Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez were the closest thing baseball had to a bromance. Then a 2001 Esquire magazine interview put words on paper that Jeter could never quite forget.

In 2001, Alex Rodriguez had recently signed a 10-year, $252 million contract with the Texas Rangers, which was the biggest deal in sports at the time. Soon after, Esquire writer Scott Raab interviewed him for the magazine's April cover story.

During that conversation, Rodriguez spoke warmly about Jeter at first. "No, there's not a rivalry at all," he said. "Ours is such a brotherhood that there's definitely no rivalry there. And it's weird, because even with my brother we have a little rivalry. But with Derek, I'm his biggest fan, and I think it's vice versa."

Then the tone shifted. "Jeter's been blessed with great talent around him," Rodriguez said. "He's never had to lead. He can just go and play and have fun. And he hits second, that's totally different than third and fourth in a lineup. You go into New York, you wanna stop Bernie and O'Neill. You never say, Don't let Derek beat you. He's never your concern."

Jeter said he felt betrayed after hearing those comments. In The Captain, a seven-part ESPN+ documentary series that started streaming on July 18, 2022, he spoke publicly about the issue for the first time. In the third episode, Jeter explained how the comments affected him.

"Those comments bothered me because I'm very, very loyal," Jeter said. "As a friend, I'm loyal. I just looked at it as, 'I wouldn't have done it.'"

Jeter said he could have forgiven it if it had only happened once. But soon after, Rodriguez repeated his comments during an interview on The Dan Patrick Show, according to Esquire's July 2022 report.

Rodriguez later acknowledged what he had done. "I think early on I was in that circle of trust," he said in The Captain. "I think that changed when I said some things he didn't like and that, for him, broke the trust."

The two ended up teammates when Rodriguez joined the Yankees in 2004.

Jeter and Alex Rodriguez played side by side for nine years despite the broken trust

The dynamic was uncomfortable from the start. "The first month, I didn't feel comfortable with me being there," Rodriguez said in The Captain. "I didn't feel like he felt comfortable either."

Jeter told the press at the time that Rodriguez had apologised and that he accepted it. But privately, the relationship had already changed permanently.

"From that moment on it was never quite the same ever again," Rodriguez said.

Baseball America writer Alan Schwartz summed up the divide in the docuseries.

"Derek Jeter wanted to be a Yankee," Schwartz said. "Alex Rodriguez wanted to be a star."

That contrast, per The Captain docuseries, followed both men throughout their careers.

Do you think Rodriguez was wrong to say what he said about Jeter in that 2001 interview? Tell us in the comments!

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Written by

Sneha Abraham