To be around the dynastic Yankees was to know they had talent. But they had more – something that steeled them and inflated their confidence …
To be around the dynastic Yankees was to know they had talent. But they had more – something that steeled them and inflated their confidence and kept them hungry even as they were recording great achievements. Derek Jeter was the engine for that. He had fortitude and unrelenting confidence, but it was that hunger to win. No, more than that. This belief that he would never begin a game, a season or a postseason thinking anything but that his team would win became the DNA of a whole clubhouse. So for Jeter to walk away from what was his second dream after being the Yankees’ shortstop – to own a team – screams about his lost belief that the Marlins were committed to win. Jeter understood the path to sustained winning in Miami would involve painful and unpopular decisions and years of not winning. But he thought it could be done by Year 5 of a five-year contract that had made him the first and still only black chief executive of a major league team. But before Year 5 even began, Jeter unleashed a bombshell Monday that he was stepping down and also divesting from his roughly 4 percent ownership of the club. Among the issues, sources say, is that Jeter went into the lockout believing team chairman Bruce Sherman had approved the spending of another $10 million-$15 million on player(s) whenever transactions begin again. And that plan was reversed, in Jeter’s understanding. Jeter did not only see that as reneging on a promise, but as a statement against the build up to try to win – and Jeter was biding the bad times to satisfy his passion to ultimately win. Jeter issued a three-paragraph statement that was standard vanilla at top and bottom, but in the middle his true feelings resounded: “The vision for the future of the franchise is different than the one I signed up to lead. Now is the right time for me to step aside as a new season begins.
