‘Their Job Was to Get a Headline’- Derek Jeter Once Prioritized Winning the World Series Over Settling a Personal Grudge With a Veteran NY Yankees Teammate

Multiple rumors of a possible fight between Derek Jeter and David Wells started coming up because of an incident that happened during a game on September 18, 1998. 

Because of some changes made by the then manager, Joe Torre, in the team, the players were not able to stop a mistake from happening. Hence, this caused the pitcher to throw his hands in the air to show his frustration.

The Yankees Captain, Derek Jeter, was there to rebuke his teammate’s actions. 

“Knowing David Wells, he didn’t mean anything by that, that’s just him, he’s animated,” Jeter further stated, “So I told him we don’t do that s**t around here… and that was pretty much the extent of it.”

A fight was in question between Derek Jeter and David Wells

Apparently, things started brewing after the incident, and there was a fight in question between the duo. 

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The ESPN columnist, Buster Olney, went to the infield to get the story straight. The young captain also asked his teammates if they had seen any spat between Olney and Jeter when he was attempting to get the facts straight about the rumor.

The answer did not get Olney the headlines that he wanted. Olney learned something that day that shocked him to his core. Every player answered ‘No’ when Jeter had asked them about witnessing a spat.

Jeter was not afraid to call out David Wells, and this surprised the columnist. All because he did not want anything small like this to affect the team’s performance.

Olney’s story was changed 

Naturally, Buster wanted to get his story straight about the speculations of a fight, but the story he got turned out to be significantly different from what he had thought. Not only did the rumors come out to be wrong, but he also got to know something entirely different about the young captain.

Olney shared his views regarding this matter. He iterated, “What I was so amazed by was how it was like a wall came up in that moment, and Derek was immediately like, ‘That never happened,’” Olney said. “Derek did not want that story to interrupt what was going on with the Yankees, which was greatness.”

“Their job was to get a headline, and I wasn’t gonna give it to them,” Jeter said.

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The story that Buster got at the clubhouse made him proud of Jeter. Considering it was hard for him to grasp that at the mere age of 24, the player did not care about anything but to take the team to another win. 

However, Buster did get a story out of it, even if it was not something he came looking for. Instead, he got something even more worthy that would fill any Yankees fan’s heart filled with pride. 

Do you think what Jeter did was right? Or should he have done something else? Let us know in the comments below.