The Silent Vocal Leader?

From Tyler Kepner (NY Times):

While Jeter is too guarded to say if he had confronted Cano, he gave an interesting answer about how he is perceived. Jeter has a reputation for being a leader by example and for not being especially vocal.

“I always hear the same thing about myself, ‘He doesn’t get in somebody’s face,’” Jeter said. “Well, how do they know? How does anybody know? Unless I was to tell someone or unless he was to tell someone, nobody is going to know. And you don’t do things for the camera.”

So if Jeter did verbally challenge a teammate?

“I ain’t going to tell you about it,” Jeter said. “And if I yelled at someone, you think the person I yelled at is going to tell you? It’s always baffling because people think they have this perception of how someone is. I don’t do things for the camera. There are people like that.”

You know, this is something I’ve always wondered about. There’s been this belief floating around, for years now, that Derek Jeter doesn’t speak up in team meetings, he doesn’t speak out when a player makes a mistake, he only leads by example, and so on and so forth. However, what I’ve wondered is, how do we know that to be true? All we really know is what we see or are told by beat writers and scouts. These guys don’t see everything, right? I’m sure if Jeter were to speak up in a given situation, the context would have to be strictly private and behind closed doors (no press).

This sort of reminds me of Ichiro’s famous All-Star game speeches (which he delivers in English). Ichiro, the perennial All-Star, supposedly rallies his fellow AL players with a barrage of insults and curse words aimed at the opposing NL squad (an insult-laden pregame speech). It’s totally out of character and not what you’d expect from him, but it happens reportedly every year and is a fabled tradition since the players are the only ones who have really seen and heard it.

Maybe Jeter’s “vocal leadership” is similar to Ichiro’s AS Game rants?