Blog 3

On Derek's road to success he had a lot of set-backs on the way, and had to get a lot of help from other people. His parents, former players, coaches, and people in the Yankees organization. He had to overcome a lot of things in order to become great.

His first baseball card in the Rookie Leauge.

He thought at first that rookie ball wouldn't be that difficult to hit, and he was wrong. His batting average dropped his first season and he had over 50 errors. He was very stressed and made a lot of calls home, he said his phone bill was around $400 to $500 dollars a month. However, the Yankees organization helped him through this internal conflict between him, his mind, and the ball. They told him to stick with it and his talent would carry him through.

After the 50 errors in his first season, he studied other great shortstops that had played in the majors, and he had seen that there footwork was always consistant and that they had made the same arm motion with every throw, unlike Jeter. He had improved by his second year by a lot in batting, keeping his average around .300 and his errors got a little better, but he still made a lot. The Yankees said that even though another bad season in the numbers, he was improving constantly and this was a good sign.