The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter

by Ian O'Connor

  Steinbrenner began hunting for scapegoats, and his hitting coach, Rick Down, was in his sights. Don Zimmer, bench coach, had already signed his walking papers by trashing Steinbrenner one last time on his way out of the Stadium, and by promising to never again work a day in the Boss’s employ. Mel Stottlemyre, pitching coach, said he was considering stepping down because he felt “personally abused” by Steinbrenner.

  But Down wanted to return. As the hitting coach walked out of the Stadium the day after the Marlins’ conquest, Torre wrapped an arm around him, kissed him on the cheek, and said, “You’ve got nothing to worry about. I love your passion for the game.”

  As Torre walked away, another Yankee coach, Lee Mazzilli, started laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” Down asked.

  “Do you know who that is?” Mazzilli responded.

  “Yeah, that’s my manager.”

  “No, that’s the Godfather, and that was your kiss of death.”

  Sure enough, Brian Cashman phoned Down the next morning to tell him he had been fired. When Torre called to express his regrets, he explained to Down, “I couldn’t buy a new house, but I can rearrange the furniture.”

  Suddenly Down was a frayed love seat moved out to the curb, ultimately replaced by Don Mattingly. But the Yankees were not only going to hire a new hitting coach.

  They were going to hire a new infielder, too, one who would forever alter the franchise and every aspect of Derek Jeter’s baseball life.

  10. Alex

  Alex Rodriguez thought he had found an exit strategy in the Boston Red Sox, who were miles apart in contract negotiations with Nomar Garciaparra, scheduled to be a free agent at the end of the 2004 season.

  A-Rod’s Texas Rangers had finished dead last in the American League West for three consecutive years, and the $252 million man wanted out. He was desperate to win. Desperate to get out of Arlington, Texas. Desperate to avoid finishing his career without a parade to call his own.

  Boston had deals to send Manny Ramirez to Texas for Rodriguez and Garciaparra to the White Sox for Magglio Ordonez. The Red Sox needed to clear one hurdle—they wanted to lower the average annual value of A-Rod’s contract, and the Players Association was more inclined to allow random, unlimited steroid testing than it was to allow a megastar player to give back a pile of guaranteed cash.

  A-Rod wanted to go to Boston, the Red Sox and Rangers wanted A-Rod to go to Boston, and Commissioner Bud Selig wanted one of his most marketable players to go to Boston, or any place other than Texas, where the reporting date for punters and kickers is bigger than the one for pitchers and catchers.

  But the union and the Red Sox could not agree to agree on the amount of the contract reduction, leaving Garciaparra stuck with a franchise that did not want to pay him, and leaving A-Rod stuck with a market and a manager (Buck Showalter) he could not stand.

  Until the Yankees’ home-run hero from the 2003 triumph over Boston, Aaron Boone, blew out his left knee in a pickup basketball game. Suddenly the Yankees needed a third baseman, and Drew Henson, the two-sport star at Michigan and $17 million bust with the Yanks, was busy escaping to the NFL. The remaining candidates included Enrique Wilson, Erick Almonte, Tyler Houston, and Miguel Cairo, and nobody was singing a Sinatra tune over them.

  Brian Cashman ended up on the phone with his counterpart in Texas, John Hart, in an attempt to scoop up Boston’s fumble and, against all odds, lateral A-Rod over to third base. “I didn’t tell anyone about it,” Cashman said. “I didn’t even tell my owner I was working on that deal.”

  His owner, George Steinbrenner, had collapsed in December while attending the memorial service for NFL great Otto Graham, and the Boss had retreated from public view. But Steinbrenner was still the principal owner, still the one in charge. He had personally signed Gary Sheffield to a $39 million deal (against the wishes of Cashman and team president Randy Levine) before his collapse, and even though he was speaking through statements released by his publicist, Howard Rubenstein, Steinbrenner remained active in a much less visible way, fully committed to the same old mission statement of winning it all.

  Hart advised Cashman to seek permission from the commissioner’s office to talk directly to Rodriguez and his agent, Scott Boras. “I’m not talking to Boras,” Cashman said. “He will try to extract something from us. You guys have to tell Alex he’s got to waive his no-trade clause, and that he’s got to play third base. If you put the Yankees on the phone with Scott Boras, he’s going to smell leverage, and I don’t want to be in that position.”

  Cashman hoped to keep the trade talks confidential, as the public nature of Boston’s negotiations with Texas helped prevent the Red Sox from landing A-Rod. “But Alex told a friend of his who’s a real estate tycoon in Miami,” Cashman said, “and that guy happened to be a friend of Randy Levine’s. So I got nailed there and was put in an uncomfortable position.

  “Randy calls me and says, ‘Hey, I got a call from a buddy of mine in Miami who said we’re on the verge of getting Alex Rodriguez. Is that true?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, shit,’ because I hadn’t presented our side yet.”

  The talks hit the papers, but there was no killing this trade. Cashman had the Rangers tell Rodriguez that there was zero chance the Yankees would unseat Jeter at short, that it was third base or nothing at all. Cashman and other club officials discussed whether it made any sense to move Jeter to third and arrived at a quick consensus that the incumbent had to stay put.

  It did not matter that Rodriguez was the superior physical talent; Jeter was the captain and the soul of the team. The Yankees did not want to diminish him in any way.

  And besides, Rodriguez would have agreed to become a catcher if it meant escaping his own Arlington cemetery and resurrecting his championship hopes in New York. So A-Rod willingly surrendered his cherished position—and any future claim as the greatest shortstop of all time—while Rangers owner Tom Hicks agreed to take Alfonso Soriano and to cover $67 million of the remaining $179 million of A-Rod’s deal.

  Selig still had to approve the deal, and the commissioner was concerned that the move would leave the Yankees with a staggering talent and payroll advantage over the rest of creation. But Selig was no dummy. Send his biggest star to the brightest lights of Broadway? Yes, it was worth the sacrifice of competitive balance.

  In a statement released on February 16, 2004, the commissioner warned that he would not let money deals of this magnitude become the norm. “However,” Selig said, “given the unique circumstances, including the size, length, and complexity of Mr. Rodriguez’s contract and the quality of the talent moving in both directions, I have decided to approve the transaction.”

  Steinbrenner, the ultimate star collector, was ecstatic over the news. A-Rod would not just improve the Yankees’ chances of winning another title, at least theoretically, but he would be a brand-new TV star for Steinbrenner’s YES Network. If the Yankees were a sitcom, Rodriguez would be expected to have a Seinfeld-like impact on ratings and advertising revenue.

  Steinbrenner merrily agreed to bid farewell to a $5.75 million player at third (the Yanks gave Boone only thirty days of termination pay, as he violated language in his contract forbidding him to play basketball), and to absorb the $112 million fee for A-Rod, who would be the fourth Yankee with a nine-figure contract (Jeter had signed for $189 million, Giambi for $120 million, and newcomer Kevin Brown for $105 million with the Dodgers).

  Few cared anymore that David Wells was gone, that Andy Pettitte had signed with the Astros, and that Roger Clemens had emerged from his fifteen-minute retirement to do the same. The A-Rod trade represented another Christmas in February, as Torre had called the 1999 acquisition of Clemens. Everyone marveled over the new toy under the tree. Everyone except the captain of the team.

  On a cold, sunny day, Cashman was driving southbound on I-95 between Darien and Stamford, Connecticut, when he called Jeter with the big news. The general manager knew the history of bad blood between the captain and Rodriguez. He
knew Jeter would have preferred it if the Yankees had signed Chad Curtis out of retirement and traded for Ken Huckaby rather than deal for A-Rod, but in the end, Texas made an offer Cashman could not refuse.

  The GM rarely called players about trades that did not involve them, but this was different, much different. Cashman did not want a member of the media to break the news to Jeter, and to ask the shortstop if he was concerned Rodriguez might take his job.

  Cashman needed to assure Jeter up front that he would remain at short. So the GM got the captain on the phone and without pause told him, “I just want you to know we just acquired Alex Rodriguez.”

  “Really?” Jeter said.

  Really.

  Cashman explained his reasoning, explained that Rodriguez understood there would never be any quarterback controversy at short. Jeter absorbed the information that was coming at him like a truck, paused for a moment of deliberation, and said, “This sounds pretty cool.”

  Pretty cool. Under the circumstances, “pretty cool” was the best answer the Yankees could have hoped for.

  To present a united front, Steinbrenner told Jeter he should appear at A-Rod’s Yankee Stadium press conference—the kind of press conference Jeter did not get for his $189 million deal—and appear Jeter did. Not only did he show up at the Stadium, but Jeter agreed to fly with Rodriguez from Tampa to New York.

  On that flight, A-Rod told Jeter he was committed to third base for the long term. “I’m going to stick close to you,” Rodriguez told Jeter, “ask your advice on many issues. I need your support and mentorship.”

  The peace-in-the-Middle-East-sized press conference in the Stadium Club was attended by three hundred reporters. Never had baseball seen anything like this. Joe Torre had become Chuck Daly at the Barcelona Olympics, coaching Jordan, Magic, and Bird. Or Magic and Bird, anyway, forming their own Dream Team on the left side of the infield.

  “Derek has four world championships,” Rodriguez said, “and I want him to have ten. That’s what this is all about.”

  Ten rings, the same as Yogi?

  “Let’s work on making it five first,” Jeter said.

  A-Rod wore a pinstriped tie to go with his new pinstriped jersey. He would get number 13, the number Jeter first coveted as a rookie, the same number Jeter’s father wore at Fisk University. Rodriguez was not paying any tribute to a father who had abandoned him as a child; the former Miami high school quarterback wanted to wear the number of his favorite NFL player, Dan Marino.

  Before the cameras and notebooks, with Steinbrenner watching on TV in Tampa, Rodriguez kept deferring to Jeter, kept calling him the leader, kept saying he just wanted to be “one of the guys.” Of course, if Rodriguez was a man of many talents, being one of the guys was not among them.

  A-Rod was the American League’s Most Valuable Player, a two-time Gold Glove winner, and a shortstop considered by most baseball observers to be a better defender than Jeter, who had yet to claim his first Gold Glove. So the question had to be asked:

  Why was Rodriguez the one being asked to move to third?

  “That’s a non-issue,” A-Rod claimed.

  “I know you’re going to be enjoying this issue for as long as we’re playing together,” Jeter told reporters. “There’s always a spin on it. I’m playing short. That’s my job here. His job here now is to play third.”

  Remarkably enough, Cashman made the decision that A-Rod would be the one to move without consulting Torre. The general manager had explained that “you go with the man that brought you to the dance. . . . We have, arguably, the best left side of the infield in the history of baseball, and this is what it’s going to be: Derek Jeter at shortstop, Alex Rodriguez at third base.”

  Torre would have made the same call Cashman did, and the GM knew as much in advance. In many ways, Jeter had made Joe. Jeter had helped turn a retread manager into a Hall of Famer, and Torre was not about to betray him now.

  But in defending Jeter’s honor, Torre conceded Rodriguez had greater natural talent. “There are things that go beyond ability,” the manager said. “And I’ve said this about Derek in the past. He can’t hit with A-Rod, maybe can’t throw with him. Can’t throw with Garciaparra, can’t do this with Garciaparra.

  “But what I know is I wouldn’t trade him for anybody. There is something special about Derek Jeter. What is it about him that makes him what he is? It’s something that you can’t put down on paper.”

  When they were young big leaguers who slept in each other’s homes, Jeter and Rodriguez talked about finishing their careers together. That dream died a painful death on the pages of Esquire, leaving Jeter and A-Rod to answer questions about their breakup.

  “The worst thing that could happen for the media, I think,” Jeter said, “is for me and Alex to get along. I think everyone wants us to disagree, to battle over who’s doing this and who’s doing that. But that’s not the case.”

  Yet during this only-in-New-York media event, Jeter said more with his expressions than he did with his words. He looked like he would rather have spent the day getting a few boils lanced from his rump.

  Jeter surveyed the scene and understood the game had changed for good. With Pettitte in Houston, only four teammates remained from the glory days—Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, El Duque Hernandez, and Bernie Williams—and Williams was in a fight for his center-field life with Kenny Lofton.

  The Yankees had all but kicked Pettitte to the curb in free agency, they were closing in on Bernie, they were letting Torre enter the final year of his contract without an extension, and they were giving the keys to the kingdom to an athlete, Rodriguez, who represented everything Jeter was not.

  “The measuring stick is how many championships you win,” the captain said, as if reminding A-Rod that none of his monstrous home runs took his zero off the October scoreboard.

  Rodriguez had endured a wild winter, nearly landing in Boston before showing up in the Bronx. Worn down by all the negotiating, by all the back-and-forth between owners and agents and union officials, Rodriguez’s wife, Cynthia, turned to Jeter on the flight up from Tampa and said, “I’m glad this is all over.”

  The captain smiled. “The party has just begun,” he said.

  If Jeter was in a partying mood, at least for public consumption, his friend and former minor league teammate and roommate, R. D. Long, killed the mood in private.

  Years earlier, in his first meeting with the Class AAA Columbus manager, Stump Merrill, Long was reminded of his true identity within the Yankee organization. “He called me into his office once and said, ‘You’re Jeter’s buddy, right?’” Long said. “Not R.D., but Jeter’s buddy.”

  Jeter’s buddy walked away from baseball in 1997, at age twenty-six, when he realized he was through chasing the big league dream. But even though Long was out of the game, nobody tracked Jeter’s career more closely than Jeter’s buddy.

  And with the Rodriguez acquisition announcing the start of a new era in the Bronx, Jeter’s buddy wanted Jeter to know that the Yankees had just made a huge mistake.

  “I told Derek the minute A-Rod [joined] his team,” Long said, “told him that day, ‘The championship run is over. You will not win a championship with Alex Rodriguez on your team unless your karma is bigger than his. . . . You won’t win another one with this guy. You’d better get rid of him some kind of way.’”

  Derek Jeter greatly appreciated George Steinbrenner’s willingness to spend whatever it took to surround his shortstop with championship-grade talent. Hours after Andy Pettitte had reached a deal with the Astros, Jeter was sitting with Jay-Z at a high school basketball game at Fordham University when informed of the news.

  Jeter said a few complimentary things about his longtime teammate and friend but basically handled the bulletin with the greatest of ease.

  “I’m sure we’ll get someone else,” the captain said.

  “You already did,” a reporter told him.

  The Yankees were finalizing a trade with the Dodgers for Kevin Bro
wn, sending back a package that included a Jeter favorite, Jeff Weaver, who had flopped in the Bronx. To offset their considerable personnel losses, and the second-place finish to the Red Sox in the race for Arizona ace Curt Schilling, the Yankees acquired, among others, Brown, Javier Vazquez, Gary Sheffield, Kenny Lofton, Tom “Flash” Gordon, and Paul Quantrill.

  And Alex Rodriguez.

  With his budget knowing no bounds, Steinbrenner was forever giving Jeter a chance to win titles, even if the captain would have preferred a less aggressive approach when it came to trading for A-Rod.

  “I hope all the writers lay off on this thing, A-Rod versus Jeter,” Steinbrenner told reporters while sitting in a golf cart at Legends Field. “It has no part. It really doesn’t. Let them go about playing baseball. It’s going to be tough enough as it is in the American League East.”

  Asked if he planned to take Rodriguez to dinner, Steinbrenner responded, “Jeter should take him to dinner.” The Boss had just read a USA Today column explaining how another Yankee captain, Lou Gehrig, learned how to thrive in the shadows of Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio.

  Steinbrenner said Jeter should find a way to deal with the new Ruthian presence in his life, just as Gehrig did. “He’ll show that kind of great leadership,” the owner said. “I would bank on it.”

  Of course, Gehrig’s mother once criticized an outfit Ruth’s daughter was wearing, and the Yankee stars did not speak to each other for six years.

  Jeter and A-Rod would never get away with that, not in this electronic age of 24/7 scrutiny, even if they represented the most fascinating intrasquad feud since Thurman and Reggie.

  As spring training opened, Rodriguez finally disclosed his three-year-old secret: after his Esquire comments were published, he had made the loneliest ninety-minute drive of his life from the Rangers’ Port Charlotte camp to Jeter’s Tampa home in an attempt to save the very friendship he had torpedoed.

  “From that day on,” Rodriguez told a few reporters, “I thought it was over.”