Derek Jeter won five World Series, was an almost unanimous first-ballot baseball Hall of Fame selection, and is one of the most popular New York Yankees players ever. So whatever his secret was in his career, it worked.
CC Sabathia, who was teammates with Jeter from 2009-14, revealed on the first episode of The 6-1-1 Podcast with Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins, that Jeter had his share of baseball superstitions.
“Jete is super, super, superstitious,” Sabathia said. “He does the same thing every day. Every day he does the same thing.”
He shared one story in particular about a road series in Kansas City, when he asked Jeter if he wanted to get lunch with him at PeachTree, a local soul food restaurant.
“So we always had to stop at Starbucks first,” Sabathia said. “I had a rental car, we stop at Starbucks, we go to PeachTree, the food is so heavy…like, we got this food then we both sleeping on the couch before the game. Jete wakes up, goes 5 for 5.”
Howard and Rollins almost certainly saw where this was going, but Sabathia continued in his typical, humorous manner.
“Five hits but like, his stomach is hurting. He could barely run the bases. He’s hurting, bro,” Sabathia said. “The next morning he calls me at 11, he’s like ‘you ready to go?' I’m like ‘go where?' You know me, bro I’m 330 pounds. He’s like, ‘to PeachTree.' I’m like, ‘I can’t eat that again.'”
But Jeter was the Yankees captain and that holds some sway.
“Lo and behold we back at Starbucks, back at PeachTree so he can play. Luckily, he didn’t get five hits again so we didn’t have to go the next day, but if he does well, he’s going to do the exact same thing bro,” Sabathia concluded.
Derek Jeter and the superstitious gold thong
Yankees fans know that Jeter is superstitious. And if people needed a reminder, he provided one in 2023 in an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. During the show's “True Confessionals” segment, he admitted, “I once wore a thong in public in front of thousands of people.”
Jeter explained that then-teammate Jason Giambi kept a gold thong in his locker that he would wear when he felt he needed a little extra luck. In 2004, Jeter found himself mired in the worst slump of his career at 0-32.
Jeter put on the thong and homered in his first at bat that night.
“The golden thong is legendary. It's never not gotten a hit,” Giambi recalled to NJ.com in 2015. “It was his first slump. I don't think the guy's ever slumped in his career. He's unbelievable. You know, the gold thong, he had to get out of it.”
The only logical conclusion is that the thong worked. From that point forward in 2004, Jeter hit .313, won his first Gold Glove and that July made one of his most legendary plays against the Boston Red Sox, leaping into the stands to catch a foul ball.
Yankees fans just probably wish he brought the thong back in the ALCS, when the Red Sox erased a 3-0 deficit to win the series and end the Curse of the Bambino.
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