In Defense of Ian O'Connor's Derek Jeter Book

Yes, I'm going there. After many months of criticizing ESPN New York columnist Ian O'Connor for his writing a half-dozen fawning articles about Derek Jeter this winter without disclosing that he was writing a book that promised "unique access" to the Yankee captain, I actually feel compelled to defend O'Connor on a couple of things that I think he's being unfairly criticized for.

First off, there's the curious case of Jeter going up to New York Post writer George King the morning after the Post published a front-page story about the book. That article discussed how The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter revealed how Jeter's dislike of teammate Alex Rodriguez put A-Rod in the Yankee "snubhouse" (The Post's term, not O'Connor's!)

In a followup piece by King entitled "Jeter: It's not my book," Jeter didn't confirm or deny any of the tidbits. But he told King:

"Make sure everyone knows it's not mine," Jeter said. "I had nothing to do with that book."

Well, nobody had suggested that Jeter had actually authored the tome himself. But if he really had "nothing to do with that book," a book that has been promoted of giving "unique access" to Jeter, then why is he quoted talking to O'Connor in the book, according to an ESPN New York article about the tome? And why would Newsday columnist Ken Davidoff, who witnessed the King-Jeter conversation, write that "Jeter was aware [the book] was being written and agreed to be interviewed for it"?

Not to mention the fact that O'Connor did over 200 interviews for the book, many of whom were people in the Jeter camp. Did Jeter have control over everything written in O'Connor's book? Doubtful. But he did agree to be interviewed for it, and many of the people close to him were also interviewed for it. To say that he had "nothing to do with" the book is pretty disingenuous.

The second thing I will defend O'Connor on, albeit in a backhanded way, is the notion that he was somehow out to get Jeter. I've even heard him compared to Selena Roberts. Really? Roberts wrote nasty column after nasty column about A-Rod before writing an entire bile-filled book on him. O'Connor is just the opposite. In a town where burnishing the Jeter legend is par for the course with New York columnists, O'Connor is in a class by himself. Remember these moments, all written without any mention of the upcoming book?

* October 24, 2010:  In an article entitled, "Expect Yankees to splash cash on Jeter," O' Connor said, "I believe a fair deal would be for four years at $23 million per."

* October 28, 2010:  O'Connor writes a bizarre column tying in Joe Girardi's job fortune to Jeter's, saying that Girardi should get a warning with his next contract saying, "Change, or we'll hire someone else to bench The Captain."

*November 21, 2010: O'Connor interviews Jeter's personal trainer Jason Riley for a column. Ian managed to keep a straight face when Riley said "I think it's very realistic" for Jeter to play through 2017, and when Riley said, "The desire to be the greatest can never be turned down by Father Time."

O'Connor also uncritically ran this other Riley comment (basically, most of the article is an infomercial for Jeter and his trainer): "You can't put an age on the heart of an athlete, and Derek's got one of the purest hearts in sports," Riley said. "He's not going to allow himself to have another down year, if he even considers 2010 a down year. His internal drive separates him from others. I've worked with very few people who go after the game like he does." The piece ends with O'Connor saying, "If the trainer is right, this next contract Jeter signs won't be his last." Oy.

* December 5, 2010: Regarding the Yankees coming to terms with Jeter on a new contract, O'Connor wrote, "The Yankees could have offered Jeter minimum wage, free parking and cab fare to and from the ballpark, and he would have found a way to accept it."

* March 26, 2011:  "For now, Jeter is still Jeter, a future Hall of Famer who just needed some extra face time with the hitting coach, Kevin Long. With the contract done and the footwork adjusted, the smart money says the captain will make something of a comeback this year."


There's also O'Connor writing for the Bergen Record in spring 2009 that the Yankees would be a better team without A-Rod, and that the team should just release him. So it's not like O'Connor is a Team A-Rod writer.


I haven't gotten to read O'Connor's book yet, but I just find it hard to believe that O'Connor did a hatchet job on the captain. Go to Houghton Mifflin's web site and read the book description, and an excerpt from Chapter One, and see what I mean. Heck, the book starts with this line, "Like all good stories about a prince, this one starts in a castle." Does that sound like an author with an agenda to get Jeter? I don't think so. Just because O'Connor has written that Jeter isn't always perfect doesn't make this a smear.

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Post Publishes Juicy Tidbits From Ian O'Connor's New Book About Jeter/A-Rod Feud

Sorry I haven't squawked for a while -- I have been working on two real-life projects that have consumed almost all of my time. I knew I had better get back to squawking soon when I got this email the other day, with the subject line "Do You Know there are 2 teams in NYC?"  Here's the email:

Hey…do you guys know that there is another team in town. They are called “the Yankees.”

Would think that there is only one team in NYC, to read your blog lately.

What’s the story???

Harsh, dude! Ouch!

Anyhow, on a brighter note, Happy Easter! When I got online this morning and saw that the New York Post had information from Ian O'Connor's upcoming book, "The Captain" (you know, the one that he's been working on at the same time he's been carrying Jeter's water in his columns), I knew I'd better squawk, or some might think I was comatose!

This "exclusive" article has inside details on the feud (although, for some odd reason, the Post calls it an "unauthorized" bio), and has pretty much vindicated a lot of what I've said over the years. Some tidbits:

* Jeter, the modern day Joe DiMaggio in a lot of ways -- including holding grudges -- so intimidated one Yankee front office person who admitted to being afraid to talk to Jeter about burying the hatchet with Alex. "It would've been the last conversation I ever had with Derek," he said. "I would've been dead to him. It would've been like approaching Joe DiMaggio to talk to him about Marilyn Monroe."

* At the 2001 All-Star Game, according to the Post's account of the book, "a smitten Rodriguez introduced him to Latin songstress Joy Enriquez. Jeter wasted no time -- the singer and the shortstop began dating."

* Don Mattingly tried to get Jeter to make up with A-Rod. "I faked it with Boggs," he said. "And you have to fake it with Alex." Heh!

* Brian Cashman also asked Jeter to "fake it" with Rodriguez, after noticing Jeter's lack of defense when it came to other players and fans criticizing the third baseman. "You've got to lead them all, the ones you like and the ones you don't," he told Jeter. He asked Jeter to defend A-Rod to the fans. "I can't tell the fans what to do," Jeter countered. (Of course, Jeter did just that when it came to Jason Giambi and Chuck Knoblauch, although the article doesn't mention that.) I don't know how many times I wrote over the years that the captain's job was to stand up for all of his teammates, not just his buddies. So good for Cashman that he told him the same thing!

Then there's this tidbit:

It all came to a head during a Yankee loss in August 2006 to Baltimore.

An easy pop-up hung in the air between A-Rod and Jeter. Both players closed in and Jeter bumped into A-Rod, knocking the ball out of his glove. Jeter shot A-Rod a withering look.

The gesture did not go unnoticed. Cashman pulled Jeter aside and ordered him to knock it off.

"Listen, this has to stop," Cashman said. "Everybody in the press box, every team official, everyone watching, they saw you look at the ball on the ground and look at him with disgust like you were saying, 'That's your mess, you clean it up.' "

A-Rod also felt betrayed by manager Joe Torre, who players said added fuel to the fiery feud.

"He would never call Jeter on anything, but he'd have no problem doing it to Alex," one player told the author.

I remember that well. And I remember how much grief I got from fans for pointed out that obvious dis. Believe it or not, readers used to argue me all the time when I said it was pretty obvious Jeter couldn't stand A-Rod. But It was pretty clear to me starting with the way Jeter mumbled and grimaced through A-Rod's introductory press conference in 2004 that the Captain didn't want him on the team.

It's funny -- people would tell me over and over how Jeter would do anything to win. Yes, except for making the peace with Rodriguez!

Even though most of the New York media mostly ignored the issue as it was happening, it was pretty clear that there was a huge issue here. And since I was one of the few people anywhere writing about it, I got a lot of "How do you know, you're not in the clubhouse" in response, and people insisting that Jeter would never be so petty. Oh, really?

What's funny is that O'Connor's book, written with the cooperation of the Jeter camp, has such tidbits which reflect so negatively on Jeter (although, to be sure, the information also reflects negatively on Rodriguez, saying that Jeter didn't like A-Rod acting as a diva as a Yankee, and that A-Rod obsessed over Jeter. IMHO, I think A-Rod could have been Mother Teresa as a Yankee, and it wouldn't have made any difference!)

After all, so much of Jeter's mystique has been on his vaunted leadership skills. But instead of embracing getting the best player in baseball at the time for the team, this article makes it clear that Jeter was "less than thrilled" when A-Rod became a Yankee. And that one of the reasons the Yankees gave CC Sabathia $161 million was to mend the clubhouse, From the article:

"CC's main concern was our clubhouse, and how people got along," Cashman told the author. "I told him the truth. 'Yeah, we are broken. One reason we're committing [$161 million] to you is you're a team builder. We need somebody to bring us together.' "

I guess it would have been too much to expect the team's captain to bring the Yankees together, eh?

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Derek Jeter Biographer Ian O'Connor Defends His Subject -- Again

ESPN New York's Ian O'Connor has written yet another column lauding the merits of Derek Jeter, without bothering to mention that he has written an upcoming book on the Yankee captain with the cooperation of Jeter and his friends and family. That makes at least a half-dozen times since the fall that O'Connor has written such a pro-Jeter column without even a cursory disclaimer about the book.

And that's problematic, especially given that the book is billed as being written with inside access to the captain. O'Connor's publisher's blurb says that in the upcoming book "The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter" O’Connor" draws on extensive reporting and unique access to Jeter that has spanned some fifteen years." BN.com's promotion for the book says O'Connor "draws on unique access to Jeter and more than 200 new interviews."

I first wrote about this conflict of interest back in October, and then again in November (twice) and in December. And here we are in March, and O'Connor is still writing fawning articles about Jeter, without the simplest of disclaimers. Given that he has a financial stake in the subject, he should tell his readers about the book, and how he got inside access from Jeter for it.

O'Connor doesn't just write slobbering columns on the captain, but he has positioned those columns as being the inside view of Jeter. In one of them, he said Jeter wanted to play until 2017 (!) and that Jeter's trainer, Jason Riley claimed that "the desire to be the greatest can never be turned down by Father Time."

In another one last fall, O'Connor pushed for the Yankees to give Jeter a four-year, $23 million deal, saying those dollar figures would be "fair," and writing:

"There's no need to diminish him by demanding that he take a pay cut. If one athlete of this generation deserves to be overpaid, it's Jeter. A token, thanks-for-the-memories bump to $23 million would suffice.

There are a lot of pro-Jeter writers in this town, but nobody else in New York suggested such a ridiculous new contract for the captain.

O'Connor's most recent Jeter article says that he "desperately wants a dignified endgame to his career, and he knows that being a New York Yankees icon never guarantees you one." O'Connor also writes that "Jeter wasn't hurt so much by the tens of millions of dollars that the Yankees wouldn't give him. He was hurt by the public nature of the quarrel with his employer, and by the fact he was sucked into a swirling A-Rodian drama he couldn't control."  Well, is O'Connor speculating on the emotions here, or did Jeter tell him that's the way he felt? And if it's the latter, why did he share that with O'Connor? Is it because of the book?

Not to mention that O'Connor completely neglected to note that Jeter's agent Casey Close helped make this situation public, when he whined about being "baffled" by the Yankees stance, and compared his client to Babe Ruth. For some strange reason, that didn't make it into this article.

O'Connor also writes in the most recent piece that:

If he needs to be taken out of the leadoff spot and, ultimately, deposited near the bottom of the order, that will be a huge, franchise-rattling story. If he needs to be moved from shortstop to who knows where, the coverage of that demotion will be defined by an apocalyptic tone.

For now, Jeter is still Jeter, a future Hall of Famer who just needed some extra face time with the hitting coach, Kevin Long. With the contract done and the footwork adjusted, the smart money says the captain will make something of a comeback this year.

If Jeter needs to be moved down in the lineup, or switch positions, he will only have to do what every single superstar eventually faces. Is O'Connor suggesting that Jeter be held to a different standard?

I personally think Jeter will have a very good 2011 -- the anger over the contract talks this winter will motivate him, I think -- but this article is so filled with spin, it's like a washing machine or something. And you have to wonder if some of that spin is due to O'Connor's new book on Jeter.

What do you think? Tell us about it!