ETHAN NICKEL, EDITOR

My Nickel’s Worth

This past week my favorite baseball player and athlete growing up, Derek Jeter, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. I became a Yankees fan the second I was born, but I did not begin watching them regularly until I was seven years old. By then, I was the biggest Yankees fan on this planet and at that time I was playing baseball almost year round with a few different teams throughout the year. Long story short, I grew up idolizing everything Derek Jeter did on the field… and as I got older, I began to watch the way he handled himself both on and off the field.

I began watching the Yankees in the playoffs of the 2003 playoffs against the Boston Red Sox. I remember in that series the two teams got into a big brawl, with many of the main players on both teams joining in on the fight…but Jeter was nowhere to be find. Jeter was trying to stop players on both teams from things escalating any further. That was the type of player he was from the beginning of his career, until the very end. He ALWAYS did and said the right things on and off the baseball field. Jeter was named captain of the Yankees in 2003 by the owner, George Steinbrenner. Derek Jeter was the definition of a great leader and he really showed me what true leadership is. Anytime there was a bad call, a ball off the plate that was called a strike, he would just laugh it off and act like it wasn’t a huge deal. I always admired that because as a kid obsessed with sports, you want to do the things and act the same way as your favorite athletes. And I along with many other kids, grew up doing things the right way because of his leadership. Jeter was not the most vocal leader, but it was his actions and the way he conducted himself for 20 years that made him so impactful.

Teammates throughout the years have said that when he was named captain, nothing about him changed. He was the same guy and player from his first game, until his last. Derek was one of the best players to ever play baseball, totaling more than 3,400 hits in his 20-year career, which is 6th all time. He won five world championships in his career, and watching him play every day, you knew the most important thing to him was winning. He never made excuses. I can remember a time when he was injured for much of the season, but when he came back, they asked what percent he thought he was health wise…and his response was “If I am out on the field playing, I am 100 percent,”. Jeter was one of the best players the game has ever seen, but I keep going back to the way he led the team…every year for twenty years. No scandals, no blemishes, no excuses, no nonsense, just baseball. Baseball fans and media have known for years that one day he would be elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame. But five years after his final game, it became official. Jeter being elected into the hall of fame officially just helped me remember where my love for sports began and why I love sports to this day. Thank you to “The Captain” for all you have meant to baseball and sports for the past twenty five years, we are forever grateful.