Derek Jeter has extensive travel plans in retirement. Shoot, his 2014 farewell tour got him trips to pretty much everywhere besides Alex Rodriguez’s Los Angeles home.
But if you think the Yankees’ former captain stopped by Marlins Park this week just to check it off his bucket list, I’ve got some Derek Jeter game-used socks to sell you for $409.99 each.
No, Jeter has declared repeatedly for quite a while now he intends to own a baseball team someday, and unlike another well-known baseball player whose name already has been mentioned in this column, Jeter tends to value and honor his words. He even told reporters in June he intended to reach out to team owners upon the season’s (and his playing career’s) conclusion.
And if you want to bet which team he’ll eventually own? You won’t find a safer wager than the Marlins.
The Marlins said Jeter simply stopped by because he happened to be in town, and maybe that’s all it was — for now. Jeter figures to approach his goal smoothly and deliberately, and there’s only upside by spending some time with Marlins owner (and huge Yankees fan and George Steinbrenner admirer) Jeffrey Loria.
The 74-year-old Loria made the industry’s biggest splash of this offseason when he committed $325 million over 13 years to his stud outfielder Giancarlo Stanton. It was a good, necessary move, one that warded off yet another trust-deficit plunge between ownership and the club’s fan base. Yet the Stanton contract’s dramatically backloaded structure, with modest payments of $6.5 million, $9 million and $14.5 million coming from 2015 through 2017, just raises more questions about the franchise’s future.
Will Loria try to cash out now that he has stabilized the situation in the wake of the 2012 trades of Mark Buehrle, Hanley Ramirez and Jose Reyes? The Manhattan resident has long denied the notion he’ll be selling anytime soon. Yet industry speculation persists because the multiple times Loria has shot himself in the foot with rebuilds, manager changes and strikingly low payrolls — and most of all the public funding he secured for his new ballpark. And because the Marlins, even after opening a widely praised stadium in 2012, still can’t draw fans, partly as a result of the aforementioned issues and partly, it’s believed, because of logistical issues like parking. Even as the 2014 Marlins flirted with .500, finished 77-85 and boasted one of the game’s best everyday players in Stanton, their attendance of 1,732,283 ranked last in the National League.
Enter Jeter, whose representative Casey Close didn’t respond to a request for comment. He lives in Tampa, a short flight (or approximately four-hour drive) away, and he sure seems to enjoy Miami, based on repeated Page Six sightings there. Purchasing the Marlins, unlike the Rays right in his backyard, would keep him out of direct competition with the Yankees.
Obviously, Jeter doesn’t possess the resources necessary to purchase even a cheaper club like the Marlins. He needs to put together a consortium that would in turn appoint him as the control person. He surely knows this already, and it isn’t outrageous to think that Jeter, based on his income not only from the Yankees but also from his endorsement deals, could chip in a sizeable portion himself. Maybe $100 million?
Major League Baseball folks naturally would be thrilled to welcome Jeter into the ownership fold, and all the more so into a sad-sack market like Miami.
Now, the simplest solution doesn’t always become reality. Maybe Loria and his controversial team president David Samson will hang on for the long haul. Maybe Jeter will be wooed by another ownership shift. How about he takes over the A’s and finally moves them out of the O.co Coliseum, even though that’s where he made his Flip Play?
The 40-year-old may not want much to do with New York or the Yankees for a while, but he showed his preparation for his next phase when he launched The Players’ Tribune just days after his last at-bat. Now he’s reaching out to owners, just as he said he would.
If he has to wait a year or five before becoming a baseball team’s head? It won’t be for lack of effort. For it already has begun.