Yankees great Derek Jeter was ‘Costanza’ as Marlins CEO, ex-team exec says

Turns out, nearly everybody has curbed their enthusiasm for The Captain as a baseball executive.

Former Florida Marlins executive David Samson became the latest to mock the Yankees great Derek Jeter’s futile time as minority owner and CEO of the Marlins. In an interview with Front Office Sports, Samson compared Jeter’s front office skills to lazy and clueless Seinfeld character George Costanza, who spent his days avoiding work at Yankee Stadium.

BUY YANKEES TICKETS:STUBHUB, VIVID SEATS,TICKETMASTER

“[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.”

After a Hall of Fame playing career Jeter ran the Marlins from 2017 to 2022. Fox Sports recently announced that Jeter is joining the network as a studio analyst. But his tenure has been widely criticized. New Jersey native and former MLB manager Jack McKeon was one of the first to tell the world Jeter was a lousy front office executive. Fans have told the team they want the home-run sculpture that Jeter removed returned to the ballpark.

Want to bet on MLB?

Samson said he learned he was fired by an ESPN news alert.

“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 added: “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.”

Several media outlets reported that Jeter left the Marlins because he was frustrated that team chairman Bruce Sherman reneged on a promise to spend more money on players’ salaries.