Today is a big day in the Yankee world. Today is the day when "The Yankee Years," Joe Torre's book co-written by Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci hit the shelves. Between "A-Fraud" and his Alex Rodriguez' "Single White Female" obsession, the New York tabloids sure did a job. As we speak, the book is No. 1 of all books on Amazon.com.
As luck would have it, today we had a chance to talk to Yankees shortstop and captain Derek Jeter, who was in Orlando promoting the alliance between the Gillette Fusion razor and Electronic Arts. We asked Jeter a bunch of questions including what he thought about the book, even though he admitted he obviously haven't read the tome.
Darren: You're promoting a razor here, are you a good shaver?
Jeter: I don't know, you tell me. Actually, we kind of have to be. Playing for the Yankees, we're not allowed to have facial hair, so I know a little bit about shaving.
Darren: You are now in the gym business with your name on a bunch of 24-Hour Fitness gyms. What's the buzz on them?
Jeter: I'm really excited. There's one open now in New York City now and there's going to be a second one that's opening up and it has been really successful so far. I mean, I think when you talk about 24-hour fitness gyms, in New York City, 24 hours a day, the city that never sleeps, that seems like a perfect match.
Darren: The New Yankee Stadium debuts this season and there's been a fixation on ticket prices. How much are the players aware of what's going on in our economy?
Jeter: I think everyone is aware of it. It really hits home regardless of how much money you have or how much money you make. This is something that's a crisis that's hitting the whole country.
Darren: Michael Phelps bong photo has been well circulated. How, as a high profile athlete, do you avoid getting in trouble with pictures in general?
Jeter: It's difficult. People are going to take pictures with their cell phones or however they can regardless of what you are doing or where you are. You have to realize that people are going to be watching. It's unfortunate, but that's just the state of society now. It seems like no matter where you go somebody is going to take a picture and write a story to go along with it. The only thing you can do is to surround yourself with good people and go to places where you are going to stay out of trouble.
Darren: There's been a lot of buzz around "The Yankee Years," particularly the comments about Alex Rodriguez, which I'm sure you've seen. What's your reaction to all of this?
Jeter: I haven't had a chance to read it. The only thing I can say about Alex is, he's a teammate. We're here. We support all our teammates. We stand behind our teammates. But it seems like a lot of this is old news. They seem to have the same questions year in and year out. These are issues that have already been addressed, they've already been put behind us and right now is the time of year you look forward to Spring Training. There's a lot of optimism out there and we wish it could be more questions about baseball and the season.
Darren: If there's not much to it, why has it gotten so much ink?
Jeter: When you are in New York every word causes a stir, you understand that. But like I've said before, like I've said with all my teammates, we're all supportive, we stand behind all our teammates, we're trying to win a championship and we all play together and try to move on. Not to really rehash things that have already been talked about year after year.
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