Overview

Every spring, Little Leaguers across the country mimic his stance and squabble over the right to wear his number, 2, the next number to be retired by the world's most famous ball team. Derek Jeter is their hero. He walks in the footsteps of Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, and Mantle, and someday his shadow will loom just as large. Yet he has never been the best player in baseball. In fact, he hasn't always been the best player on his team. But his intangible grace and Jordanesque ability to play big in the biggest of postseason moments make him the face of the modern Yankee dynasty, and of America's game. In The Captain, best-selling author Ian O'Connor draws on extensive reporting and unique access to Jeter that has spanned some fifteen years to reveal how a biracial kid from Michigan became New York's most beloved sports figure and the enduring symbol of the steroid-free athlete. O'Connor takes us behind the scenes of a legendary baseball life and career, from Jeter's early struggles in the minor leagues, when homesickness and errors in the field threatened a stillborn career, to his heady days as a Yankee superstar and prince of the city who squired some of the world's most beautiful women, to his tense battles with former best friend A-Rod. We also witness Jeter struggling to come to terms with his declining skills and the declining favor of the only organization he ever wanted to play for, leading to a contentious contract negotiation with the Yankees that left people wondering if Jeter might end his career in a uniform without pinstripes. Derek Jeter's march toward the Hall of Fame has been dignified and certain, but behind that leadership and hero's grace there are hidden struggles and complexities that have never been explored, until now. As Jeter closes in on 3,000 hits, a number no Yankee has ever touched, The Captain offers an incisive, exhilarating, and revealing new look at one of the game's greatest players in the gloaming of his career.

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Long after Derek Jeter is inducted into the Hall of Fame, Ian O'Connor's work will be viewed as the definitive biography of the captain. Jeter has always managed to keep it simple, but as O'Connor shows, the shortstop is a complicated superstar. -- Buster Olney, author of How Lucky You Can Be and The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty Ian O'Connor is an ideal biographer for Derek Jeter. Ian is the same kind of thorough pro. -- Tom Callahan, best-selling author of Johnny U <br> <br> Derek Jeter is undoubtedly the most talked about, argued about, cheered, booed and ultimately respected baseball player of his generation. And as public a figure as he has been, he is in many ways the least known. That changes now as Ian O'Connor, one of the best sportswriters anywhere, goes deep and does what no one has quite been able to do: tell us a bit about who Derek Jeter really is. -- Joe Posnanski, author of The Machine <br> For years we've been telling young ballplayers to play and beh

Jeter is the prince, the good son, the tireless worker. O'Connor uses baseball lore and the tropes and rhythms of folktales to limn Jeter's family life and early career...essential for Yankees fans. -- Booklist O'Connor peppers the bio with enough hidden gems about the notoriously private ballplayer to make this the most thorough and intriguing work on Jeter so far. And O'Connor's ability to reconcile Jeter the man with Jeter the ballplayer means that even Red Sox fans may enjoy this bio. -- Publishers Weekly The most complete account yet of this signal player's life and career . . . Insightful about Jeter's minor league days and touching on his personal life, The Captain tantalizes with predictions about possible position changes and the length of Jeter's career. An excellent selection for those interested in baseball generally and in pinstripes particularly. -- Library Journal Long after Derek Jeter is inducted into the Hall of Fame, Ian O'Connor's work will be viewed

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