celebrated with the Hornets at the Grand Stand bar near the left- field seats. Jeter’s older teammates were responsible social drinkers, but the kid shortstop was not one to sneak in a beer, not at the ballpark.
“Derek would sit out there all friggin’ night drinking Coke,” Horshok said.
Players, coaches, and townies would engage in karaoke contests at the Grand Stand, billed as the largest outdoor sports bar in North Carolina. Jeter, for one, saved his singing for road trips. “Derek had the worst singing voice on the bus,” Delvecchio said. “He loved Mariah and Janet Jackson; he used to sing Mariah at the top of his lungs.
“I told him, ‘You’re horrible. You’re worse than me.’ And Derek would say, ‘The first thing I do when I get to New York, I’m going to find Mariah Carey and go out with her.’”
Jeter was tooling around in his Mitsubishi and trying to persuade Delvecchio to appreciate Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. The teenager was mentoring the twenty-something college boys in more ways than one.
They would go to clubs together, “and Derek was underage in a lot of these places,” Delvecchio said, “and nobody cared. . . . He occasionally had a beer here and there, but he never took it to excess.”
The Hornets took turns approaching attractive women in these clubs. When it was his turn, Delvecchio rarely struck out. But when it was Jeter’s turn, he said, the shortstop would get in the middle of the bar, “and he’d extend his index finger and point and motion for them to come over without making a sound. Without fail, they always came over. If Derek did that fifteen times with me, he was fifteen for fifteen. I never saw such confidence. The women absolutely loved him.”
So did his teammates. Jeter did not walk about with an air of royalty. He carried himself like a thirty-fourth-round draft choice, like a player who had received Mariano Rivera’s $3,000 bonus to sign.
Derek also was his baseball brother’s keeper. After Rivera’s surgery, Jeter counted his pitches in ’93 and reminded Mariano he needed to be efficient to preserve his arm. The nineteen-year-old shortstop was looking out for the twenty-three-year-old starter.
Jeter built up his less talented teammates, never broke them down. A twenty-fifth-round pick, Delvecchio was a converted outfielder who had tremendous power (he was good for 21 homers and 80 RBI that year) but who struggled with his footwork at first base. He had a hard time picking up Jeter’s throws from short under the poor War Memorial lighting, and he was likely responsible for a dozen of Derek’s errors.
“And he never said a word to me about it,” Delvecchio said. “That’s how cool he was. He’d come over and say, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ We all thought Derek was fantastic to play with.”
Jeter would pass down lessons from his old man’s playing days at Fisk University, too. Out of left field, Jeter approached Matt Luke, a big, strapping eighth-rounder out of the University of California, and handed him a page out of the Charles Jeter playbook.
“My dad always told me that you’ve got to get two or three hits against mediocre pitchers,” Derek told Luke, “because when you face an ace you’ll be fighting some nights just to get one.”
Luke absorbed the thought and decided it made as much sense as anything a grizzled minor league or college coach had ever told him.
“And here’s a high school kid telling me, a college kid,” said Luke, who was on his way to a season of 21 homers, 91 RBI, and a .304 batting average.
No, Jeter did not let his mounting sum of errors ruin his Greensboro experience. The lost and homesick eighteen-year-old had slowly grown into this confident and independent nineteen-year-old.
Despite his age, Jeter was a credible leader. For 7:00 p.m. games he would arrive at War Memorial at 1:30 to do some soft toss and hone his inside-out swing as the Garth Brooks music blared on the stadium speakers. Jeter
“Derek would sit out there all friggin’ night drinking Coke,” Horshok said.
Players, coaches, and townies would engage in karaoke contests at the Grand Stand, billed as the largest outdoor sports bar in North Carolina. Jeter, for one, saved his singing for road trips. “Derek had the worst singing voice on the bus,” Delvecchio said. “He loved Mariah and Janet Jackson; he used to sing Mariah at the top of his lungs.
“I told him, ‘You’re horrible. You’re worse than me.’ And Derek would say, ‘The first thing I do when I get to New York, I’m going to find Mariah Carey and go out with her.’”
Jeter was tooling around in his Mitsubishi and trying to persuade Delvecchio to appreciate Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. The teenager was mentoring the twenty-something college boys in more ways than one.
They would go to clubs together, “and Derek was underage in a lot of these places,” Delvecchio said, “and nobody cared. . . . He occasionally had a beer here and there, but he never took it to excess.”
The Hornets took turns approaching attractive women in these clubs. When it was his turn, Delvecchio rarely struck out. But when it was Jeter’s turn, he said, the shortstop would get in the middle of the bar, “and he’d extend his index finger and point and motion for them to come over without making a sound. Without fail, they always came over. If Derek did that fifteen times with me, he was fifteen for fifteen. I never saw such confidence. The women absolutely loved him.”
So did his teammates. Jeter did not walk about with an air of royalty. He carried himself like a thirty-fourth-round draft choice, like a player who had received Mariano Rivera’s $3,000 bonus to sign.
Derek also was his baseball brother’s keeper. After Rivera’s surgery, Jeter counted his pitches in ’93 and reminded Mariano he needed to be efficient to preserve his arm. The nineteen-year-old shortstop was looking out for the twenty-three-year-old starter.
Jeter built up his less talented teammates, never broke them down. A twenty-fifth-round pick, Delvecchio was a converted outfielder who had tremendous power (he was good for 21 homers and 80 RBI that year) but who struggled with his footwork at first base. He had a hard time picking up Jeter’s throws from short under the poor War Memorial lighting, and he was likely responsible for a dozen of Derek’s errors.
“And he never said a word to me about it,” Delvecchio said. “That’s how cool he was. He’d come over and say, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ We all thought Derek was fantastic to play with.”
Jeter would pass down lessons from his old man’s playing days at Fisk University, too. Out of left field, Jeter approached Matt Luke, a big, strapping eighth-rounder out of the University of California, and handed him a page out of the Charles Jeter playbook.
“My dad always told me that you’ve got to get two or three hits against mediocre pitchers,” Derek told Luke, “because when you face an ace you’ll be fighting some nights just to get one.”
Luke absorbed the thought and decided it made as much sense as anything a grizzled minor league or college coach had ever told him.
“And here’s a high school kid telling me, a college kid,” said Luke, who was on his way to a season of 21 homers, 91 RBI, and a .304 batting average.
No, Jeter did not let his mounting sum of errors ruin his Greensboro experience. The lost and homesick eighteen-year-old had slowly grown into this confident and independent nineteen-year-old.
Despite his age, Jeter was a credible leader. For 7:00 p.m. games he would arrive at War Memorial at 1:30 to do some soft toss and hone his inside-out swing as the Garth Brooks music blared on the stadium speakers. Jeter
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