When Derek Jeter was little, he only had one dream: to play shortstop for the New York Yankees. Jeter eventually achieved everything he wanted, and more. Derek played for the Yankees from 1992 to 2014, a total of 22 years. Most of his career was at the Yankee Stadium, in New York City, New York. Jeter revolutionized the shortstop position with outstanding plays. In fact, he was so skilled at baseball, that fans were expecting Derek's performance to be as good as Mickey Mantle's, a baseball legend. He raised expectations for shortstop with his phenomenal fielding and extremely high batting average. Derek Jeter's life was truly amazing.
Derek was born on June 26, 1974, the first child of Charles and Dorothy Jeter. Young Derek Jeter loved the
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Derek's last year of high school passed in a blur. Many colleges were offering scholarships to him to play baseball if he decided not to play professionally straight out of high school. Eventually, Derek Jeter accepted a scholarship to the University of Michigan, which had an excellent academic reputation and a former catcher of the Detroit Tigers as baseball coach. When Derek began to play more baseball games, more than forty scouts came to observe him. He didn't disappoint them. Scouts evaluate players using five skills: hitting, fielding, throwing, running, and hitting for power. Players with all five skills, which included Jeter, were very rare. One day, a scout called the Jeters and introduced himself as Dick Groch. He explained that he had been watching Derek for two years and asked if he was still interested in playing professionally. There was nothing unique about this call, but when the scout told Jeter that he was for the Yankees, Derek Jeter's heart leaped into his throat. The next day, the Yankees called Derek to tell him that the Yankees had picked him for a baseball …show more content…
He proved this by setting a nearly impossible goal and achieving it. Jeter represented a new generation of shortstops. Previously, the shortstop players fielded well, but were not expected to have a high batting average, and the few players who had these skills were considered unique, but none of those players had the combination of size, speed and strength of Derek Jeter. The Yankees even won the World Series with a rookie, Derek, at shortstop, an accomplishment that few teams had ever achieved. Some people even say that he was the biggest impact on the 1996