PRIME NUMBER
T HE PITCH came shortly after David Price’s pitch on July 9, 2011, the one Derek Jeter deposited into the Yankee Stadium left-field bleachers for his 3,000th career hit. Upon delivery, it carried great potential.
“We wanted to mint $2 bills and have [Jeter’s] face painted on him,” Emil Bodenstein, then a Major League Baseball licensee for memorabilia, recalled in a recent interview. “It’s a project I wish I was able to get done.”
It didn’t get done because Jeter and his management team passed on it. Yet that Bodenstein, now a player agent, even conceived of the clever idea spoke to the hold that Jeter possessed not only on baseball and on the Yankees, but on his uniform No. 2.
Put it this way: Could more sports fans in this country identify the person on the real $2 bill, or the person who wore No. 2 for the Yankees?
“You say ‘2,’ you think of Derek. No matter what team, you think of Derek,” Yankees manageranager Joe Girardi said. “You say 23, you think of Michaelel Jordan.”
The Yankees officiallylly will retire No. 2 in honornor of Jeter on Sunday night,ht, in a ceremony before their game against the Astros at thehe Stadium, and this will con-constitute more than anotherher giant leap in the formerer shortstop’s baseball career, with the next step the Hall of Fame in July 2020. It also will serve as the culmination as one of the most successful branding endeavors in sports history.
Jeter and the No. 2 are inextricably linked,d, arguably even more soo than the connection betweenen Jordan — Jeter’s longtime friend, mentor and business partner — and the No. 23 he wore for nearly his entire legendary NBA career.
That Jeter’s jersey ranks as the top baseball seller of the past 10 years, based on data provided by MLBShop.com, merely touches the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the power of 2.
The digit occupies privileged space in the name of Jeter’s acclaimed Turn 2 Foundation, which he founded in his rookie season 1996; that the name also incorporates Jeter’s shortstop position, from which one “turns two” for the traditional double play, reflects just how savvy a marketer he was even in his young 20s (and why he absolutely never wanted to play another position, even when the Yankees acquired the superior Alex Rodriguez). During Jeter’s retirement tour in 2014, the Mets wrote Turn 2 a check for $22,222.22, while Major League Baseball saluted Jeter with a $222,222.22 donation to the foundation.
Memorabilia organization Steiner Sports has been holding a 22-day buildup to Sunday by selling various Jeter tchotchkes.
This past week, when Jeter wrote a thank-you note to New York on The Players’ Tribune, the website he launched shortly after he stopped playing, he featured this line: “Everyone comes to this city with dreams of being No. 1. You showed me that being No. 2 was more than enough.”
As his writing reflects, Jeter appreciates how well the No. 2 has come to fit his brand, which has come to incorporate humility, selflessness and work ethic.
“We didn’t think that far into it,” Brian O’Connor, vice president of marketing for Nike’s Jordan brand, conceded in a phone interview. “But the number 2 itself, when you think about Derek and his simple,
KEN DAVIDOFF: From uniform sales to #RE2PECT, Derek Jeter’s number 2 remains number 1 in the hearts of Yankees fans and fellow ballplayers
understated confidence as a true leader, it makes sense.”
O’Connor and his team found the perfect way to package that recipe when they met with Jeter at Nike’s Beaverton, Ore., headquarters in November 2013, about three months before Jeter announced his intention to retire after the 2014 season. Jeter mentioned “the respect I have for the game,” O’Connor recalled. That word, respect, stuck with O’Connor as a promising buzzword to encapsulate Jeter’s identity.
All the better that Jeter’s 2 could replace the “S” in “Respect,” creating the eminently hash-taggable “#RE2PECT” campaign.
“Derek made it very easy to tell a ‘Respect’ story with 2 embedded into it,” O’Connor said, and boy, did they put that 2 to work. The memorable commercial that launched the concept first aired around the 2014 All-Star Game — with various folks, including many celebrities, tipping their cap to Jeter — displays eight visual images incorporating the No. 2, plus the audio of late Yankees public-address announcer Bob Sheppard’s memorable announcement: “Now batting for the Yankees, number two, Derek Jeter. Number two.”
The tie between Jeter and his number remains so strong that when Tony Bruno, the CFO of Yankee Global Enterprises, took charge of the $40 million-plus renovation of George M. Steinbrenner Field, the Yankees’ spring-training home, he placed a large, blue aluminum “2” along the concourse in right-center field. No words or photos accompany the 2.
“Anyone with any sort of baseball knowledge at all knows that number 2 is Derek Jeter,” Bruno said. “This allows fans to stand next to something that’s symbolic ofo the player. … It’s just a clear place for us to tribute him but also gave fans an opportunity to experience Derek Jeter in some way when they were at ththe park.”
Bruno, who added a “15” in left field for his personal favorite ThurmThurman Munson, said he was ppleased with the numbnumber of fans who posed for selfies next to ththe numbers. IIn retirement, JeJeter has stayed somewhat private yet has no plans of disappearing, and Sunday’s events continue what has been a busy public stretch for him. He and former Florida governor Jeb Bush have teamed up in an attempt to buy the Miami Marlins, and Jordan will be coming out shortly with a RE2PECT line of apparel.
His ownership of No. 2 carries on in the present day, however. As ESPN reported, 10 of the 21 players who currently wear No. 2 do so as a tribute to Jeter.
Blue Jays shortstop Tulowitzki, among the trailblazers of this practice, grew up in Northern California and saw Jeter play in person about once a year when the Yankees visited the Oakland Athletics. He wore 14 as a rookie with the Rockies in 2006, then switched to 2 — taking the number from Rockies third-base coach Mike Gallego, who was the last person to wear 2 for the Yankees before Jeter — for his first full season in 2007. He has worn it since.
“It’s a constant reminder,” Tulowitzki said in a phone interview. “A neat way to pay respect to a player you admire.” Whether it’s respect or #RE2PECT, on the field or in the stands, Jeter’s 2 looms as ubiquitous. Unstoppable. It will enter the Stadium’s Monument Park on Sunday night, and it instantly will become the most famous of the group. It would deserve just as much placement an advertising Mount Rushmore along, say, the Pillsbury Dough Boy, Ronald McDonald and Mr. Whipple of Charmin fame.
“It’s really incredible,” Girardi said. “It’s a number that will, in a sense, never die.”
Jeter doesn’t need his face on a $2 bill, filling in for Thomas Jefferson, to attain such branding immortality. Though that still would’ve been pretty cool.
“You say ‘2,’ you think of Derek. No matter what team, you think of Derek. You say 23, you think of Michael Jordan.” — Yankees manager Joe Girardi