Book on Yankees’ Derek Jeter, cross-promoted by ESPN during broadcast, at center of mixed signals

Rick Sutcliffe “ill-informed”? The Red Barren strikes again!

The analysis took a radical twist when Rick Sutcliffe, another one of O’Connor’s ESPN colleagues, ripped the book. Sutcliffe spoke as if he were delivering a message from Jeter. And it wasn’t two thumbs up. Before the game Sutcliffe said he had spent 15 minutes with Jeter. “He was as angry as I’ve seen him in a long, long time,” Sutcliffe said on the air.

What followed was an indictment of the book. “Derek says he (O’Connor) hasn’t talked to ‘anybody close to me.’ Supposedly there was like a coach that he played for when he was in the ninth grade. And there was some cousin that he was talking about that Derek didn’t even know,” Sutcliffe said Monday night. “He (Jeter) was upset about it. A lot of it, like Tim said Brian Cashman told him, is stuff that happened a long time ago.”

There’s more to the ties that bind Sutcliffe and Jeter. Oh yeah, that ESPN world is small. On ESPNNewYork.com there are “testimonials” to Jeter as he approaches his 3,000th hit. Sutcliffe offers one, praising Jeter for attending a fund-raiser for the Negro League Baseball Museum in Kansas City and making the event a success. Sutcliffe was born and raised in Kansas City. A TV source was surprised Sutcliffe pursued such a hard line Monday night. The source said ESPN has a policy where its talent cannot criticize “colleagues” or “competitors.”