Doug Mientkiewicz says the Yankees clubhouse appeared to be way more fun than he’d imagined.
And Derek Jeter was a big reason why.
On the Foul Territory Show, Mientkiewicz — who played for the Yankees in 2007 — says he was “skeptical” of joining the team prior.
“I was a little skeptical of going to the Yankees’ clubhouse when I signed with them in ’07. I felt so at home,” he recalled. “They weren’t what I thought they were from afar. You all see like this business machine that keeps going. I couldn’t believe how much fun [it was] and Derek [Jeter] had a lot to do with that.
On Jeter specifically, Mientkiewicz continued, “He was always very humble in the sense of like he would make fun of himself. Most baseball players are self-deprecating. We have to deal with so much failure.
“That was probably the biggest surprise of my career was seeing how Derek really was behind closed doors and how much fun he was.”
To Mientkiewicz’s point, he told an incredible story about a time that Jeter pranked him.
“The rumor is we all had [Derek Jeter Driven] Cologne on, and all the bugs showed up. Game 3 rolls around,” he said, adding that Jeter was the consummate captain who was always worried about and taking care of everyone on the roster, checking in on teammates regularly, and things of that nature.
“He [Jeter] doesn’t speak to me,” added Mientkiewicz. “[Jorge] Posada is coming up to me shaking his head. He’s like, ‘You f–ked up man.’ And I’m like, I don’t recall what I did.
“The game goes by, he doesn’t talk to me the entire game, doesn’t look at me, which is unlike him… The next day, it’s Game 4. I walk into my locker and on the chair is a Macy’s manilla folder. I open it up and it’s a professional letterhead that says… something to the effect of, ‘Due to your comments… we’ve had to pull 2.7 million bottles of Derek Jeter Driven off the shelves,’ and my heart sinks.’”
He later adds that Jeter told him, “That letter was all bulls–t.”
That season was Mientkiewicz’s only one as a Yankee, and the team lost in the American League Divisional Series in four games — so, the Game 4 he had been referring to was the team’s last.
Mientkiewicz, who finished his career in 2009, didn’t have all good feelings for his Yankees teammates.
The former first baseman had some harsh words for Alex Rodriguez and said he would “die a lonely man.”
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