From the New York Daily News
From: Sports | Baseball |
Wednesday, June 27, 2001
By Lisa Olson
The birthday boy's right shoulder was wrapped in so much gauze, he looked like something that had just escaped from an Egyptian tomb. A nosy reporter was sifting through the birthday boy's copious amounts of mail, and an old man was threatening to give the kid more bruises. Others hovered on the periphery, eyeing the birthday boy for, what? Wrinkles and a paunch? Signs that might explain this mid-life crisis, otherwise known in baseball circles as the dreaded slump?
"I feel like I'm 34," groaned the birthday boy. "I'm getting up there."
Ah, to be Derek Jeter, 27 years old yesterday, going on forever.
"Woke up at 11:30, ate breakfast, went back to sleep til 2, woke up, ate lunch, came here," the Yankee shortstop was saying at the Stadium before last night's 5-3 loss to Cleveland. "Typical day."
Yogi Berra, Hall of Fame catcher, meandered his way around the flowers and balloons that surrounded Jeter's locker like a shrine and waved his glimmering pinkie ring, the one he wears to commemorate his fifth Yankee championship in a line of 10. It was a subtle reminder that Jeter still has a way to go before he can call himself a big shot.
"Did I give him a present?" asked Berra. "Yeah, a little punch in the nose."
Jeter owns four rings, three All-Star invites (and another one pending) and the month of October. If he wanted, he could have his face plastered all over billboards in Times Square. He could star in a Puff Daddy video, if he wasn't so busy taking early batting practice.
"The kid, he just wants to play the game," Berra said. In the dugout, Joe Torre talked about how Jeter "continues to be young," as if he had found some magical age-defying elixir in his bat. Jeter has been a Yankee since the dawn of time, or so it seems, and still we think of him as this young thing just hatched.
"He was so skinny," Bernie Williams said of the kid who, nine years ago, made his first appearance in the clubhouse, for a workout, too afraid to say much of anything. "He's very loud now. He's one of the most talkative persons here, but in a good way. In this game you deal with a lot of frustration. He finds a way to make us laugh at ourselves."
On the bench, during games, Jeter is a one-man pep squad, flittering back and forth to the pitchers, to the infielders, to the scrubs, soaking up the tension with one-liners.
"He'll strike out and come back and say, I (stink), I shouldn't be here," said Luis Sojo. "We all tell him to shut up."
"He'll find his way to (Don) Zimmer and myself," said Torre. Jeter, the kid, will ask the sage ones for wisdom. Was that dive a gamble? Should he just quit and go home? He went 1-for-5 last night including two strikeouts, dropping his average to .285, with six home runs and 37 RBI. He has nine errors. Someday all those good-luck rubs to Zimmer's head will take root and Jeter will be back to his old self, which is really his young self.
"He gets on and makes fun of the way he got there," said first base coach Lee Mazzilli. The other day in Tampa, after Jeter slapped a blooper that barely sailed over the infield, Mazzilli beat Jeter to the punch by greeting him with a "Wow, you really hit the cover off that ball." Hey, that was Jeter's line!
In the clubhouse, Jeter's bon mots must get lost with the dirty socks. He has a tendency to check his personality at the door, but at least he's there by his locker, win or lose, 0-for-4 or three RBI, and that counts for something on a team where, except for Jeter, Mike Stanton and Paul O'Neill, the players consistently shun the media.
Reliever Brian Boehringer refuses to talk to the press, which really means he refuses to talk to the fans about his outings, his season, his injuries. All that does is put more burden on someone like Jeter, who doesn't duck.
"I think it should come with the territory," said Jeter. "Being accessible shows you have a respect for the game."
Rick Reilly, Sports Illustrated columnist extraordinaire, was at that very minute perusing Jeter's mail, searching for clues on, as Reilly said, "what life is like for America's heartthrob." Six hours later, Reilly, with Jeter's permission, had barely sifted through one-third of the Himalaya of stuff.
"It's pretty boring," Jeter warned. He meant his life. He signed a 10-year, $189 million deal in February, the most lucrative Yankee contract ever, but his indulgences tend to mean ordering breakfast in, before pulling back the covers. Much of his down time is spent with the Turn 2 Foundation, a charity that combats teenage substance abuse. He has the usual big-time endorsements, but eschews more offers in a week then some players get in a career. They would get in the way of this other gig he has going.
"He never wants anyone to judge him on anything but how he plays baseball," said Torre. This little mid-life crisis/slump notwithstanding, the kid seems to be doing just fine.
