The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter

by Ian O'Connor

  The Yankees outlasted the Red Sox in the pursuit of Contreras, a development that inspired Boston’s new boy-wonder GM, Theo Epstein, to take out his frustrations on the furniture in his hotel room and compelled team president Larry Lucchino to tell the New York Times, “The evil empire extends its tentacles even into Latin America.”

  And Japan. Matsui was not just a star with the Yomiuri Giants; he was, in the words of Yankees general manager Brian Cashman, “the Tom Cruise of his country,” a claim that Yankees assistant GM Jean Afterman, a major player in the Matsui recruitment, called an understatement.

  “When Tom Cruise goes to a London premiere,” Afterman said, “he’s not carrying the hopes and dreams of a nation like Hideki. He’s carrying the hopes and dreams of Warner Brothers.”

  As a Yankee, Matsui would help Jeter carry the hopes and dreams of George Steinbrenner, who would not start the season in a good mood, not after he fined David Wells $100,000 for writing in the released galleys of his upcoming autobiography, among other things, that he pitched his perfect game in 1998 while “half-drunk.”

  The controversy irreparably harmed the close relationship Steinbrenner had with Wells, who would refuse to appear with the owner and the rest of his high-profile pitching staff on the cover of Sports Illustrated. The flap also began tearing at the relationship between Torre and management.

  Steinbrenner gathered his manager and team executives in a Legends Field conference room, with team president Randy Levine on speakerphone. The Boss told Torre to demote Wells to the bullpen, and Torre argued that Steinbrenner should simply fine the pitcher. In the middle of the heated back-and-forth, Levine tried to interrupt before Torre snapped, “Randy, shut the fuck up,” making himself a new blood enemy in the highest corner of Steinbrenner’s cabinet.

  In a subsequent meeting between Steinbrenner and Rick Cerrone, senior director of media relations (Levine and chief operating officer Lonn Trost were on speakerphone), the Boss made it clear he was livid that the New York sports talk radio team of Mike Francesa and Chris Russo were scheduled to do their popular Mike and the Mad Dog show live from the Yankees’ facility, and that the show would surely focus on the Wells book.

  Steinbrenner called for a vote to decide whether the Yankees should cancel the on-site appearance, and Levine and Trost voted with Cerrone to keep the show scheduled. The PR man gave some players advance warning that Francesa and Russo would likely pepper them with questions about Wells’s galleys, which included jabs at Mike Mussina and Roger Clemens and assertions that steroid and amphetamine use was rampant in baseball.

  Jeter was among the players Cerrone warned. “You just worry about Wells,” the shortstop said. “I’ll be fine.”

  Even after the made-in-tabloid-heaven mano a mano he waged with Steinbrenner, Jeter was reestablishing the fact that he did not need any PR help. Jeter acted as his own senior publicist, almost always saying and doing the right things.

  He could have used a big season, though, the kind of season he had in 1999. Jeter could have used the kind of season he had when the Yankees were ripping off titles, the kind, Reggie Jackson said, “where Jeter didn’t lead the league in anything except victories. People looked at him as the best player in baseball even though he didn’t have the best skills, which is a very hard thing to pull off.”

  A lingering shoulder injury had helped drag Jeter’s numbers back to the pack, not that he would ever admit it. Jeter refused to be defined by his stat sheet, anyway. When a New York–based columnist told Jeter he was planning to write that the shortstop had not been playing up to his $189 million deal, Jeter defended himself this way:

  “But I don’t look at it as living up to my contract. When I signed that deal, they didn’t tell me I had to start hitting 50 homers with 120 RBI. I was told to continue doing the things I’ve always done.

  “Personally, things weren’t as good last year as they were in other years, but I’m still scoring runs and doing whatever it takes to help this team win. If [Alfonso Soriano] is hitting 50 doubles batting leadoff, I’m going to move him over. I’ll make sacrifices to help this team.

  “You can’t win a championship by yourself. You can be the best player in baseball and, unless you have good people around you and a good team, it won’t matter. . . . I couldn’t care less about numbers. I’d love to hit .380 with 40 homers and 150 RBI; anyone would. But that’s not what winning is about. I’m my own biggest critic, so I have no problem with criticizing my play. I know I can do better. A lot better.”

  The same New York–based columnist told Steinbrenner he agreed with him that Jeter had not been a $189 million ballplayer since signing the $189 million contract, and the Boss replied, “You’re not the only one. But I know the young man will come through for me this year.”

  Truth was, Jeter could not wait to get the 2003 season started, could not wait to shut up the Boss and the Daily News and anyone else painting him as a frat boy in pinstripes.

  On opening night in Toronto, Jeter had already managed a double, a run scored, and a walk after his first two at-bats. He was standing on first base when the Blue Jays’ infielders shifted a quarter mile to their left to defend against the Yankees’ lumbering pull hitter, Jason Giambi.

  As he took his lead off first, Jeter made a mental note that the third baseman, Eric Hinske, had planted himself at shortstop and left his bag wide open. So when Giambi grounded Roy Halladay’s 3-1 pitch back to the mound, Jeter decided the time was right to make a play only Derek Jeter could make.

  This would be his baserunning answer to the flip play to the plate against Oakland in the 2001 playoffs. When Jeter saw Halladay throw to first for the easy out, he hit second base the way an Olympic sprinter hits the final turn in the 400. The shortstop was going to race all the way to third.

  Just Jeter being Jeter, eyeing the free base the shift was offering and forever seizing upon the smallest of openings in an opponent’s defense. But this time two of the ten athletes on the field, not one, were seeing this play one frame ahead of everyone else.

  Toronto catcher Ken Huckaby was a twenty-second-round draft choice of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1991, and he was briefly a Yankee farmhand during his twelve-year minor league odyssey. He would play a total of 161 big league games for five teams over six seasons, batting .222 along the way.

  On March 31, 2003, Huckaby was supposed to be a mere tourist passing unnoticed through Derek Jeter’s world, a holiday shopper strolling by Macy’s window before going on his way.

  But Huckaby did not want to go back to the Crash Davis existence he had known in the minors. He needed to make an impression, needed to make a play, needed something that would convince Toronto’s front office—any front office—he was worthy of a major league job and major league hotels and major league meal money.

  Huckaby saw his opening when Hinske shifted for Giambi, and when Giambi hit the ball back to Halladay. The Toronto ace threw to first baseman Carlos Delgado, and suddenly Huckaby was struck by the same thought consuming Jeter: nobody was covering third.

  Yes, this was Crash Davis’s big chance. His big break. He was going to win a race with the great Derek Jeter. He was going to outsmart the game’s smartest player.

  He was going to make SportsCenter lead with this play.

  He was going to win an ESPY with this play.

  Some 215 pounds in full pads, Huckaby started trudging up the third-base line. “He just looked like the catcher,” said Torre, the former catcher, “like he was running after a school bus.”

  Or like he was pulling a school bus with a rope tied to his waist.

  Across the field, Delgado was making like a quarterback waiting for his tight end to complete his crossing route and find a soft spot in the middle of the zone. Finally, Delgado fired the ball to where he thought his intended target would be.

  The throw to third base was high, nullifying any shot the graceless, unathletic catcher had of making a graceful, athletic play. Once Huckaby left his feet, all bets were of
f. There would be no swipe tag, no aesthetically pleasing climax to match the one defining Jeter’s flip to the plate in Oakland.

  Huckaby made the grab, and as Jeter made a headfirst dive into the bag, the catcher awkwardly crash-landed into him, his left knee and shin guard blasting into Jeter’s left shoulder. “He sort of jumped on me,” the shortstop would say.

  Jeter immediately clutched his shoulder with his right hand and rolled off the bag as his helmet flew off, his face betraying the excruciating pain, the veins in his forehead appearing ready to explode. Huckaby applied the tag, and the umpire who had called Jeter safe, Paul Emmel, suddenly called the runner out.

  For the first time in his baseball life, from Little League to the Bronx, Jeter did not care about the umpire’s call. He had dislocated his left shoulder—actually, Huckaby had dislocated it for him—and Jeter was writhing in pain in the dirt, adding injury to Steinbrenner’s insult.

  From the looks of it, Jeter’s 2003 season was over before it began. “The kid never shows any pain,” Torre said. “But this was something he couldn’t hide.”

  Torre, Yankees trainer Gene Monahan, and two Blue Jays doctors ran out to Jeter, who was surrounded by grim-faced teammates. The shortstop had felt something pop. He wondered if he had broken his collarbone, and he was afraid to look at it. The thought of missing the entire season flashed through his head.

  A cart was driven onto the field and a stretcher was prepared to take him off, but as the SkyDome crowd applauded, Jeter was helped to his feet and loaded onto the cart without the stretcher’s aid. An endorphin rush kicked in, and Jeter’s agonized expression was replaced by a blank mask as he was transported off the field after a twelve-minute delay.

  His shoulder was returned to its rightful home inside the clubhouse, and then Jeter was sent to the hospital for x-rays. Meanwhile, on the Yankees’ bench, at least one newcomer was cursing the fates. John Flaherty, who had been catching in the majors for eleven years, including the previous five with the god-awful Tampa Bay Devil Rays, had waited this long to play with the mighty Yanks only to see the injury-proof Derek Jeter fail to make it through three innings.

  “I’m sitting there like, ‘This is just great. Perfect. I make this team for the first time and here he’s out for a couple of months,’” Flaherty said. “But I remember the whole team on the bench, not to say it wasn’t a big deal, but everybody was like, ‘All right, we’ll find a way.’

  “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, but Andy Pettitte was just sitting there without emotion like, ‘We’ll find a way. It’s all good.’ And so coming out of that I thought, ‘Wow, that’s why this team is always so good, because they find a way to keep going.’”

  The Yanks won, 8–4, after Enrique Wilson filled in at short, Hideki Matsui delivered an RBI single on the first pitch he saw as a Yankee, Soriano belted a grand slam, and Roger Clemens pitched six scoreless innings. Only nobody could talk about a win afterward when all the questions were about a devastating loss.

  Wilson called Huckaby’s action “a dirty play,” and other Yankees grumbled that the Toronto catcher had gone too far in knocking Jeter off the bag. The shortstop had returned from the hospital, his arm in a sling, to appear in a SkyDome interview room and field questions about the injury and the play.

  Jeter needed to get an MRI done before he had a clear timetable on his rehab and return, but the early word was that he would be lost from one to four months, four being more likely than one. Asked if he thought Huckaby was guilty of a dirty play, Jeter said, “You will have to ask him.”

  For his part, Huckaby was telling everyone and anyone that he never intended to hurt Jeter, that the high throw put him in a bad position, and that he felt terrible about the result. The following day the Toronto catcher swore he left a message on Jeter’s cell phone to express his regret—Huckaby said he got the number from someone close to the shortstop—but Jeter insisted he never received the voice mail. “He doesn’t have my phone number,” Jeter said.

  Either way, Huckaby appeared to be guilty only of playing through the whistle the way Jeter did. “He was hustling and I was hustling,” the catcher said. “It was just two guys meeting at the wrong time.”

  Jeter maintained he was not angry at Huckaby—“I’m angry that I’m going to miss a long time. It doesn’t do much good to sit here and be angry at him”—but few observers found it a convincing claim, Huckaby included. So two days after the collision, the catcher decided he needed to make the long and lonely walk to the visitors’ clubhouse during batting practice.

  Huckaby took a deep breath, pushed through the door, and walked right up to Jeter and shook his hand. He told Jeter that he did leave a voice mail, that maybe he had the wrong number. “I hope you’re all right,” Huckaby told him. “I didn’t know where the base was when I was looking for the throw. It wasn’t on purpose. I didn’t know where I was on the field. It was just unfortunate we were at the same place at the same time.”

  Huckaby told Jeter he was sorry about the injury and waited for a response, a nod, a facial expression, something, anything, to loosen the suffocating knot in his gut.

  Jeter gave him nothing but a cold, bloodless stare. Not a single word or even a discernible grunt. Finally, Huckaby said, “I just turned around and walked out.”

  Jeter was back to his one-strike-and-you’re-out policy, the one he had applied to Chad Curtis. One team official thought Jeter’s behavior in the matter was unbecoming.

  “I was surprised, but he’s human,” the official said. “He’s almost perfect. So when you run into something like that it’s so surprising because he’s almost perfect.”

  Almost.

  The year before, Jeter had hardly been thrilled when Cleveland’s John McDonald rolled into him hard at second and injured his knee, but that collision cost him a couple of games.

  This one threatened to ruin the season. Jeter was so hell-bent on making this a season to remember, too, a season that would silence the Boss and the critics forevermore. If someone was going to stop Jeter from attaining his goal, a journeyman catcher did not make for a worthy candidate.

  “People say, well, I treated him wrong and I shouldn’t have acted like that,” Jeter would say. “He never called. He came over the last day and said something, [but] it wasn’t a situation where I thought the guy did it on purpose, or I refused to call him, or I was being a bad guy. But no, he never called, regardless of what he said.

  “I see all these things, ‘Oh, I treated the poor kid wrong.’ He’s older than me. . . . I don’t think he purposely hurt me, but I thought it was a little out of control.”

  Jeter would miss thirty-six games and return to the lineup on May 13, hoping to put the nightmares of winter and spring behind him. Three weeks later, his phone would ring with word of a reprieve.

  George Steinbrenner had a new title for his shortstop, and it was not party animal.

  Derek Jeter was named captain of the New York Yankees on June 3, 2003. The announcement came out of left field, in Cincinnati, where Joe Torre acknowledged he was not even consulted on George Steinbrenner’s appointment.

  Not even six months after he publicly questioned whether Jeter was fit to be captain, and whether Jeter partied too much for his own good, Steinbrenner had cut against his own grain for the sake of old times. He was firing and rehiring Billy Martin all over again.

  “It’s something I’ll always treasure,” Jeter said of the captaincy, “and I’ll do it to the best of my ability.”

  Strangely enough, entering spring training, Steinbrenner had floated Roger Clemens as his possible choice for captain to a couple of people inside the organization. Clemens over Jeter would have been a terrible judgment call, as the Rocket had established himself with the Red Sox and was not an everyday player. But the Boss adored Clemens’s John Wayne swagger. The thought did not gain any traction, and the homegrown Yankee was left as the logical choice.

  Steinbrenner’s off-season rip job on Jeter led to a commerci
al offer from Visa that was—surprisingly enough—accepted by the owner and shortstop. In the ad, the Boss summoned Jeter into his office and asked how, as the starting shortstop, he could afford to spend so much time out dancing, eating, and carousing with his friends. Jeter pulled out his Visa card, and the commercial showed him bouncing from one nightspot to the next before the shortstop and Steinbrenner ended up on the same conga line in a club.

  It was a cute spot, and one that suggested the Boss and Jeter were back to being amicable business partners. But naming Jeter the first captain since Don Mattingly retired in ’95? Without telling Torre? After four full years of media speculation that Jeter would get the nod? In the Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati?

  “I know the timing was strange,” Steinbrenner said, “but I felt the team . . . needed a spark.”

  So the Boss bestowed upon Jeter the most prestigious title in American team sports because his team needed a spark in early June? Longtime Yankee observers saw something more sinister in the move.

  They saw Steinbrenner rebuking Torre with the Jeter promotion, suggesting the manager needed help in leading his team. The Yankees were not the Yankees who had started the season 23-6 without Jeter. Yes, they had won four of five entering this series with the Reds, but they had lost twelve of fifteen prior to that. Steinbrenner was upset over the way Andy Pettitte and Jeff Weaver were pitching, and over the way Jason Giambi and Hideki Matsui weren’t slugging.

  The owner was also down on Rick Down, the hitting coach, and on Don Zimmer, the bench coach, who had picked yet another public fight with Steinbrenner on behalf of Torre and the staff. The Boss had decided three nights earlier, after Weaver’s loss in Detroit, that he needed to make a move. Torre was among the last to know; he got the news from Brian Cashman.

  That’s how Jeter finally became captain. “This is an honor that’s not thrown around too lightly here,” the shortstop said.