"Derek, will you marry me?"
Everywhere New York Yankees superstar Derek Jeter goes, the signs and screams follow, as female fans fawn over the Big Apple's most eligible bachelor -- a Sports Illustrated and GQ cover boy with Tiger Beat dimples and sustained heartthrob status who was one of PEOPLE's 50 Most Beautiful in 1999.
"I've been with Derek at fan festivals and other personal appearances, and it's like being on tour with the Beatles," David Cone, a Yankees teammate, told The Sporting News in 1998, shortly after Jeter was linked romantically to pop diva Mariah Carey (they've since broken up). "You'd think he was Ringo with all these girls screaming."
And he's achieved that fame with amazing alacrity.
A little over seven years ago, Jeter was still a student at Kalamazoo Central High in Michigan, where he was president of the Latin club. Five years ago, he was still playing in the minor leagues, trying to smooth his raw athletic edges.
Jeter's just 25 now and completing his fourth full season in the majors, yet already he's among baseball's best and most popular players: Equally adept in the field, in the batter's box or on the base paths, Jeter finished third in the most valuable player voting in 1998; and he's certain to place high in the balloting again after a superlative regular season in which he was baseball's hits leader with 219. He also finished second in the American League in both batting average (.349) and runs scored (134).
Of course, Jeter is hardly done playing this year: Already the owner of two World Series rings, he could well win a third by month's end, with the fabled Yankees franchise playing in the Fall Classic yet again. The team clinched its third World Series berth in four years -- Jeter's four years -- when he blasted a two-run, first-inning homer against the archival Boston Red Sox in the deciding game of the American League Championship Series. No wonder, then, that there's talk Jeter could become the first $200 million man in pro sports when his $5 million-a-year contract with the Yankees expires after the 2001 season.
"He could be as big as Michael Jordan, because he's got a level head, he's a good kid, he knows how to play the game, he's not afraid, he's not intimidated and he's handsome as ever," teammate Darryl Strawberry told the New York Times this year. "And he's in New York."
Jeter has his own theory about why he's become such a coveted human commodity, especially in New York City.
"I think people might feel a mystique about me because they don't know what I am," he told the Times in 1997. "I heard I'm Italian, Jewish, Spanish. They don't know if I'm white or I'm black. Maybe that's it. My dad is black, my mom is Irish and I'm Catholic, so I hear everything. I'm in New York, and there are all different people, all races and religions.
"I can relate to everyone."
Jeter's rocket-ride to the top of the baseball heap actually began near New York, in Pequannock, N.J, where he was born in 1974 to Dorothy, an accountant, and Charles, a drug and alcohol counselor and self-described "good field, no hit" former shortstop at Fisk University in Nashville. Although the Jeters moved to Kalamazoo, Mich., when Derek was 4, he became a Yankees fan, anyway; often, when he traveled back to New Jersey to see his mom's family, Derek would even go to Yankee Stadium to see his favorite team play.
"This is the most recognized franchise in all of sports," he told the Detroit Free Press in 1996. "If you ask any player from any team, he would say that playing for the Yankees is something special."
While Jeter was becoming a standout athlete in Michigan along with his younger sister, Sharlee, who excelled in softball, both siblings still had to follow strict family rules and curfews. One dictated that Derek had to be back home by 10 on nights before day games. "We tried to instill in both our kids a sense of goals and working hard to achieve those goals," Charles Jeter told Newsday in 1994. In the same paper, Derek said: "My parents made sure I don't get a big head. They taught me right from wrong."
Charles and Dorothy Jeter also encouraged their son to effectively chase his dream of making it to the majors by working as hard as he could. "When I was growing up, I always wanted to play baseball, and a lot of people would laugh," Derek told the Detroit Free Press in 1996. "I would tell everyone -- teachers and friends -- and they would say, 'You can't do that.' My parents always said, 'If that's what you want to do, if you work hard, then you can do it.' "
At Kalamazoo Central High, where his 3.83 GPA earned him membership in the National Honor Society, Jeter hit over .500 his senior season, in 1992, and was named Michigan's player of the year by Scholastic Coach magazine. That summer, he became the first high school player selected in baseball's free agent draft when the Yankees made him the sixth overall pick.
Though he'd accepted a baseball scholarship to the University of Michigan, Jeter -- who once played AAU basketball with future NBA standouts Chris Webber and Jalen Rose -- signed a contract with the Yankees less than a month after the draft. His deal included a $700,000 bonus that equaled the one given the year's top overall pick, Phil Nevin. It also provided tuition money so Jeter could attend Michigan during off-seasons. "As far back as I can remember, I always told my parents I wanted to be a baseball player," he told the Free Press in 1993. "But they always told me education comes first."
He began his pro career shortly thereafter with Class A Tampa in the Gulf Coast League but started his stint there by going 0-for-14. His eventual batting average there was just .202. Jeter later admitted to suffering from a severe case of homesickness in Tampa, where he rarely left the Radisson Bay Harbor Inn and rang up $400 monthly phone bills with calls to Kalamazoo. "I was ready to go home when I got there," he told Newsday during spring training in 1993. "When I went to bat I'd be thinking about how many days I had left before I could go home." The highlights of Jeter's initial season? The two times his parents came from Michigan to visit -- perks provided by Jeter's contract.
The next season, Jeter began to shine for Class A Greensboro, N.C., and was named starting shortstop in the South Atlantic League All-Star Game. Still, he struggled in the field, making 56 errors, which prompted Yankees officials to wonder whether Jeter might be better suited for a different position. His offense was never a question mark, though: At Double A Albany, he batted .377, and by 1994, Jeter was already playing at Triple A Columbus, where he hit .349.
In 1995, at the age of 20, Jeter arrived in the major leagues to start at shortstop for the injury-depleted Yankees. He was called up on May 29, 1995, and after a disappointing debut, played 15 games with the Yankees, hitting .250 with four doubles and seven RBI. He spent most of the season back at Triple A Columbus, but in December, manager Joe Torre declared that the Yankees' starting shortstop job was Jeter's and the following spring, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner told Newsday: "He could be one of those special ones." The words proved prophetic: On opening day, Jeter hit a home run -- a 395-foot blast that gave the Yankees a 2-0 lead over the Indians in what would be the first of many victories for the title-bound team. In that same game, Jeter also made a twisting, sprinting, back-to-the-ball catch of a pop-up that had been hit into the wind, proving that he had the defensive prowess to match his offensive output.
That year, Jeter made just 22 errors in 157 games -- a marked improvement over his 56-error campaign in 1993 -- and he hit .314 with 10 homers and 78 runs batted in to help the Yankees clinch their first division title in 15 years. Jeter's subsequent superlative play in the team's American League Championship Series victory over Baltimore earned him the cover of Sports Illustrated, though his half-joking response was, simply: "They could have found a better picture."
The team eventually won the World Series, thanks largely to Jeter, who hit .361 in the postseason. Jeter's own assessment of that first year, which saw him win the American League rookie of the year award (not to mention the hearts of women around the world)? "Halfway decent."
Even now -- after all the accolades and adulation, not to mention a cameo appearance on "Seinfeld" and yet another World Series ring, won last year -- the man the Bergen (New Jersey) record calls "the glamour player on baseball's glamour team" remains modest. When the paper asked about his talents, Jeter said, "Man, I've got everyone fooled," adding, "Just doing my job."
"He hasn't paused a bit to look in the mirror and say, 'How good I am,'" manger Torre told the New York Times this year. "He's just concentrating on getting better."
Said baseball's commissioner, Bud Selig, also in the Times: "He's exactly what baseball needs, a young player, talented, who really communicates exactly what this sport is."
And, of course, is as big as the Beatles.