Free The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter by Ian O'Connor Page A

six-figure way.
    Sabean faxed Caruso an opening offer of $550,000. The agent assured the Yankee executive these negotiations would not be nearly as acrimonious as the Brien Taylor talks but also told him that bid would not get it done.
    Caruso wanted to beat the $725,000 bonus Toronto had given the California high school star Shawn Green and his agent, Moorad, the year before. As the faxes and phone calls went back and forth, Jeter phoned the Michigan head coach, Bill Freehan, to seek his counsel. Freehan was in a delicate spot—he wanted Jeter on scholarship in the worst way, but as a former All-Star catcher with the Tigers he understood the lure of the big leagues.
    “The kid wanted to go to Michigan,” said Freehan’s assistant, Ace Adams. “No one knows this, but Jeter did not want to sign [with the Yankees]. He wanted to go to Michigan with his girlfriend, and he wanted to play there.”
    But the Yankees kept inflating their offer. Derek called the Michigan head coach and said, “Mr. Freehan, what should I do?”
    “You’ve got to sign,” Freehan finally told him. “You’re crazy if you don’t.”
    Adams was flabbergasted over his boss’s show of integrity and good faith. “I don’t think many college coaches would’ve ever said that,” Adams said, “but Bill was such a classy guy.”
    Jeter listened to Freehan. On June 28, 1992, two days after his eighteenth birthday, Jeter signed an $800,000 deal with the Yankees that included a $700,000 bonus (Caruso’s 5 percent cut amounted to $35,000) and enough to cover the full ride to Michigan that Jeter was giving up. His deal at number 6 doubled Mottola’s at number 5 and beat those signed by the top three picks.
    Freehan reached out to Adams, who was driving on the New York Thruway and returning from the Cape Cod League when his boss broke the news.
    “Derek just signed with the Yankees,” Freehan said.
    “Oh, shit,” replied Adams, whose long journey home had just gotten three times longer.
    Derek Jeter, who graduated twenty-first in a Kalamazoo Central class of 265, would not be continuing his education at Michigan. Instead, Charles Jeter would take his son to the airport for a flight to Tampa and a spot on the Yankees’ rookie team in the Gulf Coast League.
    When Charles took his last look at Derek before he boarded that plane, the father thought the son looked a lot younger than eighteen. After he returned to his car to begin the drive back to his Battle Creek office, Charles began to weep uncontrollably.
    “As soon as the plane took off,” Derek would say, “I realized there was no turning back.”
    His touchdown in Tampa marked the end of innocence. Derek was not an amateur prospect hobbling around in high-top cleats anymore. He was a corporate asset, a commodity, a highly compensated employee.
    Charles did not know if his child was up to handling the transition. And in the first weeks of what was supposed to be a dreamy Yankee life, it became clear Derek Jeter was a boy ill prepared to become a man.

3. E-6
    The first high school player selected in the 1992 major league draft had a problem, and a big one:
    He wanted to go home to his mother.
    Derek Jeter could not hit a professional curve ball or fastball and could not get past the sinking feeling that all his fellow rookies and coaches in Tampa were asking themselves this one question:
    How the hell did the New York Yankees make him their number-one pick?
    “It was the lowest level of baseball,” Jeter said, “and I was awful.”
    Alone in a faraway hotel room in the summer of ’92, a child overwhelmed by grown-up stakes, Jeter could not get a grip on his runaway emotions. So he would call his parents, his sister, his girlfriend, and tell them that he had made a terrible mistake, that he should have taken the four-year scholarship to Michigan.
    Sometimes the calls came at 2:00 a.m., long after Charles and Dot and Sharlee had gone to bed. The minute the phone rang they knew Derek had