Thanks to Coach Eric Musselman for passing along an article by Tom Verducci on the Yankees Derek Jeter -- he is an excerpt:If you were to draw up a list of Jeter's dislikes, most all of them would be what he regards as obstacles to winning:
1. Individuals who don't care about winning.
2. Self-promoters.
"I never liked people who talked about themselves all the time, gloat," he says. "If you're accomplished and have done things, people will talk about it for you. I don't think you have to point it out. I'm not judging anybody. That's just the way I am."
3. Measuring success by individual statistics.
"In this day and age, not just in baseball but in sports in general, all people care about is stats, stats, stats," he says. "You've got fantasy this, fantasy that, where you pay attention to stats. But there are ways to win games that you don't get a stat for."
4. Injury talk.
"You either play or you don't play. If you're playing, nobody wants to know what's bothering you. Sometimes it's a built-in excuse for failing."
5. Negativity.
Jeter wants nothing to do with negative questions from reporters or negative talk from teammates. He once went 0 for 32 and refused to admit he was in a slump. "We weren't allowed to use the word can't—'I can't do this, can't do that,'" Jeter says of his childhood. "My mom would say, 'What? No.' She's always positive. I don't like people always talking about the negative, negative, negative, because once you get caught in that mind-set, it's hard to get out of it."
