Derek Jeter

The First Black CEO of a Major League Baseball Team

Derek Jeter, the iconic MVP Hall of Famer who experienced racism growing up. Photo courtesy of Joe Faraoni/ESPN Images.

A five-time World Series champion, Derek Jeter spent his 20-year career in Major League Baseball with the same team: the New York Yankees. During that time, he won awards for the best overall hitter and best-fielding shortstop in the league. In his prime, Jeter was considered one of the greatest hitters in the sport, and the 11 seasons he batted over .300 was proof of that. In 2009, Jeter made history with his record-breaking 2,674th career hit, the most made by a shortstop in the majors. Then in 2011, he became only the 28th player to register 3,000 career hits.

Derek Jeter with his retired number. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.

Major League Baseball is among the hardest sports in which a player can enter the Hall of Fame. Since 1876, the year the National League started, close to 20,000 men have dawned a Major League uniform, as of this writing. Of that number, only 333 hang in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. That is a scant 1.67% of all the executives, pioneers, managers, umpires, and players who participated in the sport. Yet Derek Jeter, a Yankees icon and captain, received a nearly unanimous election to the Hall of Fame in 2020. Of the 397 ballots submitted, his name was on all but one. Only Mariano Rivera, the one player to be elected unanimously to the Hall of Fame, fared better than Jeter.

Portrait of Derek Jeter. Illustrated by Daniel J. Middleton.

Derek Sanderson Jeter was born on June 26, 1974, in Pequannock, New Jersey. His mother, a white woman of English, Irish, and German ancestry named Dorothy, was an accountant. His father, Sanderson Charles Jeter—a black American who held a PhD—was a substance abuse counselor. His parents met while stationed in Germany, as they both served in the U.S. Army. Consequently, Jeter’s father, Sanderson, was a standout shortstop on the baseball team at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. No wonder then, that Jeter had his sights set on becoming a professional baseball player.

Jeter got an early start in the sport, playing Little League at around age five, after the family moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan. Jeter and his younger sister often spent the summer in New Jersey with their grandparents. It was those summers when his grandparents stayed up at night to watch the New York Yankees play on TV that made Jeter a fan of the team. One of his favorite players at the time was outfielder Dave Winfield. When speaking with Karl Ravech of ESPN, Jeter said:

“Obviously, the pinstripes stood out first and foremost. I think when you’re young, it’s a visual love affair. And it was [Dave] Winfield. Big Dave was my guy, you know. I thought he was larger than life…. We used to watch all the highlights. So, I tried to learn as much as I could about the past Yankee teams, and I just couldn’t think of a better organization to play for.”

After retiring in 2014, Jeter focused on business. He launched an online media company called The Players’ Tribune and a publishing imprint with Simon & Schuster called Jeter Publishing. But, most notably, in 2017, Jeter and a group of investors purchased the Miami Marlins for $1.2 billion. He was named CEO, and the purchase makes him the first black person to own a Major League team.

Update:
As of 2022, Derek Jeter stepped down as CEO of the Marlins and no longer owns shares of the ball club.

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This article appears in 21st Century Black Changemakers.

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