Derek Jeter shared that those rumors about a long-standing rivalry between him and Alex Rodriguez are way off base.
While promoting his new ESPN docuseries CaptainDerek, 48, explained that he and his former teammate, 47, are on good terms.
“No, there is no wedge. Everything’s good,” he told Good Day New York on July 28. “I know people to this day, when I go places, that’s one of the first things that they ask me about, but there are no issues between Alex and I at all.”
Rumors of a feud have followed the Yankees players for decades. But, as it turns out, Derek was simply more focused on playing baseball than any other kind of mind games at the time.
“There were things that I kept private. My job, being the captain of the Yankees, was to limit distractions and in order to limit distractions, I know sometimes I didn’t create much controversy,” he told the host. “I talked about things one time and that was the end of it.”
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The rift rumors between the two extend back to the early 2000s, when Alex made disparaging comments about Derek’s leadership in a 2001 Esquire interview.
“Jeter’s been blessed with great talent around him. He’s never had to lead. He can just go and play and have fun,” Alex told the outlet, per the New York Times. “He hits second—that’s totally different than third or fourth in a lineup. You go into New York, you wanna stop Bernie and O’Neill. You never say, ‘Don’t let Derek beat you.’ He’s never your concern.”
The comment, at the time, was something that Derek took to heart.
“As a friend, I’m loyal,” he said in the documentary, per the new york post. “I just looked at it as, ‘I wouldn’t have done it.’ And then it was the media. The constant hammer to the nail. They just kept hammering it in. It just became noise, which frustrated me. Just constant noise.”
In the documentary, Alex explained that he later apologized for his words but found himself striking out once again after criticizing Derek’s career in a radio interview with host dan patrick.
“When you talk about statistics, mine never compared to Alex’s,” Derek said about the slight in the documentary. “I’m not blind. I understand that. But, we won! You can say whatever you want about me as a player. That’s fine. But then it goes back to the trust, the loyalty. This is how the guy feels. He’s not a true friend, it’s how I felt. Because I wouldn’t do it to a friend.”
Now, it appears that the decades-long feud is officially water under the bridge. In fact, Derek said that he’s much more focused on his three daughters than him —Beautiful4, Story3, and River7 months—than any residual grudges.
“I’m chasing my girls around,” the Hall of Famer told Fox 5 New York. “Right now, I’m really focused on being there for them and trying to help them find out what they’re passionate about. And, once they find out what they’re passionate about, support them in every way possible.”
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism