Derek Jeter had a long successful career on the baseball diamond, but when it came to his time as an owner things didn’t seem to go the way it was hoped. Now, former Miami Marlins president David Samson gave some insight as to what went wrong during his time in Miami.
Samson had been the Marlins’ president from 2002 to 2017 and had been known to be outspoken, especially in the media. During an episode of the Front Office Sports Today podcast, Samson said that Jeter had brought his own people and had started to do away with the ideas that he had implemented.
“He was able to bring in all his own people and he thought that everything that I did was bad,” Samson said. “So he erased anything I had done. And figured he could do Costanza, which is opposite day. Anything I did, he did the opposite and assumed it would work.
“He assumed that he could get a bigger TV deal. He assumed he could get a big naming rights deal, that he’d get tons of season ticket holders, that he would make the team a winning team. And after four years, I think he realized that being a shortstop and being an executive are two totally different things…. And I think he realized quickly that being a pitchman for Subway was probably going to be more up his alley than running the team every day and being accountable for that.”
Jeter was part of an ownership group that purchased the South Florida baseball franchise in 2017 and hed stepped down from his role of CEO of the ballclub and his part-ownership of the team in 2022. Jeter had a 4% ownership stake and was responsible for running the baseball and business operations of the team.
The Marlins went 218-327 during his time running the club and made the postseason during the COVID shortened 2020 season.
Samson continued to take his shots at Jeter in the interview, saying that Jeter had been the perfect person to buy the Marlins “because he didn’t use his money.”
“He had someone in the name of Bruce Sherman who let him do anything he wanted with absolutely no accountability. And if you can get that kind of job, you might as well go get it,” Samson commented.
