Derek Jeter Credits His Parents for the Bulk of His Success

In Tennessee, Charles Jeter performed shortstop for Fisk College. It wasn’t till he determined to get his PhD in Psychology that the entire household moved to Michigan in order that he might attend Western Michigan College and pursue his diploma.

Derek recalled how necessary baseball was to his household rising up in a 2004 Sports activities Illustrated article. “My household moved to Kalamazoo from New Jersey once I was about 4, in order that my father, Charles, might get his PhD in Psychology from Western Michigan. He has been a shortstop in faculty, at Fisk College in Tennessee,” he wrote. 

“I at all times idolized my dad, so I liked baseball too, however I spend my summers with my grandparents in West Milford, N.J. and I at all times rooted for the Yankees … A few times a 12 months, when the Yankees got here to Detroit, we might make the two-and-a-half-hour drive to Tiger Stadium. On a kind of journeys, my father recalled that I promised him that I’d play in that ballpark sometime,” he defined.

It wasn’t simply Derek and his father who bought in on the love for baseball. Sharlee Jeter additionally had a ardour for the sport and was a softball star at Kalamazoo Central Excessive. “She was a part of a ritual that Don Zomer, Derek’s baseball coach at Central, witnessed on nightly walks, discovering your complete Jeter household after apply, engaged on method,” the Westchester Journal Information reported. “’Some folks go to the films for enjoyable,’ Sharlee says. ‘We went to the sector. It was a part of being shut.’”

Derek instructed ESPN that rising up with mother and father like Charles and Dorothy was like rising up with the Cosby household. “My upbringing was like The Cosby Present. We had enjoyable, at all times did loads of issues collectively. My mother and father have been concerned in the whole lot my sister and I did,” he instructed ESPN. 

This included faculty work, curfew, plans with buddies, and targets for the longer term. ESPN defined, “Earlier than each faculty 12 months Charles and Dorothy Jeter required Derek and his youthful sister Sharlee to signal a handwritten contract that spelled out issues corresponding to their examine habits, anticipated grades, early curfew occasions and guidelines relating to medicine and alcohol use (none).”

“Derek remembered: ‘We weren’t allowed to make use of the phrase cannot — ‘I am unable to do that, cannot do this.’ My mother would say, ‘What? No.’ She’s at all times constructive.’”