When you're wrong, you're wrong. On Tuesday, I wrote that you shouldn't hold your breath in anticipation of Derek Jeter throwing his support behind Alex Rodriguez. The Yankee shortstop spoke with CNBC's Darren Rovell on Tuesday night and he did bring up his embattled partner on the left side of the infield.
"The only thing I can say about Alex is, he's a teammate," Jeter said. "We're here. We support all our teammates. We stand behind our teammates."
It's not like anyone expects or wants Jeter to act as A-Rod's dad and fight his battles for him. Saying you support him is a good start, even if the above statement falls a bit short of something that would make you want to climb into a foxhole.
Jeter then quickly moved on to chastising anyone who was interested in his reaction or Torre's book.
"But it seems like a lot of this is old news," Jeter said. "They seem to have the same questions year in and year out. These are issues that have already been addressed, they've already been put behind us and right now is the time of year you look forward to Spring Training."
Rovell followed up to ask why it's gotten so much ink if it's old news and got boilerplate "because it's New York" as an answer. A better follow-up would have been, "If it's all old news, why do you think Joe Torre felt the need to put it in a book?"
That's the only other thing you'd like to hear from Jeter or any member of the Yankees about Torre's book, and anything else that takes rips at A-Rod or any member of the team, at this point. Stop using Rodriguez as a punching bag to fatten your wallet and sell books, especially when you admit after publication that you wish some of the stuff hadn't been in there.
