Derek Jeter Biography
The following biography
is from
Wikipedia.org
“The
Free Encyclopedia.”
|
Position |
Shortstop |
|
Team |
New
York Yankees |
|
Years of experience |
11
years |
|
Age |
31 |
|
Height |
6-3 |
|
Weight |
175
lbs. |
|
Bats |
Right |
|
Throws |
Right |
|
College |
None |
|
2005 Salary |
$19,600,000 |
|
Place of Birth |
Pequannock, NJ |
|
Selection |
1st
Round; 6th Pick; 1992 |
|
Major League Debut |
May
29, 1995 |
|
Nicknames |
DJ,
Mr. November |
Derek Sanderson Jeter (born
June 26, 1974 in Pequannock, New Jersey) is a shortstop for the New York
Yankees and six-time All-Star.
His father, Charles, is
African American; his mother, Dorothy, is white. Jeter was named 1992
High School Player of the Year by the American Baseball Coaches
Association. He had a baseball scholarship to Michigan, but the New York
Yankees drafted him in the first round of the amateur draft. Jeter left
the Wolverines behind to follow his dream.
Growing up, he had wondered
whether the Yankees would have any one-digit uniform numbers left, as so
many of them had been retired. But his hope that he could get to wear a
Yankee uniform with a single digit was realized, and he got the number
2. He has worn that number from the beginning, and many believe it will
be retired in his honor when he finishes his career.
He earned a taste of the
big leagues on May 29, 1995 replacing an injured Tony Fernandez, only a
month before turning 21. He showed enough talent to replace Fernandez,
and inherited his starting spot in 1996. It didn't take long for the
Yankee faithful to take to Jeter, as he earned Rookie of the Year honors
by having a solid all-around year in which he hit .314. He saved his
best for the postseason, where he batted .361 in 15 playoff games en
route to the Yankees' first world title in 18 years. His postseason was
highlighted, in a way, by a home run in the League Championship Series,
a home run that was very famously deflected by 12-year-old Jeffrey Maier
who reached over the wall (and, technically, onto the field of play) and
stole the ball from Baltimore Orioles outfielder Tony Tarasco. Replays
clearly showed fan interference, but it was nonetheless ruled a home
run.
During his rookie season
the young shortstop gained instant fame and soon became a regular
subject in the local newspapers' gossip columns. A highly eligible
bachelor in New York with matinee idol looks, his love life became a hot
topic among the press, most memorably a long affair with pop star Mariah
Carey. Despite the media's influence, he continued to produce. In the
Yankees' 1998 campaign, in which they won 114 games, he batted .324.
Also in 1998, he led the American League in runs scored, with 127.
Putting together his best year defensively as well, he earned his first
all-star appearances and 3rd place in MVP voting.
While his 1998 was great,
his 1999 was statistically better, as he reached career highs in
average, home runs, RBIs, and walks, leading the AL in hits with 219.
This earned him 6th place honors though in MVP voting. 2000 made up for
the misses in MVP award voting, as he won All-Star MVP honors, and then
World Series MVP honors as the Yankees defeated the Mets in the Subway
Series. He continues to put up similar seasons as he did what he's
always done in 2001 and 2002, hit solidly for average and for power,
steal bases, and play steady defense. In 2004, Jeter won his first
American League Gold Glove Award, an award given annually to the best
defensive player at each position.
Perhaps the best example of
his defensive prowess took place on October 13, 2001, during the 3rd
game of the ALDS. The Yankees trailed in the Series 2 games to 0 to the
Oakland Athletics, and led 1-0 in the 7th inning. With a runner on
first, Terrence Long hit a double down the right-field line. The Yankee
rightfielder, Shane Spencer, threw home, to try to stop the tying run
from scoring. The throw went over the cutoff man, first baseman Tino
Martinez. Jeter cut the ball off, and shovel-passed the ball to catcher
Jorge Posada, who tagged the runner out and saved a run. The Yankees
went on to win the series.
On July 1, 2004, Jeter made
another extraordinary defensive play. In the 12th inning of a tie-game
against the Boston Red Sox, Boston's Trot Nixon hit a pop-up down the
left-field line. Jeter sprinted for the ball from his position at
shortstop and made a running catch at full-speed, sending him into the
stands headfirst. Jeter held on to the ball, but emerged from the stands
bruised and bloodied, with lacerations on his chin and cheek, and had to
leave the game for X-rays. With Jeter out, the Yankees moved Alex
Rodriguez from third to short and moved former shortstop Gary Sheffield
from right field to third base for the first time in more than a decade.
The moves, along with several other substitutions, led to New York
fielding an outfield of Ruben Sierra-Bernie Williams-Bubba Crosby. New
York would win in the 13th on a string of two-out hits by Sierra, Miguel
Cairo and John Flaherty. Jeter was back in the lineup the very next
night against the New York Mets.
However, Jeter's defense
has been the target of criticism by the sabermetric analytical
community. Every advanced defensive metric has rated Jeter as a below
average defensive player in nearly every season of his career (his 2004
Gold Glove season was statistically average in most metrics, and the
best of his career), and some metrics have rated him as one of the
worst, and sometimes the worst defensive shortstop in baseball in
multiple seasons.
Defensive metrics, however,
are the least reliable of all baseball statistics, so the dispute cannot
be resolved through numbers alone. Central to the dispute is the low
percentage of balls hit into Jeter's area of the field that are
converted into outs, which would apparently indicate poor range.
However, the statistical fact that Jeter has historically fielded a
lower percentage of balls in his area than most shortstops does not in
and of itself prove this, and there may be other reasons for this
occurance.
The controversy about
Jeter's defense does not revolve entirely around statistics, though they
provided the intial impetus for the criticism. Many sabermetric analysts
have noted that Jeter does appear from the naked eye to display less
range than other shortstops. It is likely that the central issue of the
dispute between those who feel Jeter's defense is excellent and those
who feel it is awful is what exactly makes for a good defensive player.
While Jeter has made a great many spectacular-looking plays like those
mentioned above, these may have more aesthetic value than baseball
value, and sabermetricians feel that it is more important to make a high
percentage of ordinary plays than it is to make a high number of
extraordinary plays.
The problems with defensive
statistics may be resolved in the future when superior camera equipment
and positioning allows for far more exact tracking of a player's range,
but these innovations will almost certaintly come too late to give an
objective analysis of Jeter's glovework, as he will either have retired
or seen his skills erode considerably due to age by the time they are
available. It is almost certain that Jeter's defense will remain a
permanent object of dispute.
Since arriving in the Major
Leagues in 1996, Jeter's Yankees have appeared in the playoffs every
season, winning eight American League Eastern Division titles and one
Wild Card, winning six American League Pennants and four World
Championships.
Jeter has played a
conspicious role in many of the Yankees' postseason successes.
In 1996, as a rookie, Jeter
hit .415/.415/.561 (Batting Average/On Base Percentage/Slugging
Percentage) in his first two postseason series. Against the legendary
starters of the Atlanta Braves in the World Series, his batting
struggled, but he still managed to get on base, hitting .250/.400/.250,
and his penchant for starting game-tying or winning rallies that year,
including the Series-turning Game Four, established him as a "clutch"
performer.
In 1997 he enhanced this
reputation with a homer that ultimately won Game One of the ALDS against
the Indians, and homered again in Game 2. While the Yankees lost the
series in five games, Jeter had an excellent series, hitting
.333/.417/.667, hitting .385 in the Yankees losses.
In 1998 Jeter struggled
terribly for the first two series, and his .353 Batting Average in the
World Series included no extra-base hits. He hit only .235/.328/.288
that postseason, but it mattered little -- the 114-48 Yankees rolled
through the postseason, losing only two games to the Indians in the
ALCS.
In 1999 Jeter completely
redeemed himself and more with an utterly dominant postseason, hitting
.375/.479/.542, hitting a two-run home run in the first inning of Game 5
of the ALCS to give the Yankees all the runs they would need, and
singling home the tying run in the eighth inning of Game One of the
World Series.
2000 started off on a bad
note for Jeter, as he struggled along with the rest of the Yankees in
the ALDS, but he exploded offensively in the ALCS and World Series,
hitting a combined .364/.472/.727, with four home runs in ten games,
matching his combined output in his first 51 postseason games. For his
dominant World Series, Jeter was named MVP.
2001 saw the Yankees lose a
postseason series for the first time since 1997, and Jeter struggled
that year, hitting just .226/.275/.290, but his struggles can be traced
to an injury suffered in Game Five of the ALDS, where he fell into the
stands making a catch. Jeter had hit .444/.476/.500 in that series, his
offensive struggles not coming until after that play -- and 15 of his 54
remaining postseason plate appearances were against Curt Schilling and
Randy Johnson.
But the 2001 Postseason
also featured two plays that would come to define him. One was the
previously mentioned "shovel pass" in Game 3 of the ALDS, the other came
in Game Four of the World Series. After Tino Martinez hit a dramatic
game-tying home run in the ninth inning with two outs, Jeter won the
game in the tenth with a two-out homer off of the same pitcher. Occuring
just three minutes after midnight on November 1, 2001, the home run
ended the first game official Major League game to ever be played even
partially in November, and Jeter was whimsically dubbed "Mr. November",
a reference to Hall-of-Famer Reggie Jackson's nickname, "Mr. October".
In 2002 Jeter, just as in
1997, homered in the first two games of the ALDS, and hit a spectacular
.500/.526/.875, but the Yankees' pitching and defense was annihilated by
the eventual World Champion Angels, and the Yankees fell in four games.
The Yankees won the pennant
again in 2003, but lost the World Series. Jeter was spectacular in the
ALDS and excellent in the World Series, and overall hit .367/.455/.550.
After another excellent
series against Minnesota to start the 2004 postseason, Jeter hit only
.200/.333/.233 against the Red Sox in the ALCS, hitting .211 and
stranding several runners in scoring position in Games 4 and 5, which
were decided by 1 run (although his 6th inning double in Game 5 provided
3 of the Yankees' 4 runs). The Yankees became the first team in baseball
history to lose a series after they had led 3 games to none, and while
others (Tony Clark, Tom Gordon, Javier Vazquez and Kevin Brown, as well
as Manager Joe Torre) were more responsible for the loss than him, Jeter
deserved a larger share of the blame than some of his other teammates,
notably Alex Rodriguez, who was made a goat by many writers and fans for
slapping the ball away from Bronson Arroyo in Game 6 of the series,
despite the fact that Rodriguez's offense had been a major reason for
their taking a 3-0 lead in the first place.
While Jeter's postseason
career has not been perfect, he has on the whole been one of the best
postseason players in Major League history, having had several
spectacular series and delivering crucial hits numerous times. Overall,
Jeter has hit .308/.380/.456 in the postseason and is 1st all-time in
postseason Hits and Singles, as well as 2nd in Runs Scored, Doubles and
Total Bases, 5th in Walks, 6th in Stolen Bases and RBI and 7th in Home
Runs.
In January of 2005, Derek
Jeter was voted the best baserunner in baseball by ESPN.com.
From the start of his
career, Derek Jeter assumed a role of leadership on the team, and was
known to be the first out of the dugout to congratulate his teammates
after scoring runs. Quickly, Jeter became the popular face of the
Yankees, and was considered their unofficial captain. He was officially
named the 11th captain in Yankees history on June 3, 2003. (However,
Howard W. Rosenberg, the foremost historian on baseball captains and
author of the 2003 book Cap Anson 1: When Captaining a Team Meant
Something: Leadership in Baseball's Early Years, has found that the
count of Yankee captains is deficient Hall of Famer Clark Griffith, the
1903-05 captain, and Kid Elberfeld, the 1906-09 one, with 1913 Manager
Frank Chance a strong circumstantial candidate to have been captain that
year as well. Therefore, Jeter may in fact be the 13th or 14th Yankees
captain.)
Jeter-hating has turned
into a lucrative cottage industry in Boston, with vendors selling
t-shirts reading "Jeter Sucks" and other obscene messages outside of
Fenway Park -- no little irony, given that Jeter was named after the
1970s' Boston Bruins hockey star Derek Sanderson.
For several seasons, Jeter
held the dubious honor of having the most career at-bats with the bases
loaded without hitting a Grand Slam. This was particularly unusual
because Jeter, while not a noted slugger, does have good home run power.
On June 18, 2005, in the bottom of the sixth inning of a 8-1 victory
over the Chicago Cubs, Jeter finally hit a Grand Slam to end the streak
at 135 plate apperances.
* * * *
The
above biography has been copied in part or in whole
from an article on
Wikipedia.org
"The Free Encyclopedia." It has been modified under
the NGU Free Document License Section 5 in the
following manner: (1) All links within the article
have been removed, including text links such as
"[#]"; (2) The "[Edit]" text and link have been
removed [if you would like to update the article,
you may do so from the original page]; (3) the table
of Contents links and text have been removed; and
(4) all of the sections of the original article have
not been copied. All of the above text is available
under the terms of the
GNU Free Document License.
URL of Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Jeter
Date Article Copied:
July 11, 2005
We
will try to replace this article with an original
biography in the near future, but we hope this will
be of help to our visitors in the mean time.
For
additions & corrections,
Click Here |