The education of Derek Jeter, baseball CEO
MIAMI -- FOR TWO DECADES as
New York Yankees shortstop, Derek Jeter distinguished himself with his impeccable work habits and mind-numbing consistency. He hit .310 in the regular season and .308 in October, and the teammates who accompanied him on his journey will attest that his demeanor in Game 7 of the World Series mirrored his approach in routine April games at Tropicana Field or Camden Yards.
Jeter embodied the phrase, "Control what you can control.'' But nothing could prepare him for his first game as an owner, and the helplessness of waiting for DJ Khaled to finish his 30-minute set in time for
Jose Urena's scheduled first pitch of the 2018 season opener.
The Marlins were hosting the Cubs on March 29, and as game time approached for the 12:40 p.m. ET ESPN broadcast and DJ Khaled wrapped up his new team song, "Just Gettin' Started,'' Jeter kept checking his watch and calculating the logistics. That stress-inducing moment provided a window into the challenges awaiting Miami's new baseball messiah.
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"It's funny,'' Jeter says. "I never thought I would be sitting in the stands worried about whether or not our stage would be taken down prior to the first pitch. Those are the little things you never really take into consideration when you're a player.''
In his role as Marlins part-owner and chief executive officer, Jeter is responsible for making sure everything runs on time -- and the ushers are polite, the farm system is stocked and the in-game entertainment is, well, entertaining. No detail is too small, and each correct decision brings the Marlins closer to relevance and Jeter's ultimate goal: a sixth championship ring.
More than 10 months have passed since a group led by Jeter and billionaire businessman Bruce Sherman bought the Marlins from Jeffrey Loria for $1.2 billion and embarked on two grand experiments. The first: build a foundation for sustainable success in Miami, where the Marlins have won two titles but surpassed 2 million in attendance only twice over the past 24 seasons.
The second: show the world that a former player with no experience in the corporate or management realm can make a successful transition to ownership. Jeter reportedly has a 5 percent stake in the operation, but he's 100 percent invested emotionally.
Jeter still owns his 32,000-square-foot Tampa manor, dubbed "St. Jetersburg.'' But he now lives full-time in Miami with his wife, Hannah, and their daughter Bella Raine, who turns 1 on Friday. Among the other firsts he has experienced in the past year: his first owners meetings and his first spring training, Opening Day, amateur draft and trade deadline as a chief executive.
His vision persists even as
Brian Anderson,
Magneuris Sierra and
Rafael Ortegaman the outfield spots previously held by
Giancarlo Stanton,
Christian Yelichand
Marcell Ozuna. The Marlins are 48-73, 20 games out of first place in the National League East and last in the majors in attendance, but Jeter is ardent in laying out the tenets of his mission statement.
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Jeter insists on building a "first-class organization." Surrounding himself with good people is pivotal. Accountability is paramount. And he is resolute in his expectations, even though he's part of a different club now.
"It's strange,'' Jeter says. "When you're a player and you're playing against a particular team, all you think about is beating them, beating them, beating them. When you come into an ownership situation, so many people are reaching out and wanting to help. People keep asking me, 'Is there anything I can do to help? Is there any information you want to know?' I thought initially I was being recorded for some hidden camera show.''
Ask him the simplest question -- why does he need the headaches when he could be out playing golf, basking in his celebrity status and sitting on his $265 million in career earnings -- and he reflects on a life decision he made in his formative years in the Yankees' system.
"I moved to Tampa full-time when I was 19 years old,'' Jeter says. "I wanted to work out at the minor league complex every day, because I always thought in my head if it came down to a decision between promoting me or someone else, they would say, 'Well, at least we see him working hard.' That's the reason why I moved down to Tampa.
"While I was there around the minor league complex, I tried to learn as much as I possibly could about scouting and player development. I started saying it publicly about 10 years before I retired: I could never see myself coaching or managing or scouting. I wanted to have an opportunity to build something, and I spent as much time as I could learning about how baseball operations are run. And there's a lot. I'm still learning every day I'm here.''
"When you're a player and you're playing against a particular team, all you think about is beating them, beating them, beating them. When you come into an ownership situation, so many people are reaching out and wanting to help. People keep asking me, 'Is there anything I can do to help? Is there any information you want to know?' I thought initially I was being recorded for some hidden camera show."Derek Jeter on his new role in Miami
Along with David Beckham, who is bringing a Major League Soccer team to the city, Jeter is the most prominent face of Miami sports these days. He is gradually coming to grips with the scrutiny.
"If you think anything that happened over the winter is going to deter him, you're sadly mistaken,'' says Marlins manager Don Mattingly. "There are going to be some bumps in the road, but he's not going to give in or give up. He was the toughest player I've ever seen mentally, and that translates to what he's doing now.
"It would be hard for me to doubt what he says and what he's going to do when he makes a commitment to something. I believe in him 100 percent -- where he's going and where we're going. I believe this is going to be a great place for years to come.''
laid off after cancer surgery, and Jeter took flak for attending a Monday Night Football game during baseball's winter meetings.
After years of largely Teflon news coverage, everything stuck. The last time Jeter felt this besieged, he was making 56 errors in the Sally League in 1993.
one of the photos, he sat at a desk beside an industrial strength dispenser of hand sanitizer. It belonged to David Samson, the outgoing Marlins president. But USA Today ran a story with the headline "Derek Jeter has a giant hand sanitizer dispenser behind his impressive new desk,'' and fans on social media speculated that the Captain might be a closet germaphobe.
Six months later, the dispenser is history, the old black carpet has been replaced by a lush off-white, and the combination of overhead lighting and sun streaming through the front window gives Jeter's surroundings an eerily dream-like quality. He faces a massive tank filled with tropical fish that is another remnant of Samson's tenure. His ambivalent reaction suggests it would not be his first choice if he were designing the office from scratch.
Jeter, clad in his new uniform of dark slacks and a white collared dress shirt, is generally at his office by 9 a.m, and his work day can extend to 13 or 14 hours when the Marlins have a home game. He oversees strategy meetings and leans heavily on Caroline O'Connor, the team's senior vice president and chief of staff, and Chip Bowers, the former Golden State Warriors executive entrusted with running the Marlins' business operations.
Among the big-picture items on his agenda: negotiating new TV and stadium naming rights deals, "rebranding'' the team uniform and colors, upgrading the spring training complex in Jupiter, Florida, and figuring out where the Marlins are headed with All-Star catcher
J.T. Realmuto, the team's best player and a free agent in 2021.
Jeter sweats the little things, as well. When the Marlins recently promoted 2018 draft picks Connor Scott, Osiris Johnson and Will Banfield from the Gulf Coast League to the South Atlantic League, Jeter was in the loop and offered his thoughts on the transition. He knows because he made the same jump in the summer of 1992.
"It's good to have an owner who understands the difficulty of advancing through the minors to the majors,'' says Gary Denbo, the Marlins' vice president of player development and scouting.
Martin Prado filed away one particular morsel from Jeter during those encounters.
"He said it's like building a new building,'' Prado says. "If the base of that building is strong, even if it's 100 floors, it's not going to fall. But if you have a weak or fractured building, you're not going build over that fractured base. That's the mentality they have here now. ''
Dee Gordon were mixed, and ESPN's Keith Law and other outlets still rank the team's farm system in the bottom third among MLB clubs.
But the Marlins have added depth to the system with the addition of more than 30 players in trades over the past year, and they've made expenditures under the Jeter regime that were previously unheard of in Miami. They exceeded their $8.66 million June draft bonus pool by 4.5 percent and paid a $300,000 penalty as a result. They spent $1.8 million -- more than double the allotted value for the 69th overall pick -- to sign Will Banfield, a Georgia-born catcher who was bound for Vanderbilt University.
They're also on the prowl for international talent. When they acquired $250,000 in pool money from the
Seattle Mariners in a recent trade for outfielder
Cameron Maybin, it was a first in franchise history. The Marlins' $4.35 million international bonus pool is the second highest in baseball to the Baltimore Orioles' $8 million-plus stockpile, and they hope it will give them a fighting chance to sign Victor Victor Mesa, a Cuban sensation who could be a natural fit in South Florida.
"This should be a destination spot for every Latin player, amateur or professional,'' GM Hill says. "They should want to play here. It's a great city and a great ballpark, and they're going to want to be a part of what we're building.''
Do the Marlins need a drawing card the magnitude of a
Jose Fernandez, Stanton or Jeter to rekindle fan interest? The owner doesn't necessarily subscribe to that theory.
"You still need to win,'' says Jeter, who notes that the Marlins finished 28th in attendance last year even with Stanton hitting 59 home runs.
EMILY GLASS, WHO joined the Marlins in the spring as the team's new education coordinator, has a background that's diverse, to say the least. She spent two years as an NCAA Division II softball player at Pomona College in California before traveling to Australia, where she played in an age 18-to-35 men's baseball league. After that, she coached a Little League baseball team in Japan. "I'm always just trying to have fun,'' Glass says.
Early in her tenure, Glass found some situations she thought needed addressing and approached management with her concerns. There were minor leaguers who had slept in quarters with no air conditioning. She informed Jeter and Denbo, and the problem disappeared. When she suggested hiring two or three full-time teachers and buying new Dell computers for a learning lab in the Dominican Republic, Jeter signed off on the initiative.
"We don't need much to change the conditions, lives and support that we give the players,'' Glass says. "But everything I've needed, Derek has said, 'No problem.'''
As part of Glass' curriculum, the Marlins focus on education and real-life concerns. Players in the low minors receive instruction on everything from budgeting to cooking healthy meals to financial planning to tipping clubhouse attendants. What might be common practice in other organizations is a world beyond what has transpired previously in Miami.
"It's for all the 18- or 19-year-olds who have never been away from home,'' Glass says. "Anything our players need and don't know, we're going to teach them.''
Language instruction is at the heart of the program. During Jeter's time in New York, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams were among his most valued teammates and closest friends, and he never understood why clubhouse communication was a one-way street. So as the Marlins' young Latin American players take English lessons, the American-born players and coaches will be required to learn Spanish.
On Thursday, Jeter hauled a bunch of vice presidents into a room for the first of what will be regular weekly lessons in
Español.
"I've been to the Dominican and Venezuela,'' Jeter says. "I went to Cuba with Major League Baseball in 2016. So I've been to those countries and tried to learn as much as I could about their cultures. Everybody expects the Latin players to make an effort to speak English. Well, especially here in Miami, if you don't speak Spanish, you don't fit in. I think it's important.''
Derek Jeter doesn't join manager Don Mattingly and the team on the field often, but when he does make an appearance, having the future Hall of Famer around leaves quite an impression on Marlins players. AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee
WHILE JETER GREW accustomed to the big stage over 2,905 games as a Yankee, he has never been especially comfortable with grand entrances or public admiration.
Before he spoke at the Captain's Camp in February, the Marlins' video department assembled a three- to four-minute compilation of his noteworthy moments -- from the celebrated flip of the ball to nab Jeremy Giambi at home plate in the 2001 AL Division Series to the dive into the third-base seats to catch a Trot Nixon foul pop in 2004. Jeter made one thing clear before his arrival: The video had to be over before he entered the room.
"It's uncomfortable to sit there and watch highlights of yourself before someone introduces you,'' Jeter says. "I'm like, 'Gary, if that's what you want to do, fine, but do it before I get there.'''
Jeter is more at ease in unstructured, one-on-one interactions with fellow ballplayers. Glass was recently tutoring a young Dominican prospect at Marlins Park when Jeter popped in unannounced. The minor leaguer looked at his right hand after the introductory bro-grip with an expression that suggested he might never wash it again.
"If you change the scenery, it was just like Derek was in pinstripes walking up to a teammate who just arrived in the big leagues and saying,
'Dime, hermano. Soy Derek,''' Glass says. "It was exactly the same.''
Some big leaguers are smitten, too. Earlier this year, Miguel Rojas was asked to move off shortstop to make room for J.T. Riddle, and Jeter took part in a group sit-down with Mattingly, Rojas and Hill. Rojas grew up in Venezuela idolizing two shortstops -- Jeter and Venezuelan countryman Omar Vizquel -- and he would like nothing more than to see the Marlins owner come out and take a few ground balls one day for old times' sake.
"That's one of my goals during the season -- to pick his brain and talk to him about how he prepared to play 162 games at shortstop,'' Rojas says. "I feel like it's a blessing that we have Derek Jeter around and we can take advantage of that.''
When Jeter spoke at a business function at the East Hotel in downtown Miami in February, the Chamber of Commerce contacted the Marlins to make sure all the details were in order. Did he need a car service to transport him to the event or a representative to accompany him? They were told no special arrangements were necessary. But Jeter still had to enter the building through a back entrance so he didn't cause a traffic jam in the lobby.
Upon arrival, Jeter made some brief opening remarks, then yielded the floor for questions. After some candid give-and-take, he signed autographs, posed for photos, looked everyone in the eye and took his sweet time to make sure that no attendees felt shortchanged.
"He doesn't want to be
handled,'' Sanchez says. "He's not a gilded lily. There's a great buzz when he comes into the room. But he doesn't want to just come in for a momentary encounter and be whisked away. He tries to fit his schedule into what makes everybody else feel good. What celebrity does that?''
It's all part of the balance Jeter must strike as a new team owner and baseball icon. He's the best, most persuasive advocate for the Marlins franchise, but he wants it to be less the Derek Jeter Show and more a long-range team effort to build something that lasts.
So he arrives at the park early each day, rolls up the sleeves of those white dress shirts and gets to work. Feel free to question his judgments and his decisions, but have no doubt about his mandate: He didn't come to Miami to lose.
