| Wednesday 21 February 2007 |
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Jeter on A-Rod relationship: Who cares?
I was listening to Derek Jeter's take on the whole Alex Rodriguez affair yesterday morning and I couldn't help but flip back to 2001, when I was working on a Jeter magazine profile and considered broaching a topic with him that I was told was taboo: his dating of Mariah Carey. According to everything that I had heard, that was akin to asking DiMaggio about Marilyn. "Trust me, Derek will cut you right off," someone close to him said to me at the time. "Don't even try."
Yet, I took the shot anyway and I'm not sure now what I asked about Mariah first, but, to my utter shock, he actually answered it, however briefly. In fact, I felt on such safe ground that I quickly hit him with a follow-up, which he answered as well, unflinchingly, his words being thoughtful and interesting and introspective. "I'll probably never date somebody famous again," was one thing he said.
But then came my third question on the matter and, suddenly, I saw something clearly turn over in him. Into something dark. He paused for a moment and looked at me hard, pressing those luminescent light green eyes squarely into my blue ones. I knew: He had finally caught himself in a place where he never goes. "That's it," Jeter said coldly. "Next subject."
There is indeed a diamond-hard line that Jeter holds strong between his public and private life, and I don't think I've ever witnessed him crossing it, even for a second, since that tinderbox episode nearly six years ago. "I understand that my job is public," Jeter was saying yesterday, responding to Rodriguez's long-winded confessional the day before on their shrinking relationship, "but your personal life is your personal life. Once you open that door, it doesn't stop. So I don't feel it's necessary to talk about things that have nothing to do with baseball." (excerpt from Record Online)
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