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Jeter Offers Leadership Along With His Talent

New York Times, January 20, 2000

By Buster Olney

Yankees officials congregate in Tampa, Fla., every fall to discuss their players. They meet in a room that has walls painted in Yankee Stadium blue and adorned with framed pictures of Yankee greats. The table is rectangular, and George Steinbrenner, the principal owner, sits at the head.

There was no argument among Yankee executives whether shortstop Derek Jeter was worth the risk of an expensive, long-term deal.

Derek Jeter's name was raised last November, when Steinbrenner and his platoon of advisers knew that they would soon need to commit tens of millions of dollars to keep the shortstop under contract. But not once did anyone raise the question of whether Jeter was worth a staggering salary, or if the quality of his play would erode once he had banked Steinbrenner's millions.

And as soon as the negotiations on Jeter's seven-year, $118.5 million deal are concluded -- and depending on how the contract is structured, the final total may slightly increase -- he will easily slide back into his place in the Yankees' clubhouse, where he is respected and not resented for all that he has.

Jeter was in Tampa yesterday, making his usual appearance at the Yankees' minor league complex for a workout. Steinbrenner was not returning phone calls and was said to be miffed that word of the contract got out before being completed. Others in the organization speculated yesterday that the sometimes-stubborn owner might delay the announcement of the agreement so that he could regain a bit of control.

But the deal cannot be put off indefinitely, with spring training less than a month away. Jeter and Steinbrenner live in the same area and could wrap up the negotiations at any time, although Jeter has commitments that will take him outside of Florida over the next week.

His teammates will inevitably tease him about his new contract when spring training begins, and then the matter will fade amid the relentless exhibition schedule. Jeter is thick with confidence, but from the time he was a rookie, he has deferred to teammates like Paul O'Neill and David Cone and to Manager Joe Torre. And in their eyes, Jeter has ascended to a natural pre-eminence.

He is good-natured and well-liked, but there is an edge to Jeter, seen at those moments when his sense of right and wrong is offended -- as it was with incidents with Chad Curtis and David Wells.

Curtis, traded to the Texas Rangers last month, has strong personal and religious beliefs and led the team's prayer group. He intermittently approached Jeter about joining the group, and Jeter put him off politely and directly, telling him he respected his beliefs but chose not to participate.

While an uneasy relationship might have resulted, the two coexisted easily -- until last summer, when Curtis angrily chastised Jeter after a fight with Seattle for fraternizing with Jeter's good friend Alex Rodriguez during the brawl.

Curtis raised the issue first in the dugout and then in the clubhouse, in front of a crowd of reporters; thereafter, Jeter kept his feelings for Curtis beneath a thin veil of disgust. When asked about the incident weeks later, Jeter responded that nothing Curtis had said bothered him -- dismissive words, wielded like a fly swatter. Curtis, after all, had made the mistake of forcing their differences into the newspapers, and Jeter would not back down.

It was interesting that after Curtis was traded, officials around baseball assumed -- wrongly -- that his confrontation with Jeter led directly to his exile, a sign that Jeter's stature and credibility were established after just four years in the majors.

In 1998, when Jeter was 24 and the Yankees would win 125 games, Torre was in the habit of resting his regulars in September. He removed two of his outfielders in the sixth inning of a game in Baltimore, and a blooper subsequently fell between Jeter and the subs, to the chagrin of Wells, the pitcher. The left-hander turned to the dugout in frustration and spread his hands, as if to say, Are we trying?

Jeter saw the uncharitable gesture and began yelling at Wells, telling him in so many words that no one on this team does that stuff. Wells, 11 years older, later backed down and apologized. It was remarkable, some teammates felt, that someone that young could naturally take charge in that situation. But Jeter is leading the Yankees into this century now, and will be well-compensated for his presence.