Meeting The Captain

Derek Jeter was supposed to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame today, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic the induction has been postponed until 2021. As a small consolation I'm posting my account of the day I met The Captain in person.

Through a stroke of dumb luck that had nothing to do with this book I wrote, I was able to have lunch with Derek Jeter on August 8, 2019. Here's the story:

It was at a Goldman Sachs event held in the fancy part of Philadelphia. My boss was somehow able to score a ticket for me and with about 30 other people we sat at a big square table with Jeter for about an hour and a half. Things kicked off with a high-level suit at Goldman Sachs describing Jeter and his success, with a heavy focus on his Turn 2 Foundation, a worthy cause which helps kids steer away from addiction, crime, etc. Jeter's sister was also in attendance as she helps run the foundation. The moderator gave the obligatory plea for contributions to Turn 2, then opened the floor for questions and open discussion.

The questions for Jeter started with the foundation, his post-retirement life, how he has managed to maintain success, etc. After a half dozen or so questions, I worked up the courage to ask one of my own (paraphrasing here): "We all encounter young people every day who are acquiring wealth for the first time in their lives, and they often have no idea what to do with it. In the sports world, that can be extremely magnified. It's been well documented that very young athletes become insanely wealthy in the blink of an eye and it can often be disastrous. As someone who has decidedly not had that problem, can you share some words of wisdom that can be passed along to young people as they start their career?"

Jeter responded by knocking on a wooden table and sort of laughing. He said (again, paraphrasing here) that there's no guarantee that he'll remain wealthy and that he has a long way to go. He broke down the reality of life as an athlete. On average, football players have 3-year careers, baseball players 4 years, and basketball 5. In that brief amount of time, they'll acquire nearly all of the money they'll make in their lifetime, and it will need to last that lifetime. Most young athletes don't have that perspective. So having a plan for your money to carry you past retirement and sustain you for the rest of your life is the best way to go about it. The sooner that's understood, the better.

Softball question, softball answer. It was still pretty cool.

From there the questions from the table started getting more baseball heavy. These covered both the state of the game in general and more Yankee-specific stuff, although he made it clear that he doesn't keep close tabs on the Yankees anymore. Eventually I asked another question: "Your playing career briefly overlapped with a guy named Don Mattingly. A great player who never so much as won a playoff series. Fast forward 20 years and when you took over the Marlins you hired Mattingly to manage the team. Can you tell us some of the qualities about him that make you trust him as the leader of your team, despite the lack of personal success he's had?"

Jeter's response started by correcting me in that Mattingly had plenty of personal success, but hasn't had the corresponding team success [fair point]. He also mentioned Mattingly's success as manager of the Dodgers [also fair, although he still has yet to manage a team to the World Series]. He called Don a great guy and told a story from 1993 when he was 18 and Mattingly was in his final years with the Yankees.

During Spring Training, the Yankees were on a road trip and Jeter stayed back at the Yankees' practice facility with a few others, including Mattingly. They were on a practice field a few hundred yards from the clubhouse and eventually they were the only two left. Mattingly, a Yankee legend by this time, said to Jeter, "Hey rook, let's run back to the clubhouse." A confounded Jeter couldn't figure out why a guy who was Yankee royalty would want to run after a long workout and questioned him after he eventually caught up to him. Mattingly simply replied, "You never know who's watching." Jeter wanted a guy with that work ethic to influence the young players he has with the Marlins.

I had heard that story before, but it was awesome to hear it from the man himself.

Shortly thereafter lunch wrapped up and the Goldman Sachs people said Jeter would stick around for pictures if anybody wanted (everybody wanted to). After we snapped the pic you see below, I quickly told him that I just wrote a book on the Yankees and needed to at least partly thank him. He was a huge part of the teams that I grew up watching. I told him I went to the Stadium as often as I could and was even there when he clinched the division against the Red Sox in 1996 with a 10th inning, game-winning hit.

Jeter politely laughed and said, "Man, you remember more than I do...You know, people always ask me what my biggest regret was during my career. It wasn't until my last year that I kept a diary throughout the season. I haven't read it yet, but I look forward to the day that I do. I wish I had done that my whole career, because there's so much I've forgotten." We shook hands, I thanked him for his time, and he left me with "Good luck."

And that was the afternoon I got to spend with Derek Jeter. I wrote this later that night when everything was still fresh in my mind. I guess I can thank him for that too.