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.

@ Steve Lombardi:
None of what you said makes

MJ Recanati wrote:

Poor little Derek, the precious soul with his tender feelings…blockquote>

untrue.

Seeing a therapist doesn’t make you weak and thinking that it does is anunenlightened point of view that is sad in this day and age. But that’s neither here nor there. I just laugh when people always picture sweet Derrie’s unerring, perfect, saintly life. As if…

@ 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.

cr1 wrote:

This did not stop him from publicly supporting AR as a team-mate through the humiliations of last spring.

LOL! I guess there was a first time for everything.

Poor little Derek, the precious soul with his tender feelings…

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.

Steve Lombardi wrote:

then A-Rod stabbed Jeter in the back with that Esquire interview in April 2001.

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.

Steve Lombardi wrote:

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.

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.

@ 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:
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)?

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.