Now, although I live in North Carolina now, I grew up in the Bronx not far from the old Yankee Stadium. And I’m a Yankee fan. That’s the way I grew up living there. You know, I watched Mickey Mantle play. I never saw DiMaggio. I remember Maris’s, you know, home run period where he hit 61 home runs that season and the toll that it took on him. I remember rooting for bad teams. I remember Thurman Munson and a host of others.

But so much of my experience is gelled in the last 20 years with a ballplayers that are called the Core Four. They are Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, and Derek Jeter, of course. And yesterday was Jeter’s retirement.

Now, Bernie Williams was there too, and he missed the last World Series, so he’s not included in the thinking. But when all is said and done, he’s part of that great tradition of Yankee ballplayers who actually came up through the minors and weren’t just bought from another team for a big contract. So, you know, all of them retired Yankees. All of them played their entire career Yankees.

And it made me stop and ask myself a question because, of course, yesterday was Jeter’s last day and thus the end of that era. And even though I focus so much on job hunting and on job search, and on teaching the techniques needed to find work outside of your organization, here are five examples of ballplayers who didn’t wind up changing jobs, although Pettitte did once, but I’ll get to that later.

But, you know, here are five ballplayers who were raised in the system, had long careers, were exceptional athletes. Two are definitely Hall of Famers, two are marginal Hall of Famers and probably won’t get in. But, you know, one of the common threads from their careers that can be applied to others, you know, applied to you as part of your career that would allow you to, you know, have a successful career within your organization.

Now, I’m going to spend most of the time focusing on Jeter because he’s the most topical of the ballplayers, but I am going to pull in experience from the others.

And let me start off by saying Jeter was not seen as a great ballplayer coming up in the minor leagues. He was not seen as one of those, you know, he’s going to hit for great average, be a great fielder, for you be a great ballplayer. He was seen as being a .270 hitter with average defensive skills who they weren’t sure was going to make it in their—on their team. As a matter of fact, one of the stories about Jeter was in his spring training with the Yankees in the season that he made the ball club, I believe that was 1996, there was talk that he wasn’t going to be a good enough fielder to make the team. So there was a discussion of a trade with Seattle, who was a big trading partner at the time, to trade a young starting pitcher named Mariano Rivera—believe that one, a young starting pitcher named Mariano Rivera to Seattle for the wonderful ballplayer Félix Fermín. If you’re detecting a little bit of sarcasm there, you’re absolutely right. Fermín was an average ballplayer and a pretty good hitter every once in a while, but certainly would never be a Hall of Fame player and never a great player.

But there were—there was the manager of the Yankees, Joe Torre, and the coaching staff who saw something in Jeter that went beyond the numbers. And they insisted that that trade not occur. They said they would never play Fermín; they wanted to go with Jeter. What was it?

So we now turn around and go: what are the ways that you stay in an organization for a lengthy period of time is if you have backers within that firm who believe in you, who will go the extra yard for you, who get you, who understand you, and see your potential and know how to work with you to bring out your best? That’s really the story of Jeter because no one ever said he was the best shortstop of his time. There were, in any given season, you know, shortstops who hit for greater average and had greater range. But no one had his drive for winning. No one had that way of playing like a Yankee that Jeter had, or, I must say, Pettitte, or Posada, or Rivera.

So ultimately, for all five players that I’ve mentioned, someone had to understand them and get them. So, are there people in your organization who understand you, who get you, who believe in you, will advocate for you at a high level like they did for Jeter, like they did for Rivera who they almost traded twice, like they did for Posada who initially they brought in the current manager of the Yankees, Girardi, to be a teacher to Posada in order to help him grow as a ballplayer? So you need someone who understands you and sees your potential.

You sometimes need coaching. And again, that’s a big part of Posada’s time with the Yankees. He was never considered a good defensive catcher, but he improved to become adequate instead of just terrible, and became an above-average hitter as a catcher. So he’s a guy that got coaching to help him get better. Are there people who in your organization will help you get better, who will help coach you? So that becomes a second factor: someone who gets you, and people who will coach you.

Number three is, and this is an internal thing, do you have that drive for success? Do you have that extraordinary will to win? Of the five players I mentioned, Williams was always considered, you know, the more casual ballplayer, yet he had a fierceness about him for so much of his career that went undetected. He’s a guy who hit .350 one season—I think it was .358 was his final average. And although he never seemed overtly to be as determined or as fierce as the others in situations, he was every bit as fierce and determined as they were.

Now here’s a fun one that many people don’t really understand, and that is you have to get paid fairly by the organization. And there are stories about each of these men—no, I take it back, four out of five of the men, because I’m not aware of Posada stories about his contract, but I am about Williams, Jeter, Rivera, and Pettitte.

Now, only one of them ever left the Yankees, and that’s Andy Pettitte. And Pettitte left to be at home with his family more often. He followed Roger Clemens to Houston for two seasons, I believe, to try and stay closer to his family. Could have been three seasons, but my memory says two. And, you know, what was important to Pettitte at that time was being near family. And, you know, when you have young kids, I understand this. You want to be there and influence their growth so that they—that you’re a dad. And he at one point left the Yankees, and when he judged that they were old enough, he returned to the Yankees.

In Jeter’s case, Jeter never threatened to leave the Yankees, but he did demand to be paid fairly. At the time that Alex Rodriguez signed his first mega-contract for $250 million with Texas, Jeter went to the Yankees and said, “I don’t expect to be paid as much as Rodriguez, but I want to be paid pretty close to it.” And he insisted that he receive a contract, you know, a long-term deal that would pay him, you know, a high price. And he got it.

Williams got to the point where he almost left the team, and the Yankees were negotiating with another player—I believe it was Albert Belle—to sign with the Yankees. And before Williams signed his contract with, I believe, Boston, which would have been the great sin of all time for a Yankee fan certainly, the management of the Yankees went to Williams and said, “We’re going to give you one more chance to sign with us. Do you want to be with us?” That’s the first question we need to know the answer. And he said yes. And then they negotiated a deal that was similar to the one that he got with Boston, not quite the same.

Rivera always wanted to be paid extremely well, but he never went for top dollar because to him it was more important to be a Yankee and have that experience.

So, you know, none of these guys necessarily went for the top dollar, but they all went for an above-average scale to have that experience. And they demonstrated to management time and time again that they wanted to be part of the organization and part of its ongoing success.

So those are a couple of factors that come into play that will help you understand what’s necessary for you to be successful within your firm. Some of them are external; some of them are internal. You know, external to you, internal to you. And if your organization doesn’t have belief in you or faith in you, or is willing to provide you with training or coaching, you can’t have a long-term career. If you’re not willing to compromise a little bit, you may not have a long-term career.

So those are a couple of my observations from watching the Core Four over these years. I hope you apply them to your career.

Now, I also want to encourage you to come over to my website, which is thebiggamehunter.us, and go exploring, because if you’re not going to have a long-term career at your organization, you have to start learning the things necessary to be So watch my videos, listen to my podcasts, read the previous articles from my ezine, receive a complimentary subscription to the ezine while you’re there. So come over to thebiggamehunter.us and go exploring. Order some of my books and guides to job hunting. You can pay what you want for them at thebiggamehunter.us. And if you’re not sure what to pay, here’s a deal for you: pay nothing, use them, learn something from them, come back to my website and you’ll see a button that says Flattr—F-L-A-T-T-R—and make a donation to the site. I use that for charity, so come over to thebiggamehunter.us and get some of my books and guides to job hunting.

A few final things. First of all, if your firm’s trying to hire someone, send me an email at the—at the big game—I’m sorry, jeffaltman@thebiggamehunter.us. Let me know who to contact and whether I should mention your name. I’d love to help your firm staff positions.

If we’re not already connected on LinkedIn, send me a connection request at linkedin.com/in/thebiggamehunter. I accept connection requests from people worldwide, except if you’re a third-party recruiter or in a country known for scams or spam; then I won’t do it.

And finally, finally, if you want to find out about my coaching work with job hunters, go to vip-personalsearch.com. I have a couple of levels of coaching service available. Find out about my programs, send me an email, let’s get to work with one another. I know from experience the work I do with people helps job hunters land more quickly.

So this is Jeff Altman. Hope you have a great day. Take care.

The Change It Had To Come