During his just-ended baseball career, Derek Jeter was notoriously tight-lipped with reporters, offering mostly sports platitudes about playing hard and wanting to win and rarely anything much deeper than that.
But now that he's done playing, he's decided that he wants to offer a way for athletes to communicate with the fans, announcing the launch yesterday (October 1st) of a website called The Players' Tribune, where athletes will be able to post content such as written posts, videos, photos, podcasts and more.
Jeter said yesterday, "You want players to feel like this is a safe place where they can get their message across how they want to portray it."
In his first post on the website -- the only thing that's on it so far -- Jeter admits that he didn't give much away during his baseball career, and offers up an explanation that he ties into his goals for the site: "I realize I've been guarded. . . . I do think fans deserve more than 'no comments' or 'I don't knows.' Those simple answers have always stemmed from a genuine concern that any statement, any opinion or detail, might be distorted. . . . I'm not a robot. Neither are the other athletes who at times might seem unapproachable. We all have emotions. We just need to be sure our thoughts will come across the way we intend."
However, the former New York Yankees shortstop says he doesn't see the site as a replacement for reporters. He said, "We're not trying to take away from sportswriters. Sportswriters are what makes sports successful. I think we're sort of working in conjunction with them."
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