Born to be A Bomber
Sports Illustrated Yankee Championship Issue, October 1996
by Kelly Whiteside

Swaddled in Pinstripes, Derek Jeter was destined to become shortstop of the Yankees.

If it seems as though rookie shortstop Derek Jeter was born to wear pinstripes, well, that’s pretty close to the truth. Throughout the Kalamazoo, Mich., home of Charles and Dorothy Jeter are childhood photographs of their son wearing a Yankees cap or a Yankees jacket or a jersey emblazoned with the interlocking N and Y. When Derek was a kid, two of his most prized possessions were a gold Yankees medallion and a blue Yankees windbreaker. In his eight-grade yearbook, from 1988, there were predictions for what each kid would be doing in 10 years. The forecast for Derek? That he would be playing for the New York Yankees. Prescient indeed, except he made it to the Bronx a few years early.

He not only made it, he took the city by storm. The 22-year-old Jeter, a shoo-in for 1996 American League Rookie of the Year, hit .314, had 78 RBIs, scored 104 runs and hit 25 doubles during the regular season-all under the critical gaze of New York City. In the postseason, looking as cool and sure as any seasoned veteran, he hit .361 and had a .406 on-base average. If ever a man has seemed destined to play for the Yankees, it is Derek Jeter. When he was four, he and his family moved from northern New Jersey to Kalamazoo, but Derek and his sister, Sharlee, continued to spend summers in West Milford, N.J., at the home of their grandparents William and Dot Connors, Jeter may have inherited his athletic prowess from his father, who played shortstop for Fisk University in Nashville, but he acquired his love of the Yankees from his grandmother. In her day, Dot like to say, it didn’t get any better than turning on the radio and hearing the sound of Joe DiMaggio’s bat meeting a handing curveball.

Derek and Dot used to trade stories about their favorite Yankees. He would talk about the day in 1986 when the Yankees came to Tiger Stadium and he got the autograph of his hero, Dave Winfield, after waiting for him in the parking lot. Dot would tell Derek about the time she went to Yankee Stadium, a few days after Babe Ruth’s death in 1948, to walk past the slugger’s casket at home plate and pay her respects. During those summers in West Milford, Derek used to get up at the crack of dawn. "All his cousins would still be sleeping," says Dot, "and he would say, ‘C’mon, Gram, let’s throw.’ He wanted to be a pitcher then. I has his catcher. Even as a little kid his throw would almost knock me over."

At Kalamazoo Central High, Jeter starred as a power-hitting shortstop and was an A students. By the end of his senior year-just a week before the June 1992 amateur draft-he had been contacted by scouts representing 27 of the 28 major league teams. The only club he had not heard from was the Yankees. "I was wondering why they were the only team that didn’t call," he says.

Scouts told Jeter that he would probably be the fifth player taken in the draft, by the Cincinnati Reds. "I thought I’d be stuck behind Barry Larkin," he says. Then two days before the draft Jeter finally received a call from Dick Groch, a Yankees scout, who said he had followed him closely for two years but hadn’t contacted him out of respect for the family’s privacy. By this time the phone call was moot, it seemed, because the Yankees had the sixth pick in the draft. At the last minute, though, the Reds decided to select a proven college player, Chad Mottola, an outfielder from Central Florida. So when the Jeter’s phone ran on draft day, it was the Yankees who were on the other end. ‘It was a freak happening," says Derek. "It was a fantasy," says Charles. "Hard to Believe," says Dot. Four years later Jeter was the first rookie shortstop in 34 years to start regularly for the Yankees; six months after that, he was the shortstop of the World Series champions. "You always want to lean on experienced players in the postseason," said New York manager Joe Torre after his team beat Baltimore in the American League Championship Series. "But Derek doesn’t see the postseason as something different." Before the decisive Game 6 of the World Series, a relaxed Jeter went through his usual routine: He put on his headphones, listened to Mariah Carey, pulled on his number 2 uniform and slipped on his hightop cleats, which are stitched with the message TURN 2 on the heels. Preternaturally calm, Jeter was laughing and smiling during the national anthem. Pressure? What pressure? For Jeter, it seemed, this game was no different from playing nine for some American Legion team back home in Kalamazoo.

Yankees veterans say they had never seen a young player with such poise. "The thing that sets Derek apart is that he’s not afraid to fail," said third baseman Charlie Hayes just before the World Series began. "He wants the ball hit to him in the last inning of the last game, with the whole World Series at stake."

Jeter says he can’t recall ever being nervous during his first season in the majors. "But I do have butterflies, especially while I’m waiting for the game to start," he admits. There is a difference between being nervous and having butterflies, he explains. The pregame fluttering is a youngster’s let’s-play-ball excitement. Once on the field, Jeter is the coolest man in pinstripes. The over-the-shoulder catch, the backpedaling grab, the diving snag, the off balance bullet throw, the clutch hit-the rookie made them all look effortless. Jeter is never frightened of the moment in the spotlight. Put the weight of the world on his shoulders and Jeter will simply Turn 2. On the day before Game 1 of the World Series, Jeter darted into the dugout to grab a bat. Heading back to the field, he practically ran over a man who was walking up the dugout steps.

It was Dave Winfield, who reached out his right hand. As Jeter clasped it firmly, a smile brighter than Times Square at night stretched across the young Yankee’s face. Winfield offered a few encouraging words, not letting on that he was aware he had been Jeter’s childhood hero. As it happened, Winfield was now one of Jeter’s biggest fans. Jeter, of course, played it cool. What was it like to meet your idol? "He said we’ll talk later," Jeter replied in his best deadpan tone.

Winfield is not alone in his admiration for Jeter. Last season the polite and respectful kid from Kalamazoo became one of the most popular Yankees in town. There were always two large boxes overflowing with fan mail next to his locker.

Jeter was once described as a one man melting post because his mother, an accountant, is white and his father, a drug and alcohol abuse counselor, is black. Not surprisingly, he has blended easily into the seven-million-man melting pot of New York City. It’s rare for a New York athlete to actually live in one of the city’s five boroughs-most retreat to the burbs-but Jeter has an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. He’s not into the New York nightlife, though; an occasional movie and a trip to his favorite restaurant is about as exciting as it gets for Jeter on a night off. Though he lives in the city that never sleeps, Jeter does-a lot. He never gets out of bed before noon. Indeed, his two favorite positions are shortstop and reclining.

He blushes when asked about the teenyboppers who worship him and scream his name when he’s at bat, as if Brad Pitt himself were stepping up to the plate. At 6’3", 185 pounds, Jeter is long and lean, and his pale-green eyes change with the sunlight like a kaleidoscope. While Bernie Williams has bashful brown eyes that avert when a compliment is paid him, Jeter has James Dean eyes narrow and cool-dangerous eyes for a shy bachelor in the big, bold city. Truth is, he can barely walk more than a few steps outside of his apartment building before he’s stopped, usually by a young woman.

"Did anyone ever tell you that you look just like Derek Jeter," a flirtatious female asked him recently. "My mom told me that once," replied Jeter, flashing a leading man smile that made the young woman swoon. For Jeter, all this instant fame and sometimes unwanted attention are a small price to pay for the honor of putting on the pinstripes. He has an appreciation of baseball history and tradition that’s unusual for a major leaguer these days. Because Yankees lore, like a family heirloom, was passed on to him by his grandmother, he knows the names, numbers and accomplishments of all the legends in Monument Park. "One of the best things about being a Yankee," Jeter says, "Is that you have guys like Whitey Ford, Phil Rizzuto, Ron Guidry and Reggie Jackson wandering around the locker room offering you advice." Jeter’s locker is next to an empty stall in the clubhouse, where the uniform of Thurman Munson, number 15, hangs in tribute. Coincidentally, Munson, who was drafted in 1968, had been the last first-round pick of the Yankees to play regularly for the team. And so, the fairy tale has come true. The boy who grew up in miniature pinstripes, the improbable draft choice of the most storied team in baseball history, won the World Series playing shortstop for the Bronx Bombers, with nearly his entire family looking on from seats behind home plate at Yankee Stadium. After Hayes squeezed a foul fly ball into his glove to end Game 6, the Jeter family waited for Derek outside the clubhouse. Dot, of course, was there to greet him. "Derek gave me a hug," she said later, "and all I could smell was champagne. It’s been quite a dream."

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