Part of my day job involves fact-checking information. Plus, I also have a healthy dose of skepticism when it comes to stories that seem too good to be true. So when I saw a recent claim about a longtime trade offer involving Derek Jeter, I immediately called shenanigans on it. And sure enough, my initial thought that it was BS turned out to be correct.
Here’s the scoop. Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe recently wrote this:
As the story goes: When Jeffrey Loria owned the Expos, he was obsessed with Derek Jeter. So he ordered his general manager, Jim Beattie, to try to make a deal with the Yankees and to give up whatever he had to. Beattie offered Yankees GM Brian Cashman Vladimir Guerrero and Pedro Martinez. Stunned, Cashman told Beattie, “I can’t trade Derek Jeter.”
This is sheer nonsense, and here’s why:
1. Pedro Martinez was traded from Montreal Expos to the Boston Red Sox on November 18, 1997.
2. Brian Cashman didn’t become Yankees’ GM until 1998.
3. Jeffrey Loria didn’t buy the Expos until 1999.
So how in the world could this trade offer have been made, when Pedro was already in Boston during this timeframe? And when Martinez was an Expo, Loria did not own the team, and Cashman was not a GM?
I wonder where, exactly, Cafardo heard this story. Did Cashman feed him this nonsense, knowing that the reporter wouldn’t fact-check it? Or did somebody else do so?
At any rate, it literally took me two minutes to Google the dates on this information, and prove definitively that this story could have never happened. Not that complicated, folks. You’d think a reporter — or his editor — would do the same. Good grief.
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