Jeter & A-Rod BFF Again?
Via Kevin Kernan -
The bond of winning a championship together has created a tighter bond between Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter.
They drove here together yesterday from Tampa for the Yankees’ split-squad 6-0 win over the Pirates. And they left together. Before the game they played catch and long toss together, ran together in the outfield and even walked into the clubhouse together along the right-field line at 12:01 after they were done with their early work while a group of Yankees were still taking batting practice.
“They’ve definitely grown closer,” one Yankee official told me.
They are laughing and joking together more, and during Sunday’s workout in Tampa they spent a lot of time talking in short leftfield on a back field. They are enjoying being teammates.
That is a good thing for the Yankees. Neither player wants to make a big deal of their friendship, but it’s obvious Rodriguez and Jeter are two superstars who have finally aligned.
But this isn’t just about Jeter and A-Rod showing the world they are together in their pursuit of Yankees World Championship No. 28, it’s also important for other Yankees to see it to show that the team is together.
As one Yankee told me, “It’s important for teammates to realize that Derek and Alex are in this together.”
Hey, if Angelina Jolie and Jon Voight can work it out, why not Derek and Alex?
Wasn’t it on this site that I saw a story about how Jeter and A-Rod were both at the same club but went to great lengths to avoid eachother and that their circles of friends didn’t intermingle?
Moral of the story: don’t pay attention to what the tabloids write when they try to marry the sports and the gossip pages together. Maybe they’re friends and maybe they’re not. I don’t really care, I never have and I never will. If his name were Alex Roddington or Andy Rodriguez, no one would be remotely interested in this kind of bullshit story. Attach the name A-Rod and suddenly people cream their pants. It’s so lame.
For me, I look at this the same as any workplace situation.
There are people who you work with that you truly love – and they’d be your friends, had you met elsewhere, even if you didn’t work together.
There are people that you work with who you hate – and who you would drive by, without thinking twice, if you saw them outside the office stranded on the road with a flat tire, in the rain, at night.
There are people that you work with, who you work well with, but really know nothing about them and probably never will – hence, you work well together but you’re not close personally.
And, there are people who you work with who you really don’t like and/or trust – and perhaps strongly dislike at times – but, for the good of your unit, department, firm, etc., you make an effort to “play nice with” in public – even if it means sharing a lunch with others, sharing personal stories, faking an interest in theirs, maybe even carpooling together to offsight meetings.
And, based on what I’ve heard through the years, I would bet that Jeter and A-Rod fall into that last group that I’ve mentioned here.
@ Steve Lombardi:
Sure, that’s all true. I just don’t understand why anyone cares. Why are people obsessed with what Derek Jeter thinks of Alex Rodriguez (or vice versa)?
@ MJ Recanati:
I think the interest on their relationship ties back to the fact that they behaved as if they were brothers from different mothers from 1997 through 2000 and then A-Rod stabbed Jeter in the back with that Esquire interview in April 2001.
It’s no different from any “celebrity” love story gone bad…the public wants to know all the twists and turns from once it hit the rocks.
Steve Lombardi wrote:
I think the interest ties back to the fact that A-Rod is hated and any story that can possibly portray him in a negative light is of interest to the many people that dislike him.
My point is — and always has been — that none of this matters one iota. It never has. The Yanks don’t need Alex and Derek to like eachother. No one needs to worry about it, it’s just irrelevant.
Steve Lombardi wrote:
FYI – Not a single word A-Rod said in that Esquire article was untrue. If Jeter felt “stabbed in the back” it’s only because the truth hurts.
Contempt, rather than hatred, seemed to be the more common response to AR after that episode.
There are probably things we could all say in public about our friends and families that even if true (or at least arguably feasible) would represent a betrayal when gratuitously fed to the press by someone in a relationship of trust.
The truth can hurt at times; having someone you trust make an opportunity to put you down in public is almost sure to.
DJ demonstrated his good sense by establishing a personal distance from someone who had proven he could not be trusted. This did not stop him from publicly supporting AR as a team-mate through the humiliations of last spring.
cr1 wrote:
LOL! I guess there was a first time for everything.
Poor little Derek, the precious soul with his tender feelings…
@ MJ Recanati:
Actually, it’s pretty well documented and sourced that A-Rod is the one with the weak mind, as opposed to Jeter.
Never saw any reports about Jeter seeing several head docs, getting daily peps talks from a counsler, or folding to the pressure on him or wanting to feel accepted – and we’ve seen those on A-Rod, many times, in the past.
@ Steve Lombardi:
None of what you said makes
MJ Recanati wrote:
this happens all the time in baseball especially the yankees.. from what ive heard media tried to say mantle didnt like maris back in the day when in reality they were good friends. media just likes to stir things up. sells magazine and papers and what not.