“The Captain” (2022)
The epitome of a Yankee.
After having penned an altogether different sub-title for this article and after a furious row with my Sports Editor (stubbornly handsome rogue but an annoyance all the same) I plumped for the epitome line above, and Derek Jeter is very firmly the shining example of what it is to be a New York Yankee. But my alternative sub-heading of “An entertaining Number 2 from the Evil Empire” was rejected by that Los Angeles Dodgers supporting destroyer of the written word and even though, during that furious argument, I argued, correctly, that both were as equally perfect for a sub heading of an article and moreover, they were both as equally grudging in the highest of complimentary ways for a Yankee who’s success I feared watching in real time and in the dead of a UK morning, but I loved watching his successful life story unfold here. Derek Jeter and the pinstripe team he led so gloriously ruined many a misty UK morning before dawn for me, and perhaps that’s a hat-trick of compliments too far and far too soon into this sporting communique of a life uniquely well lived.
Bathed in the Dodger Blue of my pesky Sports Editor, I had no love for Derek Jeter or the brilliantly monikered “Evil Empire” of the New York Yankees. Sure I had a dalliance with them before that brute of a slugger, Jose Canseco, was scoring home runs for fun for the Oakland A’s and before I fell in love with a failing LA Dodgers and their Canadian “closer” by the name of Eric Gagne. Being a limey baseball fan from the UK in the late 1980’s and through the 1990’s, you had to travel to either a specialist sports shop who dealt exclusively in American sports apparel or you ordered overseas (and crossed your fingers) and waited and waited and indeed waited.
But being a loose fan of, or associated with, the New York Yankees growing up in the UK at that time was a cinch! They were always seemingly the prestigious late game on a Sunday night but more importantly, you didn’t even need to stay up until 1am on a Monday morning for first pitch let alone the entire game and a bedtime of over 3 dark hours away. The Yankees have been a brand for as long as that concept has been a staple of the market place. You rarely saw an actual baseball shirt but as the 1990’s gave way for a brand new Millennium, if you wanted to be a fan of the New York Yankees seemingly every sports store had a range of leisurewear, hoodies and caps for a team captained by it’s guiding light and holder of the responsibilities for leading a winning baseball team fit for the city of New York.
That’s where Derek Jeter comes in. It was barely covered, if at all, the vaunted and apocryphal “code” for being a New York Yankee. You have to be a player or a “baller” in today’s lingo, sure, but you also have to carry yourself a certain way, upright, stiff backed, ready for the challenge ahead. Clean shaven, well turned out, a spick and span representative of the heaving cauldron inside in its famed stadium and the sprawling city that surrounds it. You have to be a winner. That’s non-negotiable. But you also have to have that selfish desire to win and win again. Represent the pinstripes, the city, the history and win and win again all whilst being the epitome of what it takes to be a New York Yankee.
Whether it’s my soccer team (association football, surely? Old and crusty Sports Editor) or even a friendly game of rounders with the family on a beautifully sunny English summer’s day and a favourite memory growing up and of taking over a patch of an English “Common” or a remote field and unpacking a cool box filled to the brim with summer goodies, every sports team needs a Captain.
That’s where Derek Jeter comes in.
In his 20 years as a New York Yankee, Jeter won 5 World Series titles spanning 13 years. Voted a 14 time All Star with 5 Gold Glove and 5 Silver Slugger awards alongside American League Rookie of the Year in 1996 and World Series MVP 4 years later, the Yankees retired his iconic number 2 before Jeter was inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame in 2020.
But Jeter was more than a Captain, more than the symbolic captains we have now in my limey liking of association football and far more than the otherworldly achievements listed above. The name of Derek Jeter will be forever associated with the game of baseball alongside any baseball Hall of the Famer from the past. His life and the passage of sporting time that would see his iconic number 2 jersey retired forever is an entertaining one and as the sub-title to this article suggests, he was also the clean shaven, selfishly driven winner that epitomises the New York Yankees and the team he captained to glory after first being part of a dynasty.
Although a play on words, this 7 part mini-series from ESPN films (originally released in July and August of 2022) is an entertaining look at a number 2 from the Evil Empire and it excels akin to the ESPN films and Netflix co-produced The Last Dance and 2020’s brilliant retrospective capture of the life and times of Michael Jordan and his all conquering Chicago Bulls basketball team. Jordan and Jeter are established as tight friends here and you can see the parallels to both the human beings involved and their over reliance on trust, teamwork, work ethic, friendship, as well as an unremitting and unapologetic sporting desire to win, and win again and again. The mini-series follows the path of The Last Dance in as much as Jeter’s growing up timeline from mixed race child through rookie assimilation into a baseball man’s world and ultimate record breaking sporting glory is deliberately non-linear, with episodes starting with his final game at Yankee Stadium in 2014 before filtering the remainder of the episodes through the entirety of his career, but as with the story of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, we get to meet and hear from sporting friends and enemies (and a surprising baseball enemy closer to home plate than you’d ordinarily imagine unless you “know” the story) and the tight knit group of friends and family who supported the boyhood Yankee as he became a New York legend.
All of this and more is covered, especially so Jeter’s upbringing and the era defined implications for being a mixed race child trying to break into the wide world of baseball and for a Yankees team he dreamed about representing and when he did so, the colour of his skin or his supposed “real” ethnicity was called to question as he wasn’t, seemingly, the sufficient skin colour to be regarded as black as his influential father or as white as his adoring mother. What is firmly established is that Derek Jeter was a team player who wanted to be surrounded by fellow winners, ruthless winners, and without a care as to their skin colour or even the brilliantly absent human concepts of sexual orientation, political or religious beliefs. We get to see the family man post retirement but a real highlight for me was the absence of the guttural tabloid necessities of needing strident confirmations of Jeter’s political or spiritual or religious beliefs. Sometimes less is more.
Unless you’re a Captain of the New York Yankees.
Thanks for reading. There are numerous more baseball articles within my archives or here’s just a peek into the cave of wonders that awaits the inquisitive:
