Derek Jeter breaks silence on rumor he gives date bags

Derek Jeter wasn’t just a consummate professional on the field, where he had over 3,000 hits, 14 All-Star selections, five Gold Gloves, five World Series championship rings and will go down in history as one of the greatest New York Yankees of all time played the game but also outside the stadium.

Yes, the Yankee captain loved to party, but he had a knack for keeping his name off tabloid headlines. “Everything I did I tried to hide,” he says in The captaina seven-part documentary premiering July 18 on ESPN.

Directed by Randy Wilkins and produced by Spike Lee, The captain stresses how Jeter was able to keep his image firmly in check off the field through a series of clever tricks – intentionally creating a simple public persona by answering all media questions and giving them very little. He also artfully dodged a number of precarious situations — including a December 27, 1999 nightclub shooting that ensnared Diddy, then-girlfriend Jennifer Lopez and rapper Shyne.

“We were at a place called Cronies for a bite to eat and Puff met me on the Skytel Motorola pager and he said, ‘Me and J.Lo will be here tonight. Here we go: Club New York… Bring Derek over here tonight,’” recalls Mike Evans, a close friend of Jeter. “And Derek said: You know which man? I go to bed. I have a game tomorrow. We just missed coming over an inch.”

“We were lucky,” Jeter adds in the film. “We would have been right there, so my name would have been part of the story.”

Jeter was often frustrated by the New York tabloid media because he found them guilty of double standards.

“Media representatives – they didn’t ask Bernie [Williams] what he and his wife did the night before. They didn’t go out and ask Tino [Martinez] or Paul O’Neill, where they went to eat, what time they were there, and who they were with,” explains Jeter. “Well, I just didn’t think it was fair to ask myself. You know, I think you have to draw the line. I drew the line at a very young age and just didn’t want to let it cross.”

Although they date a bevy of famous beauties — including Mariah Carey, Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Scarlett Johansson, Minka Kelly, and Adriana Lima — no. 2 has managed to keep the media at bay when it comes to his personal life. That all changed in 2011, when The New York Post ran a story with the bubbly headline “JETER’S BOOTY HAULS”. The play claimed that Jeter “bedded a bevy of beauties in his bachelor pad in Trump World Tower — and then in cold blood sent them home alone with gift baskets filled with autographed memorabilia” — and accidentally gave identical booty to the same woman.

“Derek lets girls stay at his apartment in New York, and then he gets them a car to take them home the next day. A gift basket filled with autographed Jeter memorabilia, usually an autographed baseball, is waiting in his car,” a friend of the woman said post. “This summer he hooked up with a girl he’d dated before, but Jeter seemed to have forgotten the first time and gave her the same parting gift, a gift basket with a Derek Jeter signed baseball. ”

in the The captainEmily Smith, the New York gossip buff and author of the piece, explains that they received a call from a woman who “described two occasions when she got the memorabilia” and that she “saw some pictures of it, but we didn’t me.” won’t publish them.” But she later admits it’s never been confirmed if the woman was just visiting Jeter or sleeping with him.

While Jeter chose to ignore the story at the time, he finally addresses the wild rumor that has dogged him on film for the past decade.

“Yes, I read the article. Yes, of course,” says Jeter. “You know, you see it, and then it’s like, how the hell did people figure it out? You know, basically it is. And who would believe that shit? And you believed it!”

He continues, “I remember once I was in a Starbucks and there was a random guy behind me and he said, ‘Hey, I just want to let you know that I’m giving out gift baskets because you did.’ And I turned around and said, ‘You’re a fucking idiot!’ and the look on his face… he thought I was going to say, ‘Yeah, good job man!’”

“It’s a story that became larger than life. People keep choking on this story that never happened. Never happens,” he concludes.