Derek Jeter’s new deal to work as an on-air analyst for Fox Sports required approval from his long-time frenemy, Alex Rodriguez, according to a report by the New York Post’s Andrew Marchand.
Fox Sports CEO Eric Shanks ran the idea by Rodriguez, who has worked with the network since 2017 and is known to have a complicated relationship with his former Yankees teammate, to say the least.
‘Why wouldn’t we reach out?’ Fox Sports spokesman Andrew Fegyveresi asked the Post, without specifically confirming the report.
Fox Sports spokespeople have not responded to DailyMail.com’s request for confirmation.
A-Rod did give his approval, and will now appear with Jeter on Fox Sports pregame shows this season, alongside former rival David Ortiz and host Kevin Burkhardt. Details of Jeter’s contract have not been reported publicly, although his friend Tom Brady has a 10-year, $375 million contract to begin calling NFL games for the network starting in 2024.
Alex Rodriguez (right) reportedly gave his approval to hire Derek Jeter (left) to CEO Eric Shanks
Rodriguez (left in 2013) is known to have a complicated relationship with Jeter (right)
Beginning in 2017, Jeter became the lead executive of the Miami Marlins and purchased a 4 percent stake. He has since stepped down while selling his shares of the club.
Despite some recent on-air hugs when Jeter’s deal was announced by Fox in February, he and Rodriguez have become admittedly estranged since the latter diminished the former’s accomplishments in a 2001 interview. They would become teammates in New York three years later, ultimately winning a World Series together with the Yankees in 2009.
After years of refraining from commenting on the subject, Jeter finally came clean about the end of his relationship with Rodriguez in the summer of 2022.
Speaking to ESPN as part of a seven-part docs-series on his life titled ‘The Captain,’ the 48-year-old Jeter pointed to a decades-old Esquire profile of Rodriguez, who had just departed the Seattle Mariners at the time to sign a record-breaking $252 million contract with the Texas Rangers.
Until that point, the two shortstops were often compared to each other, having debuted in consecutive seasons in the mid-1990s to immediate acclaim. Instead of a rivalry, the two All-Stars quickly became friends, socializing together and occasionally crashing at each other’s apartments.
That all changed when Rodriguez was asked about Jeter by Esquire in 2001, by which point the former had already won four World Series titles to the latter’s zero.
‘Jeter’s been blessed with great talent around him,’ Rodriguez said, crediting the Yankees’ power hitters for the team’s success.
‘So he’s never had to lead. He doesn’t have to, he can just go and play and have fun, and hit second. I mean, you know, hitting second is totally different than hitting third or fourth in a lineup because you go into New York trying to stop Bernie [Williams] and [Paul] O’Neill and everybody. You never say, ‘Don’t let Derek beat you.’ That’s never your concern.’
Before they were teammates, Rodriguez (left) and Jeter (right) were known to be close friends
Rodriguez described their relationship at the time as a ‘brotherhood,’ adding that ‘there’s definitely no rivalry there.’
‘With Derek, I’m his biggest fan and I think it’s vice versa,’ Rodriguez said.
Jeter and Rodriguez famously became teammates in New York in 2004 and ultimately won a title together in 2009. But as Jeter explained in the ESPN docu-series, that 2001 Esquire piece altered their relationship irrevocably.
‘Those comments bothered me because, like I said, I’m very, very loyal,’ Jeter told ESPN. ‘As a friend, I’m loyal. I just looked at it as, ‘I wouldn’t have done it.’ And then it was the media. The constant hammer to the nail. They just kept hammering it in. It just became noise, which frustrated me. Just constant noise.
‘You can say whatever you want about me as a player, that’s fine, but then it goes back to the trust and the loyalty. This is how the guy feels, he’s not a true friend, is how I felt. Because I wouldn’t do it to a friend.’
At the time, Jeter claimed he and Rodriguez remained friends, despite the comments.
‘Not at all,’ Jeter said when asked by ESPN Radio in 2001 if he was bothered by Rodriguez’s remarks. ‘I’ve known him for a long time. Obviously, it didn’t come out good, what he supposedly said, but he said his intentions weren’t bad, so that’s the way I look at it.
‘We’re close,’ Jeter added. ‘We obviously don’t spend a lot of time together because we’re in different cities, but he’s a good friend of mine.’
A-Rod moved to third when he was traded to the Yankees in 2004 so Jeter could stay at short
Rodriguez said he apologized to Jeter for the comments, but also defended the 21-year-old quote to ESPN.
‘When that came out, I felt really bad about it,’ A-Rod said. ‘I saw the way it was playing out. The way it was written, I absolutely said exactly what I said. It was a comment that I stand behind today. It was a complete tsunami. It was one of the greatest teams ever. To say that you don’t have to focus on just one player is totally fair.’
Rodriguez likened Jeter’s situation in New York to his own in Seattle, where he had been surrounded by a future Hall of Famer in Ken Griffey Jr. and All-Stars like Edgar Martinez and Jay Buhner.
‘By the way the same could be said about my team with the Mariners,’ Rodriguez continued. ‘We had Ken Griffey Jr., Edgar Martinez, Jay Buhner. If someone said that about me, I’d be like, ‘No s***. Absolutely. You better not just worry about me.’
Rodriguez stressed to ESPN that the comment was focused on explaining the depth of the Yankees’ lineup at the time.
‘The way that it was written, I absolutely said exactly what I said. Again, I think it was a comment that I stand behind today. It was a complete tsunami — [the Yankees were] one of the greatest teams ever — and to say that you don’t have to focus about just one player I think is totally fair,’ Rodriguez explained.
‘I apologized and said, ”Look, I feel you guys have a tsunami, it’s a great team, that wasn’t said to hurt you or penalize you or slight you in any way.”’
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