takes a high bounce, then a low one. It begins to roll, then pops up again like bacon grease off a frying pan. A tall, reed-thin shortstop somehow calms the ball. He glides in, reaches forward to glove it, makes the transfer and then fires a smooth, firm throw to first. You are left breathless. The kid is a high school sophomore.
"I see an electric body," Yankees scout Dick Groch recalls. "Thin, but with lithe, sinewy muscle. Classic infielder's body type. Fluid and graceful." At this moment, the scout gathers himself. Time to find out more about this boy, beginning with the basics. Name? Derek Jeter. Where's he from? Kalamazoo Central High. Good kid? No, great kid. Good family? Too good to be true.
Over the next two years, Groch follows Jeter's every move. He makes sure all the Yankees' top scouts are flown in to see that he isn't exaggerating about Jeter's talent, charisma and class. That he isn't making up the stuff about his good looks and impeccable manners. That he's dead serious when he says Jeter could be the greatest shortstop in Yankee history, the kind of player who can lead championship teams, be an idol and never get a swelled head.
"A player like this makes you hyperventilate," says Groch, who's been scouting the Midwest for the Yankees for 18 years. He is sitting in a hotel room in Columbus, ohio, on a chilly April night. The Yankees are playing in Detroit, and Jeter has already gone deep for the fourth time this season.
"The term we use is 'special.' I've only used it on three players. Ken Griffey Jr., Derek Jeter, and the third guy I'm not going to name because he's just getting started. We don't call a player special based on tools alone. It's also his passion for the game and his qualities as a boy. With the Yankees, you have to take maturity into account. Can he handle New York? There can't be a single question-and with Derek, there was none."
The Yankees had the sixth pick in the 1992 draft, and if Jeter was still available, he was their man. Everyone was in agreement. Then, one last question: "Is there any chance," a member of the Yankee staff asked, "that he'll go to college? He signed a letter of intent with Michigan, and I know how his parents feel about academics. Any chance of that?" Groch stood up and said, "There's only one place Derek Jeter's going for sure: Cooperstown."
A scout looks at an 18-year-old kid who's 6'3" and 155 pounds, and he sees lithe and sinewy muscle. A 21-year-old looks at that same kid and asks, This is our first-round draft pick? "He had high-top shoes that looked like army boots because his legs were so skinny," Yankees catcher Jorge Posada says, recalling the first time he saw Jeter, in Class A Greensboro in the summer of 1992. "His shirt and pants were way too big, and he didn't know how to wear a hat. It was sitting way up on top of his head. He looked like a Little Leaguer." But after watching Jeter range into the hole to make a play or rope a triple into the right-centerfield gap, Posada could see something else: "He could play. There was no doubt."
There was doubt, though, in Jeter's mind. The jump from high school to the minor leagues is difficult for anyone and more difficult for a kid from Michigan, where a player can get in only so many games between last thaw and first snowfall. In 47 rookie League games in Tampa, Jeter hit .202 and struck out about every five times he went to the plate. "I cried in my room every night," Jeter says. "I'd never been away from home before, and I didn't feel like I belonged. I felt overmatched."
The Yankees didn't see it that way. They moved him up to Greensboro for the final two weeks of the season, then told him to go home and enjoy the winter. Like all Yankee first-round picks, Jeter was invited to big league spring training the following year. Standing shoulder to shoulder with Don Mattingly, Wade Boggs and Paul O'Neill, Jeter had a realization: "I saw I had the ability to make it. And I also saw how hard I would have to work."
One day, after Jeter finished a workout on one of the fields at the Yankees' old Fort Lauderdale complex, Mattingly jogged up beside him as he was walking back to the clubhouse. "You better run," Mattingly said. "You never know who's watching." Jeter looked around. There was no one in sight. "Most of the team was playing an exhibition game somewhere," Jeter recalls. "There were no fans, no coaches, no media around. Nobody was watching. That made a big impression on me. Since that day, when I'm on the field, I always run."
And since that spring, nothing has been able to slow Jeter down. By the end of 1994, when the major leaguers were going on strike and the World Series was being canceled, Jeter was tearing up Triple-A. In 1995, he was on the Yankees' bench during September, as the team streaked to the AL wild card. He sat alongside Posada, now his best buddy. "We were like little kids," Posada recalls. "We kept telling each other, 'Man, this is the big leagues, this is unbelievable. We gotta get here and next time, we gotta stay.'"
The two young Yankees rented a Dodge Neon and commuted to the ballpark from a hotel across the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, N.J. Every night, they'd eat at Bennigan's, the only restaurant in Fort Lee open late. Derek told Jorge that when they got to the big leagues for good, they should live in Manhattan, where they wouldn't be so isolated, where they'd have a choice of postgame restaurants. Next season, Jeter won the starting shortstop job and rented a two-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side. Posada was called up from Triple-A four times that year. Each time, Derek had the extra bedroom waiting for him. Now, of course, each has his own place. They take turns choosing restaurants. They hit the China Club on occasion, usually leaving before Jeter causes too much of a stir. As for the kid who couldn't fill out a uniform? Well, he's already broken Mariah Carey's heart.
"Yeah, I know, the girls all think he's handsome," Posada says. "But I still think he's funny-looking."
The shirts come in many different sizes and styles. So do the people wearing them. The common denominator is Jeter's No. 2. There's a navy T-shirt, worn by a preppy blond college student. There's one of those $100 game jerseys, worn by a fortysomething father of three. Three Latino teenagers go with the mesh BP jersey, worn untucked and unbuttoned. All these people are hanging outside Yankee Stadium, hoping to catch a glimpse of the players as they board a bus for the airport. It's nearing 12:30 a.m.
Most of the Yankee regulars draw a response from the crowd. "Paul-Lee," a man shouts as O'Neill strolls by. "Doo-kay," another yells at Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez. But no one pulls in the cheers-or the shrieks, screams and gasps-like Jeter. All Yankees are required to wear a jacket and tie on getaway day, but no one looks as stylish as GQ cover boy Jeter, who's wearing a light checked jacket, a white shirt and dark slacks. Not until Jeter smiles, waves and walks onto the bus is the crowd contented. "The city had a love affair with the Mets," says David Cone. "Guys like Ron Darling were pretty big matinee idols, living in the city, doing the GQ cover and all that. But that was nothing like what Derek is going through, with these girls screaming and wailing every time he steps out in public. And he's handled it all with a level head. I know he's turned down a lot more endorsements than he's accepted."
One he didn't turn down came recently, when Michael Jordan handpicked Jeter to be the first baseball player to wear Nike's new Jordan brand. "What athlete wouldn't want to associate himself with Michael?" asks Jeter, whose gigantic image, complete with swoosh, already adorns the side of an eight-story building in lower Manhattan. "Michael's one of my idols. I met him in '94 when he was playing baseball in the Arizona Fall League. He's a great guy. He's down to earth and classy." What Jordan sees in Jeter is an athlete who, like himself, appeals to fans of all ages, colors and genders. A competitor on the field, a gentleman off it. A star who handles the pressures of celebrity as gracefully as he once handled the irregular hops of a high school field in Flint.
"If you want me to brag, ask me about my parents," Jeter says. "I'm not going to brag about me, because my job is too humbling." He means what he says. Ask Jeter about his torrid start (.462 through the first 10 games), his evolving power, his defense or his running game, and he'll tell you there's room for improvement. Ask him about his mother, father and younger sister, and he'll tell you, "I'm the luckiest guy in the world. I know my opinion is biased, but I have the greatest family anyone could ever ask for."
Dr. Charles Jeter, Derek's father, is a clinical therapist who specializes in drug and alcohol counseling. He was born in Montgomery, Ala. He is African-American. Derek's mother, Dorothy, who worked until recently as a credit manager, was born in Jersey City, N.J. She is Caucasian. Asked if he and his sister (Sharlee, a student at Spellman College in Atlanta) were ever teased about being multiracial, Derek says, "People sometimes said things, but my feeling was always, Why let an ignorant person bother me? Growing up, I had friends who were black, white and Hispanic. I was surrounded by so many good people, I never had much of a problem. My parents, I'm sure, had to deal with it a lot more than I did. They made it all easy for me."
As a child, Derek spent his summers at his grandparents' house in northern New Jersey, where he became a Yankees fan. His favorite player was Dave Winfield. Jeter loved the way Winfield swung the bat and ran the bases, and he thought it was cool that the big, graceful outfielder also had a foundation for underprivileged kids. Derek told himself that if he ever made it, he was going to be like Winfield and try to help the less fortunate.
After his rookie of the Year season and World Series championship in 1996, Jeter formed the Turn 2 Foundation, an organization designed to steer high-risk kids in New York and Michigan away from drugs. He asked his father if he would consider giving up his private practice to be the foundation's executive director. Dr. Jeter proudly accepted the job. In just over two years, the foundation has raised more than $700,000 for organizations like the Boys Clubs of America and Phoenix House. When the Yankees played in Detroit in mid-April, more than 80 kids were in Tiger Stadium representing Turn 2.
"And the thing is, my father gets to help out more people now than he did in his practice," Derek says. "And that makes him very happy."
Bernie Williams is wincing. Luis Sojo is giggling. Derek Jeter is singing in a falsetto voice. The tune is unrecognizable. The only word you can make out is "baby." "You know that song, Soy-Yo?" Jeter asks Sojo. "How 'bout you, Bernabee?" he asks Williams. Both shake their heads. It's three hours before game time in the cramped and cold visitors clubhouse at Tiger Stadium, and Jeter is, as always, in fine fettle. Soft-spoken and reserved during interviews, Jeter is an instigator, a jokester and a needler among his teammates.
Before Game 4 of the American League Championship Series last fall, with the Yankees trailing two games to one and playing in Cleveland, Jeter walked up to manager Joe Torre, poked him in the ribs and said, "Mr. Torre, this is one of the biggest games you've ever managed in." It broke Torre and bench coach Don Zimmer up. But, on another occasion, when David Wells threw his arms up after a ball was misplayed, Jeter approached Wells in the dugout and told him, in no uncertain terms, to act like a pro.
"He's become the leader of this team at 24," Cone marvels. "He's very good at loosening things up. And he's not afraid to get on guys, either. He's the future captain of the Yankees, if he's not already. And let's not forget, most of all, he leads us by what he does with his bat, his glove and his legs. He just keeps getting better and better." Says O'Neill: "By the time Derek's finished, we're all going to say he's the best player we've ever played with."
Jeter has yet to produce power numbers to rival his buddy, Alex Rodriguez, or the Red Sox's Nomar Garciaparra, but people are starting to think he just might someday, the way the ball's been jumping off his bat this spring. His trademark inside-out line drive to right center is still there. But after a lot of work in the weight room-he's now a sturdy 195 pounds-and the batting cage this winter, Jeter's showing the ability to get the bat head out front. "He can fight off an inside fastball and drive it to right one time and turn on it the next," Baltimore's Mike Mussina said after Jeter put up three hits on him. "He also covers the outside half of the plate. There aren't really any holes there. It's tough to have a game plan against him."
Defensively, Jeter has the same combination of grit and athleticism. His play in the hole in Game 1 of the ALCS, when he backhanded a ball on the outfield grass, jumped, twisted in the air and fired a four-seamer to Tino Martinez, was the signature play of the Yankees' postseason. But more importantly, he has become the infielder pitchers want the ball hit to with a man on third and two out. He played the final 40 games last season-including the postseason-without committing an error. The total package is beginning to look a lot like Dick Groch's final assessment before the 1992 draft.
"Calling an 18-year-old kid a Hall of Famer is a little bit absurd," the veteran scout says now with a chuckle. "But I wanted to get my point across. This kid is special."
A Manager's Dream
by Joe Torre with Bob Klapisch
The first time I saw Derek Jeter play was in the spring of 1996. Until then, I'd only heard about this young shortstop who wasn't much of a hitter and was a little raw defensively. But ready or not, he was getting his shot. The organization was committed to him.
My initial evaluation? Certainly, Derek had a strong arm, and he was confident charging the ball. That was unusual for a kid that young. As I soon learned, though, he had a maturity unlike any other 21-year-old I'd ever seen. There was a presence about him that led me to believe he was going to develop quickly as a big leaguer.
Aspects of his game still needed work. He had a habit of fielding the ball with two hands going up the middle, instead of just using his glove hand. That limited his range to his left. It took Derek about two years to break that habit. He also liked to make that jump-throw after going to his right, deep in the hole. We teach shortstops to stop and plant their feet. They can get more on their throw, and it's easier on their arm. Derek wasn't doing it to showboat. It was just his way of making that particular play. So we decided to leave him alone.
I was told not to look for much from him as a hitter, at least not in '96. That was okay, since we had so many other bats. All I wanted from him was .250. But someone in the organization said, "Jeter's going to be a lot better than .250. Just give him some time."
To look at Derek hitting today, it's hard to believe he's had only three years in the majors. Watching him play the field, seeing how patient and selective he is at the plate, and what a leader he is on the field, it's hard to believe he's so young. I don't think I've seen a player that young with so much composure.
Offensively, there's no limit to what Derek can do, because he's just learning how to drive the ball. When he first came up, he hit everything to the opposite field. He had this habit of drawing his hands in, even when pitchers were working him inside. I did the same thing as a hitter. It's not the most attractive way to go after the ball, but it keeps pitchers honest. They can't jam Derek, even with tough sinkers. Derek almost dares them to come inside. He knows he'll get plunked a lot, but he isn't intimidated.
Another factor is that he's getting bigger and stronger. Derek still goes to the opposite field with a lot of pitches, even inside ones, but now he's starting to hit home runs. He hit 19 last year, and I don't really mind that, because Derek isn't actually trying for the fences. The homers are coming naturally, which is how great hitters develop.
Derek is everything we've hoped he'd be-and more. It's fun watching him progress, because the sky's the limit.