New York Yankees News: Derek Jeter Opens the Floor with Tribune Mailbag

This week Derek Jeter‘s media platform, The Players Tribune, introduced a brand new web series called Tribune Mailbag.

The Mailbag is a series that features athletes and fans in direct conversation, where fans can send over any questions they want to the athlete, and get their answers via the tribune.

"“Long before I founded The Players’ Tribune, when it was just a seed of an idea, I knew I wanted to create a platform that highlighted the voice of the athlete”, Jeter said as the sites founding publisher. “But just as important to me was to create a channel for fans to interact directly with athletes.”"

Interestingly enough, Derek Jeter was the first athlete featured on the Tribune Mailbag, and here are a few of my favorite questions and answers pulled directly from the dialogue.

I retired last year after spending more than 30 years in education. Having an open schedule took a lot of getting used to, but I’ve discovered a lot of new interests I never had time for while I was working. What have you learned so far from retirement? -Anne, Virginia

First of all, congratulations.

As far as what I’ve learned from retirement, a lot of it so far is how many little things I missed out on while playing. Anything summer-related, I probably missed it. A barbecue. A trip to the beach. Or even just a lazy Saturday afternoon. It sounds simple, but rediscovering experiences like that has been fun.

2Pac or Biggie? -J.T., San Diego, CA

Biggie. Come on. I’m still New York.

What sort of student were you growing up? -Max, Edina, MN

I’ll give you the scouting report. Strengths: Excels at math. Shows an interest in it, and is good at it. Major weakness: public speaking. The kid is scared to death of talking to large groups. Can’t do an oral report to save his life. He’ll sweat for two weeks before one.

What superpower would you want? -Evan, New York City

That’s a tough one. Flying would be cool. Could have come in handy at shortstop. But I’ve gotta go with invisibility.

It seems like it’s important for athletes to keep that competitive fire going for a number of years in order to be really great. Throughout your career did you have any rivals and if so, who were they? -Thomas, Minneapolis

As a hitter, it’s ultimately the aces in your division that become your true rivals. Those are the guys you see again and again, and they’re the guys you have to go through to make the playoffs. For me, two names stand out: Pedro .Halladay.

Which current players do you most enjoy watching? -Angie, St. Louis, MO

There are so many. But right now the players who stand out to me are McCutchen, Harper and Trout. Those guys are special.

What’s the best locker room prank you ever pulled? -Bryan, Long Island, NY

In 2002 when Marcus Thames got called up, we decided to prank him by faking a security sweep. It was normal for dogs to come through the locker room as a security measure, so one day we hid some sticks in his bag and when they brought the dogs over, the dogs immediately started barking, growling and doing their thing next to Marcus’ bag. Security was in on it the whole time. Torre was in on it and everything. Marcus started panicking — you know, telling them, “It’s not mine! It’s not mine!” Really sweating. And then they took him outside … and we were all there waiting for him. We definitely got him — we all felt a little bad afterward.

Favorite ballpark to play in? –Suzan, Los Angeles

After New York? Anaheim. You’ve got that California weather. Great baseball conditions. And then half the stadium is Yankee fans.

You can check out the full dialogue here: http://www.theplayerstribune.com/tribune-mailbag-derek-jeter/

In closing, I just wanted to say that The Players Tribune is such a fabulous media platform and that they are really changing the atmosphere of professional sports. In a world that’s full of cruel people trying to take advantage of athletes by exploiting them to the public for motifs such as money, page views, 15 seconds of fame or whatever have you, Derek Jeter has finally given us the opportunity to hear directly from the athletes themselves.

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