Derek Jeter Joins Social Media And Is Suddenly Very Public After Decades of Guarding His Privacy

During Derek Jeter’s playing days, the daily challenge for any reporter covering the Yankees was trying to extract a juicy quote — or any quote — from the Hall of Fame shortstop.

But the notoriously guarded and private Jeter navigated through the New York media glare and gossip pages with ease across two decades. With a few exceptions, Jeter was always accessible to the maw of reporters, day in and day out, and the most anyone could usually glean from him was a vanilla phrase.

Even with the dawn and explosion of social media, before and after his playing career, Jeter kept his persona off the internet and let other athletes dish their daily lives to the public.

That all changed Tuesday, when Jeter announced his arrival on both Twitter and Instagram, a complete reversal for the man whose most revealing quotes at his locker were some variation of, “I gotta go hit,” or “It’s not like I sit around thinking about it.”

“Looks like I’ve officially run out of excuses,” Jeter tweeted at 9:32 Tuesday morning, responding to an eight-year-old tweet by a user with the handle, @jeffguity. In a December 2014 post, a few months after Jeter played his final game in pinstripes, Guity tweeted, “Derek Jeter has no excuse not to have a Twitter account by now.”

It took almost a decade, but Jeter finally caved and joined what fellow Hall of Famer Rod Carew called “the bird app” in a welcome tweet to Jeter.

No sooner had Jeter joined the two social media apps than he started racking up followers faster than you can say, “Turn 2.” The five-time World Series champion had more than 133,000 Twitter followers and more than 105,000 followers on Instagram by Tuesday afternoon.

Before the baseball lockout ended earlier this year, Jeter announced that he was stepping down from his chief executive officer position with the Miami Marlins, shocking the baseball world. Jeter had professed a strong desire to be a baseball owner going back to his playing days, and in 2017, he was part of a group that included New York businessman Bruce Sherman who purchased the team from Jeffrey Loria for $1.2 billion.

The Marlins reached the playoffs one time under the new Jeter-Sherman regime, and when he announced he was stepping down in February, Jeter acknowledged that “the vision for the future of the franchise is different than the one I signed up to lead.”

Would he try to pursue an team ownership stake elsewhere? Would he join a broadcast booth? Turns out it was neither, but rather the most unexpected decision from the former man of few words.

“What’s up everyone? I am about to start a busy summer so I thought, hey, why not add a little more craziness and dive right in here?” Jeter said in a video posted Tuesday to his official Instagram.

Later, on Instagram Story, Jeter, sporting a goatee and seated in front of a giant outdoor playhouse for his three young daughters at their Miami home, fielded questions from fans and provided the answers on camera. There was nary a “I gotta go hit” as a response.

Jeter’s longtime frenemy and former Yankee teammate Alex Rodriguez was one of several bold-face names to open his virtual arms to Jeter.

“Welcome to Twitter, Captain! #2,” Rodriguez tweeted.

“I see you bro @DerekJeter!!” tweeted another of Jeter’s former teammates, pitcher CC Sabathia.

For now, it seems the Yankee captain has found a short-term calling, and isn’t holding back on letting fans have a peek inside of what we’d previously been missing for the past two decades-plus.