I am guilty of being the ultimate fan boy when it comes to Jeter. I've been a lifelong Stros fan, but it was really hard not to jump on the Yankee's bandwagon about the time Jeter began his career. My father was a Yankee fan since Mickey was "his guy" so it was acceptable in our house to pull for them. Jeter became my guy around 98, and when the 99 season began, I think I had more Jeter gear than any Astro.
Throughout college, I recall playing MLB on playstation against my buddy who was a tremendous Brave's honk. Night after night it was Bud Ice, cold pizza, Yanks v Braves. Always.
My dad had a lot of connections within the Stros organization. He'd conducted a ton of business with several players and even a handful of coaches. Dad was a personal friend of Nolan's father so it wasn't uncommon for us to catch a post game meal with guys on the team. Guys like Terry Puhl, Jim Deshaies, Alan Ashby all knew Dad pretty well.
Dad landed us seats during the opening series of Enron in Houston vs the Yankees so my buddy and I made the drive to Houston to meet up with my parents. We had seats right behind the Yankees dugout so we we're pretty excited obviously. There we were, two kids from Texas in Jeter jerseys snapping photos and begging for a wave from guys like Roger Clemens, Paul Oneil, Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada, Joe Torre, and of course Jeter. The thing that solidified my fandom of him happened when we're leaning over the railing to grab an autograph from Torre and Jeter pops up from underneath. He says "nice shirt fellas, thanks for coming to the ball park" hands us some batting gloves he'd already signed for us. I looked at dad in a confused manner and asked him how he pulled that off for us. He just said "I guess he must have saw y'all."
Dad is/was my hero and he died never telling me how he pulled that off, but to a 20 year old kid that day, Jeter became an icon to me.
Baseball does that more so than any other sport. It's something shared between a father and son. I've never seen a game at Yankee stadium but when I do, I'm taking my girls down to Monument park to see #2's plaque. I don't know how I'll pull it off, but I'm going to.
Call me a fan boy all you want, but I'm just know, in regards to Jeter, I'm completely cool with that label.