Padecky: Former Casa standout recalls early days with Derek Jeter (w/video)
PETALUMA - Matt Ruoff will never forget the first time he saw Derek Jeter play professional baseball. What happened, well, he never saw it coming and he can never forget it for one simple reason. Ruoff participated in the memory.
It was June 1992. Ruoff was in his second season with the New York Yankees’ rookie team in Tampa, Fla., having been drafted the year before in the 46th round. Ruoff had starred at Casa Grande High School and Santa Rosa JC. Jeter was the sixth overall pick in the 1992 amateur draft.
The day before Jeter took the field for the first time as a Yankee, he arrived in Florida, walked into the Tampa clubhouse, occupied by players who suddenly began to stare, not saying a word, all of them thinking the same thing Ruoff, a first baseman, was.
“This is the million dollar kid?” Ruoff thought to himself. “He was skinny. He had a sunken chest. He still had the body of a little boy. And he was wearing a mullet.”
No muscle definition. A child was walking among us, some guessed. Jeter didn’t look at all like Ruoff. Ruoff was 6-foot-4, 225 pounds, built like the offensive and defensive tackle he was at Casa. Now THAT was what an athlete looked like.
Then came the next day when Jeter took the field during infield practice. Ruoff was on first base. Jeter was hit a ground ball. He fielded it cleanly and unleashed a throw to Ruoff. POP! It smacked into his glove.
“Whoa!” Ruoff thought to himself. “Where did that come from?”
The throw, Ruoff estimated, traveled around 88 miles per hour. It was delivered in this effortless, mechanically sound fashion, the kind of motion that promised a thousand, a million ground balls would end up the same way. Which they did.
For 20 years, Derek Jeter delivered baseballs this way and in the process became much more than a shortstop who would accumulate the sixth-most hits in Major League Baseball history, who fielded his position as he lived his life - cleanly. Jeter has lived life above reproach. How many big-league baseball players can we say that about in the past 20 years?
A leader in the world
As Jeter tours the parks one last time this season before retiring, Ruoff is gratified to know the Derek Jeter of 2014 is the same Derek Jeter who became his friend in 1992. After all, aren’t fame and fortune the ultimate, irresistible corrupters? Jeter has the fortune, somewhere around $250 million. As for fame, Fortune Magazine named Jeter the 11th greatest leader IN THE WORLD, just behind No. 10 Jeff Bezos of Amazon and way ahead of No. 29 (Starbucks’ Howard Schultz) and No. 33 (Apple CEO Tim Cook).
Oh yes, there are those five World Series rings and those 14 All-Star appearances, along with an almost guaranteed first-ballot entry into Cooperstown and plaque in Monument Valley at Yankee Stadium.
All of which are numbers, nice numbers. But that doesn’t say anything about the man.
This does.
“You always wanted to sit by him,” Ruoff said.
Think about that. The way Ruoff said it, he made Jeter sound like the village elder, the one people came for answers, for comfort, the one that could be trusted to say the right thing. Jeter was only 18.
“I know that sounds weird,” said Ruoff, who was released by the Yankees in 1992 after two years with the rookie club. “But Derek gave off a presence. It wasn’t what he said. It was how he acted. You knew he was a winner but he never flaunted it, never said anything about it.”
Sixth sense at shortstop
During one game, the Yankees were in the field. At bat stood a right-handed hitter who couldn’t pull the outside pitch, was weak with it in fact. The Yankees’ pitcher was going to pound the outside part of the plate to get the hitter into a simple tap-out to second or first base.
“Derek, however, moves over into the hole between short and third,” Ruoff said. “Our third baseman noticed Derek creeping close to him and asks him to get back. Derek shakes his head. Wouldn’t you know it, the hitter hits it into the hole. It would have been a single to left. But Derek fields it and throws him out.
“I ask him later how did he know that? Derek said, “I don’t know man, I got a sixth sense.’ I told Derek he should have been a gambler. He always made the right choice.”
Ruoff would come to know why. His parents, Al and Sharon, sat in the stands that summer next to Jeter’s parents, Charles and Dorothy. The Ruoffs learned how Jeter was raised. Things that might seem so outdated or out of place today in professional sports - respect, commitment, honor, optimism - were standard family values in the Jeter household.
Ruoff saw that in the 120 or so games the rookie Yankee played that summer.
UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy: