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He is known as The Captain. With twelve All-Star games, five Gold Gloves, four Silver Sluggers, and five World Series rings, Derek Jeter is one of the greatest to play the game.
He has the record for the all-time post-season hits, games played, extra-bases and runs scored.
He even started out like any other athletic stud. So how did he rise to the top?
Derek Jeter was born on June 26, 1974, about 50 kilometres away from where everyone will remember him as one of the greatest.
Jeter soon moved to Michigan, where he started to play baseball at the same age most kids start – he was five when he started to play T-ball.
During his freshman year he was able to make varsity.
Jeter was a good player his freshman and sophomore years of high school, but he really started to stand out in his junior year. During his junior year Jeter had a .557 batting average with seven home runs, and he was catching scouts’ eyes.
Jeter had an type of senior year hitting unheard of – .508 (30-for-59), four long balls, 23 RBIs, 21 walks and only one strikeout in 23 games.
He won many different awards in 1992 – his senior year – and some of them are; Kalamazoo Area B’nai B’rith Award for Scholar Athlete, the 1992 High School Player of the Year by the American Baseball Coaches Association, the Gatorade High School Athlete of the Year and USA Today’s High School Player of the Year.
Jeter was drafted sixth overall by the Yankees and the first high school player to be drafted. In 1993, Jeter’s first full year of baseball, he hit .295 had five home runs, 71 RBIs, and 18 stolen bases.
Again, Jeter showed that he was best, winning the Most Outstanding Major League Prospect, South Atlantic League’s Best Defensive Shortstop, Most Exciting Player, and Best Infield Arm, all at the age of 19.
The very next year he won Minor League Player of the Year and MVP in the Florida State League. On May 29, 1995 Derek Jeter got his first taste of the big leagues after the starting shortstop got hurt. He earned his name in the starting line-up the next year.
1996 was the year everyone learnt the name of Derek Jeter, becoming the first rookie shortstop to start Opening Day for the Yankees since Tom Tresh in 1962.
Jeter had himself another great year with a batting average of .314, 10 home runs, 78 RBIs and 14 stolen bases, taking home the American League Rookie of the Year Award and also taking the World Series Pennant back to New York, for the first time since 1978.
Even though the Yankees had a franchise-record winning 114 games in 1997 they just fell short of back-to-back World Series. Jeter led the Yankees back to the World Series in 1998, batting .324, with 203 hits, 19 homers, and 30 bases stolen.
He had another crazy year in 1999, winning back-to-back World Series. In 2000 Jeter become the first player ever to win the MVP in the All-Star Game and in MVP in the third straight World Series for the Yankees. Fourteen years later Jeter is playing in his last season and becoming known as the best.
Everyone knows Derek Jeter is a future Hall of Famer. Everyone knows how good the Captain was, is, and will always be.
To prove how good he is, Jeter received a letter from the baseball commissioner Bud Selig in 2009 saying:
“[You are] Major League Baseball’s foremost champion and ambassador. You embody all the best of Major League Baseball. You have represented the sport magnificently throughout your Hall of Fame career. On and off the field, you are a man of great integrity, and you have my admiration.”
This letter is just part of the great career of the Captain. A career that no one could ever forget.
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