Jeter: Call Him 'Mr. Yankee'
Bergen Record, January 20, 2000
by Adrian Wojnarowski
Ed Abromaitis can still see the skinny grandson of the Queen of Peace Church maintenance man, Sonny Connors, wiping away the sweat under a hot, August sun. As a teenager visiting North Jersey on summer vacation, Derek Jeter was commissioned a small push mower and assigned to cut the football field grass. He was lucky to get minimum wage and a bag lunch under a shady tree.
"By the time he got done cutting the field," Abromaitis, the Queen of Peace High School athletic director, said Wednesday, "the grass would've grown high enough at the other end of the field for him to start all over again."
This story flashed to him Wednesday morning, when a splashy picture of Jeter was slapped on the front page of the newspaper. After Sonny died a year ago, ending 36 years of service to the church, his boys, Billy and Bernie Connors, took over on the North Arlington grounds. Along with Abromaitis and millions in the metropolitan area and beyond, Jeter's uncles just sat and studied the staggering statistic blaring out of a winter box score.
"They just shook their heads, saying: 'One hundred and nineteen million, huh? Well, God bless him,' " Abromaitis said by phone. "Now, they're in the back fixing the whirlpools."
When else in modern times has there been so little contempt for the news that an athlete is expected to sign the richest contract in his sport's history. Well, where else do they have a Derek Jeter? Angry over it? Over Jeter? Come on. At Queen of Peace and beyond, the consensus was clear: If the price of pleasing an icon has to be $118.5 million these days, then the checks ought to be written out to the shortstop of the Yankees, Derek Jeter.
Soon, he'll sign his name and be the baseball matinee idol paid like a Hollywood movie star. As much as anyone, he's the modern day Joe DiMaggio. When everyone is desperate for a hero, there's Jeter. He's baseball royalty with a commoner's touch.
"The coolest cat in town," Joe Torre said.
Just a year ago, people were infuriated over the Dodgers paying World Series loser Kevin Brown $105 million on the free agent market. The contract included a corporate jet to fly his family between his Georgia home and Los Angeles, and that made people madder. Shaquille O'Neal signed for $121 million and defended the Lakers' generosity by saying, "I've won on every level -- except college and the pros."
There's a myth people are just angry over these salaries. That's just part of it. Mostly, they're angry over the rude, inaccessible, ringless athletes scoring those unreal contracts. Jeter is the exception. He isn't getting his contract on promise, but performance. He isn't getting it despite bad behavior, but with an unsullied file.
Beyond winning three championships, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the best shortstops ever to play, his four years with the Yankees have been an absolute affair of the heart. As much as the franchise loves him, he loves it back. On Joe DiMaggio Day at Yankee Stadium in April, Jeter confessed to having chills run over him as Paul Simon sang "Mrs. Robinson" in center field.
"I'd be lying to you if I said I didn't want to be a part of [the history]," he said.
All Jeter has done is say he had the greatest job in the world: shortstop for the Yankees. All he has done is declare his good fortune every day on the job, honoring his grandfather Sonny's relentless ethic. Just as impressive as Jeter's long home run on Joe DiMaggio Day was his running hard on an easy groundout to second base.
"It's the least you can do," Jeter says, succinctly explaining his insistence on forever playing hard.
He could have waited a couple years for Seattle's Alex Rodriguez to set the market at $150 million, named his price to stay in New York, and held George Steinbrenner hostage to meet his demands. Only Jeter could sign a $118.5 million contract, and come out celebrated for his selflessness.
He has earned the right for his best intentions to be believed. He has never disappointed. On his first day back to spring training a year ago, the winner of a $5 million arbitration award, Jeter signed hundreds of autographs up and down the first base line at Legends Field in Tampa, Fla. The rest of his teammates disappeared, but the player people wanted the most stayed until every request was satisfied. This is commonplace for him. He's the royalty forever connecting with the commoners.
Such simple courtesies shouldn't be such cause for celebration, but that is the sad state of affairs with our superstars.
"All I heard over school today were people just saying they were happy for him, glad he's going to get it," Abromaitis said.
Remembering the grass stains on the skinny kid's sneakers at Queen of Peace, family and old friends understand, just like perfect strangers do: Even at $118.5 million, the shortstop of the Yankees is one of the few priceless players left in sports. Derek Jeter will go about his job this summer, just as he did when his grandfather was paying him with a bag lunch under a shady tree. That will never change.