(Story originally appeared in the Derek Jeter Commemorative Edition of Yankees Magazine)
When Derek Jeter announced his retirement before the 2014 season, we knew that we needed to do something extra special to celebrate his career, so we put together a special edition of the magazine, looking back on the Captain’s entire career. It was an awesome project, with so much awesome material that we were able to unearth. We reran a bunch of old Yankees Magazine content and supplemented it with some great original pieces.
Obviously, there are only so many different ways to talk about Jeter on the field, particularly when you’re a house organ like Yankees Magazine. So it was really important to me that I find something a bit off-beat. I had always been intrigued by the story of Dick Groch, the scout who signed Jeter. The main is famous — trying to alleviate the concern in the Yankees’ war room that they were going to use the 6th pick in the Draft on a player who would spurn them to go play college ball at Michigan, Groch, the legend has it, insisted:
“He’s not going to the University of Michigan. The only place Derek Jeter is going is Cooperstown.”
That’s a lot of confidence, and as Groch says in the article, if he had been wrong, he probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer in the industry. But the belief paid off. Jeter became a generational player, a certain Hall of Famer and one of the most beloved Yankees of all time. Not a bad scouting job.
Here’s my attempt at putting Groch’s whole story together. Hope you’ll enjoy.
http://m.mlb.com/news/article/229038088/dick-groch-scouted-jeter-for-cooperstown-in-92/