Jeter Rejoins ‘One Big, Happy Family’ With New Accord (Update1)
By Mason Levinson
Dec. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Derek Jeter said there are no hard feelings after a drawn-out negotiation with the New York Yankees that resulted in a new three-year contract with the only team he’s ever wanted to play for.
Jeter, speaking at a news conference at the Yankees’ spring-training facility in Tampa, Florida, called the club “one big, happy family” after completing the deal, which also includes a player option that would keep him in Yankee pinstripes through 2014.
“I was more angry at the process and how I was being portrayed,” Jeter said of the talks. “I heard greed, I heard all of the sudden I have an ego, arrogance and I don’t think I was portrayed correctly. From my understanding of a negotiation, one side makes an offer, another side makes an offer and you try to come to an agreement.”
Jeter, who became a free agent after completing a 10-year, $189 million contract with the only Major League Baseball team he’s ever been on, is guaranteed between $51 million and $56 million, depending on whether he accepts the $8 million player option for 2014, according to the Associated Press.
Buyout Option
He’ll make $15 million next year, $16 million in 2012 and $17 million in 2013, with $2 million annually deferred and payable on each March 15 over three years beginning in 2015, AP said. He’ll also have a $3 million buyout if he declines the 2014 option, which could be worth up to $17 million based on performance incentives, AP said.
“There was only one option we wanted and that was Derek, and there was only one option Derek wanted and that was the Yankees,” New York General Manager Brian Cashman said in an interview with the Yankees Entertainment & Sports Network.
The agreement ends a month of discussions between the sides that became publicly bitter. Hal Steinbrenner, the Yankees’ managing general partner, said at the beginning of the talks that they could get “messy.”
“We’ve already made these guys very, very rich and I don’t feel we owe anybody anything monetarily,” his brother and the team’s Co-Chairman Hank Steinbrenner said in an AP interview last month.
The comments led Jeter’s longtime agent Casey Close to tell the New York Daily News that he was “baffled” by the Yankees’ position.
“There’s no doubt that there were times it was difficult,” Hal Steinbrenner told YES. “Any negotiation can be. Once we sat down face to face, we decided enough was enough and we worked it out.”
Chasing 3,000
Jeter, who needs 74 hits to become the first Yankee to reach 3,000 in his career, in 2010 had his worst offensive season since becoming a regular in 1996.
Yankees manager Joe Girardi today said he expects more from 36-year-old Jeter in 2011 than the .270 batting average he posted last season, a number generally associated with players making much less than the $19 million Jeter averaged over the past 10 years.
“You look for Derek to hit .300 and score 100 runs, and play good defense at shortstop,” Girardi told YES. “Sometimes you have down years. As you get older, people wonder if it’s because of your age or you just had kind of a down year, and I think Derek will bounce back and have a good year for us.”
Jeter has appeared in a record 1,379 Yankees’ victories and helped the team to five world championships, placing him among team greats including Hall of Famers Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle.
Should he retire with the team and later be elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Jeter would be the eighth Yankee so honored after playing an entire major-league career in the Bronx. He’d join Earle Combs, Gehrig, Bill Dickey, DiMaggio, Phil Rizzuto, Whitey Ford and Mantle.
“I had never planned on going anywhere, I didn’t want to talk to any other teams, I didn’t want to hear from any other teams,” Jeter said today. “This was the only team I ever wanted to play for.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Mason Levinson in New York at mlevinson@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Sillup at msillup@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: December 7, 2010 16:01 EST |
