“Are you going over to your boyfriend’s house?” - Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez were inseparable friends before things turned sour
Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez were the best of friends, until they weren't. It was a long, well-documented, and dragged-on saga between the two Yankees legends. We'll try tod break down what happened to the now seemingly indifferent relationship between Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez.
In the book "The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter" by Ian O'Connor, you can find the stories and anecdotes between the originally smooth but emotionally tumultuous relationship between Jeter and A-Rod.
The two players originally met at a Michigan-Miami baseball game way back in 1993 as the pair were introduced to each other by agent Steve Caruso. They shared a cover of Sports Illustrated in 1997 and spent time with each other between their residences in Seattle and Upper West Side in New York.
The tight bond between the two drew attention and some humorous commentary from their teammates and peers. Rodriguez's high school teammate Doug Mientkiewicz even once said:
“Are you going over to your boyfriend’s house?”
Former New York Yankee Jim Leyritz even told rookie Derek Jeter and reminded him that A-Rod plays for the other him due to the then-both shortstop's tight-knit bond.
It all came crashing down as soon as the new millennia rolled around as Alex Rodriguez, who just signed a massive deal with the Texas Rangers, made scathing comments about Jeter. A-Rod claimed that Jeter just didn't do the power numbers and also implied that he wasn't that good on defense.
Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter's fallout
A-Rod made more remarks about Jeter but suddenly realized that he was wrong. He visited Jeter's home in Tampa to offer an apology. Jeter, who was irate about A-Rod's comments, made him wait outside his house while he was spending the night at a local establishment.
People around Jeter stated that it only took one bad memory for the Hall of Famer to cut a person out of his life. In this case, A-Rod made two. The relationship was already sour and it never reached the levels of pre-2000.
Jeter wasn't pleased when the Yankees signed A-Rod in 2004 and the animosity between the two didn't subside. Even then-Yankees manager Joe Torre got in on the act and is said to have been biased toward the Hall of Fame shortstop and hard on A-Rod.
Yankees GM Brian Cashman advised Jeter to just "fake it" with A-Rod. Then-hitting coach Don Mattingly tried to ease the tensions between the two as he had experienced it before with teammate Wade Boggs.
Tensions only simmered down when the Yankees signed club leader C.C. Sabathia from the Milwaukee Brewers in hopes of finding a Band-Aid solution to the problem. It was just in 2009, when A-Rod was cast away by everyone as a steroid user and an unfaithful spouse, that Jeter reached out to him again.
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"Alex Rodriguez's interest in buying Marlins is chance to one-up Derek Jeter https://trib.al/abwVspz" - @ New York Post
But up until this very day, the relationship between the once great friends has never been restored, and people have continued to pit them against each other.