Sky’s limit for Yank Cap as Miami owner

This was five or six years ago during spring training in Tampa, after Derek Jeter had made it known he wanted to be an owner of a major league team someday. I asked him if he’d be a hands-on boss, if not a Boss Steinbrenner, in terms of making baseball decisions to build a team.

“What do you think?’’ he replied.

“I think you’d want to have your say about what kind of ballclub you put on the field,” I said.

“That’s the only way I’d do it,” he said. “I feel like I’ve learned a few things over the years. If I’m the owner I’m not going to let somebody else call the shots.” Then, as was his habit any time I managed to engage him in casual conversation, Jeter quickly added:

“Don’t write that.” Well, I didn’t then, when Jeter was still playing and merely dreaming of such a thing, but times have changed and the ex-Yankee Captain is now in the process of actually becoming an owner of the Miami Marlins, according to various reports on Tuesday. And based on what he said that day, while Jeter surely won’t have a majority stake as part of an ownership group that includes Jeb Bush, I have to believe he will make good on his word to be the baseball brains of the outfit. If so, this will be nothing short of fascinating to see if the former shortstop can achieve anywhere near the type of success that he did as a player, winning five championships with the Yankees and earning a reputation for delivering in the clutch. As it is, he will inherit a Marlins’ team being managed by another Yankee icon, Don Mattingly, who has a reputation for being great at motivating players but less than brilliant as an in-game strategist. So will Jeter be an old-school believer in the power of building trust as a manager, as Joe Torre did with those great Yankees’ teams in the 1990s, or as one of the youngest owners in baseball, will he embrace analytics like so many of today’s executives and evaluate Mattingly in that sense? For that matter, would Jeter let old Yankee sentiment get in the way if the Marlins were losing and he felt it was time for Mattingly to go?

There are so many questions that immediately come to mind, in fact: would Jeter lean on the people he trusted the most as a player, exteammates like Jorge Posada and Tino Martinez, and hire them for on-field or front-office positions with the Marlins?

Would he ask other trusted mentors like Torre and Gene Michael to advise him in assembling a front-office staff?

However he goes about it, Jeter is taking on quite a challenge. Two championships notwithstanding, the Marlins aren’t exactly the Yankees, in terms of their tradition and connection to a fan base.

Attendance has always been an issue for the franchise, and it’s not all because ownership, whether it was Wayne Huizenga years ago or now Jeffrey Loria, created so much distrust among the fans by selling off good players for financial reasons.

Usually there are about as many Mets’ or Yankees’ fans as locals in the Miami ballpark when the New York teams come to town, and maybe Jeter’s presence as owner will create a bit of a Yankees South feel to the franchise. But for him to make this a successful venture, he’ll have to build a winner and create more of a bond with the fans of South Florida, and chances are his status as a Yankee legend and soon-to-be Hall-ofFamer won’t

help in that regard.

At this point, however, would anyone bet against him?

Has anyone lived a more charmed life?

Has he whiffed on anything he’s ever attempted?

Jeter, remember, spent his summers as a kid at his grandparents’ house in New Jersey watching the Yankees on TV and dreaming of playing for them, which came to fruition at least partly because his timing was perfect, graduating high school at a rare low point in the franchise’s history, allowing his favorite team to grab him with the sixth pick in the 1992 draft.

Then he won his five championships in the Bronx while becoming the toast of the town as a celebrity bachelor, dating all those starlets without so much as a hint of scandal along the way, before marrying supermodel Hannah Davis in 2016.

Along the way he earned the tidy sum of $265 million in salary alone, according to baseball-reference. com, as well as

whoknows-how-many millions off the field in commercial endorsements.

His 3,000th hit? A home run, of course.

And though he didn’t go out on top, struggling offensively in a nonplayoff 2014 season, Jeter still managed to pull off the perfect ending, getting that game-ending single in his final home game at the Stadium — and only because David Robertson blew a lead in the top of the ninth.

That one is still nothing short of mind-blowing.

Now, only three years after retirement, at the age of 42, Jeter already has fulfilled his post-playing dream of owning a major league team — assuming his group gets at least a 75% approval vote among baseball’s other owners.

Ideally, sure, he would have loved to do it with the Yankees, but the Steinbrenners aren’t selling, and even if they were, Jeter would have had to have found even richer partners, considering his group is reportedly paying $1.3 billion for the Marlins.

In any case, he now becomes the Michael Jordan of baseball, in a sense, as one of the few ex-players to become an owner, along with the likes of Magic Johnson and Mario Lemieux.

You’d like to think Jeter will be better at calling the shots, as he put it, than Jordan has been, first as an executive with the Washington Wizards and now as owner of the Charlotte Hornets.

That’s not necessarily as easy as slashing a line drive to right field, as he did so many times on his way to collecting 3,465 hits. As we’ve seen now with Phil Jackson, as well as Jordan, greatness as a player or even a coach doesn’t always translate as an evaluator or decision-maker.

Regardless, this is a great thing for baseball, having someone as famous and accomplished as Jeter become the face of ownership in Miami, while adding some needed racial diversity at the top of the sport as well.

As for Jeter, well, in 2001, together with Jack Curry, he authored a book about his life that he titled: “The Life You Imagine.”

Sixteen years later, the title fits more than ever.