The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter (6 page)

With the Reds picking four slots behind Houston, Reds scouts Fred Hayes and Gene Bennett wanted their team to be ready to scoop up the Astros’ potential fumble.

But Hayes and Bennett were not making the final call for Cincinnati any more than Newhouser was making the final call for Houston. Scouting directors, general managers, and team owners did not make a habit of watching high school games in the Michigan rain and snow, at least not the way their scouts did, and yet they were the ones responsible for deciding who was worth drafting and who was not.

Sometimes those decisions were not about speed and power, but dollars and cents. So veteran scouts who were not in prime position to sign Jeter knew enough to hang in there with the Kalamazoo kid.

Dick Groch was one of those scouts. He was hiding in plain sight at Jeter’s games, avoiding eye contact with the shortstop, and declining to introduce himself to Jeter’s coach.

Zomer took calls all day from scouts needing directions to Kalamazoo Central, from scouts asking for weather reports and places to eat. Sometimes the phone rang in the small hours of night, and Zomer never cared.

“When you’re doing it for a kid like Derek,” he said, “you don’t mind at all.”

But Dick Groch did not bother to set up a meeting or even to stop by the batting cage to say hello.

“Never met him,” Zomer said. “I had no idea who he was.”

Groch was employed by the New York Yankees, and as draft day approached, he was finally emerging from the bushes and preparing to pounce.

Dick Groch first saw Derek Jeter at a baseball camp in Mount Morris, Michigan, where the shortstop fielded ground balls, showed off his arm, and ran the sixty-yard dash. Groch was standing next to an assistant coach at Michigan State who was taken by the teen’s talents and who wanted to get Jeter on his mailing list.

“You’d better save your postage,” Groch told the coach. “That kid’s not going to school.”

The Yankees’ scout had been watching Jeter for only half an hour when he ruined that Michigan State assistant’s day. Groch had been a junior baseball coach for eighteen years, and he had seen dozens of prospects come and go as a scout.

He knew a star when he saw one.

“When you look in the window of a jewelry store,” Groch said, “it doesn’t take long to see that big ring. If you’ve been in it as long as I had, you know the difference between going to the Kentucky Derby and the county fair.”

Groch could not help himself. The young shortstop inspired the veteran scout to empty his considerable bag of metaphors.

“You travel so many highway miles to see players who have this flaw, or that flaw,” Groch said, “that you figure somebody’s got to be able to play this game. And then you walk into a ballpark one day and see it all, and you know it right away.

“Seeing Derek Jeter was seeing the personification of athleticism, the dynamics of energy. The ease with which he did things, the acrobatic way he moved his feet, the hands as soft as melting butter. This was Fred Astaire at shortstop.”

Groch thought Ken Griffey Jr. was the best high school player he had ever scouted, and he put Jeter right there with Junior, who was more physically developed when he was Derek’s age. Durability had been a question with Jeter, who did not even weigh 160 pounds, and Groch decided to see for himself if that question had merit.

He watched Jeter play four weekend games for the Maroons in oppressive July heat. “And his body remained alive; it was catlike quick,” Groch said. “There was no sluggishness in his movements.”

Groch tracked his blue-chipper all over Michigan. Sometimes the scout would watch Jeter from down the right-field line—“halfway in the woods,” Groch said—just to see if Derek played hard all the time, or only when he thought the big leagues were watching.

Groch believed Jeter knew his identity, and which team he represented, even if the scout stayed clear of Zomer and avoided contact with the kid. So sometimes Groch would watch Jeter have a bad at-bat in the first inning, leave the field, and secretly watch the rest of the game from his car.

After Jeter returned from his injured ankle, Groch was on the way to an assignment in Columbus, Ohio, when his boss, Yankees scouting director Bill Livesey, stopped him in his tracks.

“Don’t you know Jeter’s team is playing?” Livesey asked.

“Bill, it’s supposed to snow in Kalamazoo this weekend and Jeter’s not playing on that ankle.”

“Well, that’s our kid, so you’d better go over and sit on him.”

And sit on him Dick Groch did. The scout ultimately filled out a detailed report on Jeter for the Yankees to review, a report that read like this:

Long lean sinewy body. Long arms, long legs narrow waist, thin ankles. Live “electric” movements.

Above avg. arm, quick rel., accurate throws with outstanding carry. Soft hands, good range, active feet. Very good runner, 4.33 (R); 4.41 (R); Flow on the bases. Shows pwr potential. Quick bat.

Anxious hitter, needs to learn to be more patient at the plate. Swing slightly long.

“A Yankee”! A Five-tool player. Will be a ML Star! +5!!

Groch classified Jeter as a pull hitter. He ranked Derek’s dedication, agility, and emotional maturity as “excellent”; his aptitude, habits, and coachability as “good”; and his physical maturity as “fair.”

A scouting report score of 80 would be considered perfect, Groch said, “but getting anyone into the 60s is almost unheard of on the amateur level.” He gave Jeter a raw score of 59 and an overall future potential grade (OFP) of 64.

But Groch preferred to focus on the narrative of a scouting report rather than the overall grade. Three scouts filed reports on Jeter to the Major League Scouting Bureau: Jim Terrell, an area scout; Dick Colpaert, a regional cross-checker; and Carroll Sembera, a national cross-checker.

Terrell described Jeter as a “straight away” hitter. He gave Jeter an OFP score of 59.9, compared his physique to that of “a young Mark Belanger,” and was more impressed with Derek’s “tap dancer feet” than he was discouraged by an offensive game that was “lagging” behind Derek’s defense.

“All Star status likely,” read Terrell’s summation. “Born to play SS. Quality defensive tools compare with Barry Larkin—Reds.”

Colpaert gave Jeter an OFP score of 60 but said his bat “will have to come on.” Sembera was the toughest grader—he was known as “Mr. Chainsaw Scout”—but he allowed Jeter an OFP grade of 56.3 and offered only mild criticism of Derek’s bat (“Will come around with maturity and added strength”) and defense (“Did not get good jump fielding, was hesitant due to tender ankle”). Sembera’s summation?

“All the tools to be a SS at ML Level.”

Groch and the Yankees wanted as many fresh eyes on Jeter as possible. Don Lindeberg, a cross-checker from the West Coast, was flown in to Michigan to make sure the Yanks were not getting too enthusiastic about a hobbling player in a lousy climate.

Lindeberg did not need to see more than a game or two. “Jeter’s got a rifle for an arm,” he announced, “and there’s not a kid in California as good as he is.”

Groch was ready to make his predraft case to Livesey, who was already a Derek Jeter fan. Livesey and the Yankees thought highly of Stanford’s Jeffrey Hammonds, a center fielder out of New Jersey who wanted to play in the Northeast, but they had a glut of young center fielders in their system and they figured Baltimore would take Hammonds at number 4 anyway.

Livesey had varying degrees of interest in the other candidates mentioned prominently at the top of the draft. He had a good feeling about third baseman Phil Nevin, the College Player of the Year out of Cal State–Fullerton. He appreciated the arm strength and breaking ball of Paul Shuey, the right-hander out of North Carolina, but had questions about his delivery and did not see Shuey as a good fit.

B. J. Wallace, the lefty out of Mississippi State? Livesey thought he would develop into a strong pitcher but worried that his development would come later rather than sooner. Chad Mottola, the power hitter out of Central Florida? Livesey had one scout who liked him, “but overall Mottola wasn’t quite that high for us.”

The Yankees considered a couple of pitchers—Jim Pittsley of DuBois Area High School in Pennsylvania, and Ron Villone of the University of Massachusetts—as serious backup options, and they kept their eye on Longwood University shortstop Michael Tucker, Miami (Florida) catcher Charles Johnson, and Florida State outfielder Kenny Felder.

Jeter? Livesey personally watched him play twice at Kalamazoo Central. He went in on a Friday, another miserable early spring day in the southwest corner of Michigan, and the field was too wet and muddy to get a solid read.

Livesey decided to watch some college players from Michigan and Michigan State over the weekend and then double back to Kalamazoo for a second look at Jeter that Monday. After watching the shortstop take BP and play a game on a dry track, Livesey was a believer.

“Oh, boy, I see exactly what they see,” Livesey told himself while leaving the field. He instructed his scouts and cross-checkers to play it with Jeter the way Groch was playing it—by remaining as inconspicuous as possible.

They were trying to disguise their real interest in Jeter, Livesey said, “because a lot of things had to fall into place for us to get him.”

A year after the Yankees made a record $1.55 million bonus payout to a high school lefty who threw 99 miles per hour, Brien Taylor, they needed a ton of luck for a chance to spend another first-round bundle on another high school kid. Livesey did not believe Jeter would get past the Reds at number 5 anyway; in fact, he did not believe Jeter would get past Ann Arbor.

In a meeting held before the draft, Livesey expressed one overriding concern about the player his scouts considered the number-one prospect on the board.

“Isn’t this kid going to Michigan?” Livesey asked.

“No, he’s not,” Dick Groch shot back.

“The only place this kid’s going is Cooperstown.”

The night before the draft, the Houston Astros’ decision makers gathered in a hotel conference room and made their final call. Their list of six candidates for the number-one pick had been reduced to two—Phil Nevin and Derek Jeter—and the time had come to reduce that list to one.

Dan O’Brien, Houston’s scouting director, had seen Jeter play twice at Kalamazoo Central and found him to be a purposeful kid who never took a play off, and who already had an innate feel for the game. O’Brien felt Hal Newhouser was 100 percent right on Jeter’s ability and makeup.

Bob Watson, Houston’s assistant GM, watched Jeter once in person and came away believing the shortstop “was a man playing with boys.” But Watson had a strong connection to Nevin—Watson’s high school teammate and good friend, Astros scout Ross Sapp, had coached Nevin years earlier.

“I’d trust Ross on anything,” Watson said, “and he gave us a great report on Nevin.”

The Astros actually thought Stanford’s Jeffrey Hammonds might be a better prospect than Nevin or Jeter, but Hammonds’s agent, Jeff Moorad, had warned Houston and other franchises not based in the Northeast that his Jersey-born client yearned to play closer to home.

The Astros thought Jeter would be an easier player to sign than Hammonds. Watson had been having regular conversations with the shortstop’s adviser, California-based agent Steve Caruso (high school prospects could not hire paid representatives without jeopardizing their amateur standing; they could only classify their agents-to-be as advisers).

Houston’s assistant GM asked Caruso to submit the bonus figure he would be seeking if the Astros made his client the top pick. Caruso did not want to show these cards but relented and gave Watson a number that he said was “in the $750,000 to $800,000 range.”

Caruso was asking for half of what the Yankees had given Brien Taylor the year before, so his was a reasonable request. But Houston had selected a number of high school players at the top of recent drafts, including two shortstops—Thomas Nevers of Edina, Minnesota, and Shawn Livsey of Chicago—in the first rounds of the 1990 and ’91 drafts, respectively. This time around, team owner John McMullen favored a prospect who might bring a more immediate return.

McMullen was the former minority owner of the Yankees who famously said, “There is nothing quite so limited as being a limited partner of George Steinbrenner’s.” Holding the first pick, McMullen did not know that Steinbrenner’s Yankees coveted Jeter with the sixth pick, and it would not have made a difference if he did.

McMullen set Houston’s organizational tone on this one. So when Astros officials came to a decision on the eve of the draft, the result was not a surprise.

Houston thought Nevin would advance through its system faster than Jeter would. Back in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a veteran scout was about to receive the most disappointing phone call of his second career. Hal Newhouser had cherished those road trips to and from Kalamazoo, watching Jeter play baseball in the freezing rain before returning home for a hot dinner and a warm bath.

Newhouser had a healthy relationship with O’Brien, his boss, who understood his scout was working on a year-by-year basis. At seventy-one, on Cooperstown’s doorstep at last, Newhouser was winding down his distinguished baseball life.

That phone call would abruptly end it. Newhouser took it in the upstairs office of his three-bedroom home and then walked downstairs to break the news to his wife.

“Well, I’m through with scouting,” Hal told Beryl. “They picked Nevin and said it was an organizational decision. That means this is who we picked, and you don’t count.”

Beryl asked her husband if he was certain he wanted to quit, and the scout assured her his mind was made up. “Harold was very disappointed,” she said. “He just thought it was such a big mistake, and he was the kind of person who, once he made a decision, he made it.”

O’Brien maintained that Newhouser had never threatened to resign over Jeter, and that the scout did not tell him Nevin’s selection was a significant factor in his retirement.

Beryl Newhouser saw it differently. Her man had been involved in the big leagues since he was a teenager, and more than half a century later he still loved a job that made him feel like a boy all over again.