Derek Jeter is without a doubt one the most outstanding pro athletes today. Most sports fans know about his success with the Yankees, but what about his story- how did he get there? How does he do it?
Jeter’s career has an almost storybook feel. As a child, he talked about and dreamed of one day playing for the Yankees. He is now living that dream- and is one of the most successful and famous Yankees ever.
He presents 10 guiding principles, or lessons, in his book “The Life You Imagine” that helped get him to where he is today. The book contains success and self-help principles as well as his own personal story.
Jeter grew up in mainly in Kalamazoo, Michigan (western MI.) He spent summers until age 13 in New Jersey with his grandmother. He is candid about his childhood and training. He gives the credit for his success to his parents as well as to his grandparents.
He says his parents are the “two most incredible people I know”, and “I can’t recall ever witnessing a set of parents who have been more devoted and more supportive to their two children than my mom and dad…” (xxii.) He writes that “my parents are my world.” (64).
His father Charles “was my role model” (64). Jeter writes than his father has an “easy yet stern way about him…and was very competitive and never let me win unless I earned it.” (64).
Charles obviously is the most influential person in Jeter’s life. Tragically, Charles never knew his own father, a circumstance that made Jeter’s father “much more determined to be an active parent.” Charles realized that he needed more discipline and direction in his training years, something that a father could have provided. The elder Jeter made sure to give Derek these things.
Charles was himself a good athlete and received a baseball college scholarship- and wonders if he could have played pro baseball if he had had a father to “push him harder and in the right direction.” (63)
Throughout Jeter’s childhood, his father always won the games they would play (sports, board games, etc). Jeter tells the story of the first time the younger Jeter beat his father in a one-on-one hoops game. His father pushed him to compete and win.
The family of four (he has a younger sister) were middle class, his father a counselor and his mother an accountant. His parents were very involved in their children’s lives- encouraging, supportive, positive and strict. Jeter writes about the detailed contracts that his parents would write and make the children sign, with strict guidelines for the coming school year. Jeter was for all intents a model youth and teen and was well-behaved, a top student and of course a star athlete at a diverse high school.
The family faced adversity. The biracial parents (his father is black) were treated disrespectfully at times. Jeter and his sister were sometimes made fun of. People doubted Jeter’s dreams of playing pro ball.
Jeter was named national high school baseball player of the year in 1992. Scouts knew he was great- he was drafted sixth overall that year.
After struggling his first two years in the pros (he “cried a lot” and felt “overwhelmed”)
But throughout his story, from his childhood to his youth to today, he maintained strong belief and confidence that he would indeed be a successful major league baseball player one day. For example, Jeter says his father would say the young Jeter has “more inner arrogance than anyone he has ever met.”
Jeter writes passionately about how he achieved his dreams- and how he still strives for success today. Things began to click during his third year in the pros. Through practicing the book’s lessons and principles, he began to blossom into the superstar he is today.
Throughout his career, Jeter has been a model superstar and role model. Though one of the biggest celebrities in sports, he is grounded and maintains what seems like a normal, well-adjusted personal life. He continues to be one of the best baseball players in the world. The principles he teaches certainly seem to work.
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