DEREK JETER plays the game right. He also knows how to treat teammates.
Recently, the Yankees Captain has been hit with some misguided criticism that he should come out stronger in his defense of Alex Rodriguez.
“What do they want me to say? I don’t get that one,” Jeter told The Post yesterday.
“From Day 1, I’ve said time and time again, ‘Alex is going to be fine.’ When he was going through it, I said, ‘He’s going through a slump every player goes through, I don’t care how good you are.’ I said, ‘He’s a big part of the team.’ I said, ‘It’s one of those things, and at the end of the year he’s going to be exactly where he is all the time.’
“That’s exactly what I said,” Jeter calmly explained. “I said the only thing I wasn’t going to do was tell the fans who they should boo and who they shouldn’t boo.”
Jeter knows that’s a slippery slope.
“You get into that and what, they start booing somebody else next week and you got to tell them to stop booing that person as well,” Jeter said before ticking off names like Mariano Rivera, Tino Martinez and Jason Giambi – Yankees stars who have all run the Stadium gauntlet.
“I got booed, Mo got booed, Tino got booed the first half of the season. Jason got booed,” Jeter said. “Everyone got booed, but it’s not your job to say, ‘Hey, everybody should stop booing.’
“You support your teammates, and I have, and I’ve said to the media: ‘Everyone here supports Alex.’ Those were my exact words. It seems like somebody made a story and now everybody is running with it.”
Jeter said he has talked to Rodriguez about the situation.
“Alex doesn’t have a problem with it, I don’t see why all these people writing the stories do . . . I just saw Alex in Las Vegas about a week ago,” Jeter said. “Everything is good.”
Jeter was at Riverbank State Park with some of his youngest and biggest fans for the Derek Jeter Kids Baseball Clinic, presented by Steiner Sports. There were high-fives and pictures all around as Jeter patiently worked the fielding station, smiling and helping as the children repeatedly made their way through his area. Martinez took care of the hitting, while Philip Hughes and Yankees pitching coach Ron Guidry dealt with life on the mound.
Pitching is always the name of the game and if Roger Clemens or Andy Pettitte want to return to the Yankees, Jeter is all for it.
“Anytime you got guys that you played with, you’d love to see them come back, but it’s more of a decision for them with their families,” he said.
Guidry made sure to give Jeter a little heat about the shortstop’s beloved University of Michigan, saying Florida deserved to play Ohio State in the national championship game.
As for not winning the American League MVP, Jeter didn’t seem too upset, even with the fact that one writer listed Jeter sixth on his ballot.
“Everybody’s got their opinion,” Jeter said. “You’re entitled to your opinion. That doesn’t bother me. What can you do?
“This is a team sport,” Jeter added. “Winning the World Series should be your only goal. You work too hard to focus on other things. Your only focus should be on the team. Our teams that won, that’s all we ever thought about.”
Does this Yankees team have that same attitude now?
“This past year I thought we did a great job with that, I thought we got back to doing the little things,” said Jeter, who batted .343 in the regular season and .500 in the Division Series. “We just ran into a hot team in the Tigers. Then I think what hurt Detroit in the World Series was having those days off. When they played us and Oakland, they ran through both of us.”
It’s time for the Yankees to get back to running through teams in October. That’s the best way for teammates to back up each other.
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