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

suffered through another dreadful day at the plate, and that he was busy trying to cry himself to sleep.
    Night after night after night, Jeter sobbed for relief that would not come. “That was a nightmare,” his father said.
    Derek had been a sorry sight on arrival in Tampa, a scarecrow come to life. His ankles were so skinny, his high-tops flapped about even when they were laced as tight as could be.
    Jeter would not be allowed to wear high-top cleats in games or practices (Yankee policy prohibited them), another reason he was not comfortable. Derek had never been away from home, outside of his summertime trips to his grandparents’ place in New Jersey.
    He was not in Tampa to play catch with Grandma Dot. He was not spending any long afternoons at the Tiedemann castle and splish-splashing around Greenwood Lake on the Yankees’ dime.
    The team was laying out $800,000, and the shortstop who was just days removed from his eighteenth birthday was supposed to honor the investment.
    “We’re expecting big things from you,” George Steinbrenner told him the day they first met.
    “And Derek was scared to death,” said his agent, Steve Caruso.
    Derek had his reasons. Finally done with his bonus negotiations, Jeter showed up late to the Class A rookie ball season and late to his first double-header.
    “Everyone was looking at me,” Derek would say. “I’m the number-one pick.”
    Jeter had felt the same stares bearing down on him while he ate in the dining room at Steinbrenner’s Radisson Bay Harbor Hotel, and they unnerved him. No, he was not even remotely ready to play up to the numbers in his contract.
    The same Jeter who struck out once in twenty-three games during his senior season at Kalamazoo Central struck out five times and went 0 for 7 in his first double-header as a pro in Sarasota. Derek faced a knuckleballer in the first game; he had never faced a knuckleballer. Derek faced a pitcher throwing 90 miles per hour in the second game; he had never faced a pitcher who threw so hard.
    Barely 160 pounds, Jeter was hopelessly overmatched by the velocity of the pitching and the speed of the game. He made critical errors at shortstop, went hitless in his first fourteen at-bats, and started ringing up monthly phone bills that would approach 400 bucks.
    “When you’re in high school,” Derek said, “you can’t wait to get out of the house, be on your own and away from your parents telling you what to do. When you’re down here, you realize you just can’t go back.”
    Jeter would step into the batter’s box and think about how many more hellish weeks he had to endure before he could go home. His games were played before a dozen fans, two dozen on a good day. Those games started under a blazing noontime sun so they would be over before the early-evening thunderstorms rolled in.
    For once in his life, Jeter yearned for the sleet and snow of a Kalamazoo spring. Gulf Coast League scores and standings were not printed in the paper. Jeter was stuck in a forgotten time and place, and he wanted his parents to save him. He wanted his girlfriend, Marisa Novara, to visit him. He wanted Bill Freehan, the Michigan coach, to reassure him.
    “Hang in there,” Freehan told Jeter. “It’s part of the process.”
    Derek could not help himself. The mind-numbing sameness of the routine—take early batting practice in the morning, grab something to eat, fail miserably in the game, stay for extra work in the evening, cry your eyes out at night—was wearing him to the nub.
    Suddenly the very word banned by his grandfather and mother—
can’t
—was the only word that rolled easily off his tongue. “The first few games,” Jeter said, “I was just swinging at everything. I didn’t have any idea where the ball was going.”
    Charles and Dot Jeter headed down to Tampa; Caruso had put a clause in Derek’s contract calling for the Yankees to fly in the shortstop’s parents at the team’s expense. Novara also made a trip.
    They