Derek Jeter might be one of the greatest Yankees of all time but he is not one of the greatest CEOs, according to former Miami Marlins president David Samson.
Samson slammed Jeter’s leadership as CEO of the Marlins on a recent podcast.
“[Jeter] 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 [George] 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,” he said.
He also dropped this bombshell about how he found out he was fired.
“After the team was sold to Derek Jeter, I would have stayed on, I had a contract to stay on,” Samson said. “I got a text alert from ESPN.com that I’d been fired. I called Derek and said, ‘Hey, I just got an alert. Am I actually fired?’ He said, ‘Oh yeah, I didn’t get to you. I’m sorry,” he said.
Samson basically called Jeter cheap too
“Derek Jeter was the perfect person to buy a team because he didn’t use his money,” Samson said. “And 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 obviously still has hard feelings toward the Hall of Fame shortstop, and after hearing his story, you understand why.
