The Life You Imagine

I am now about half way through the book and I am getting more and more interested in some of the things Derek Jeter has to say.  Chapter two, “Dealing with Growing Pains,” is primarily about how Jeter is having trouble leaving his parents when he goes to play minor league baseball when he is eighteen and he talks a great deal about the inspiration his parents gave him.  The following chapter, “Finding Role Models,” amused me very much.  It was probably the longest, but most interesting chapter I have read so far.  I love how Jeter talks about so many personal experiences in great detail.  It really makes me feel like I was there and I can picture what is going on.  In this chapter he has a picture of his report card from the eighth grade, which I also found interesting.  He was definitely a very smart kid who got A’s in every class.

In “Finding Role Models,” Jeter also explains a lot about his childhood and who he looked up to.  He explained that he found new role models everyday.  For example, if he saw someone (even if he does not know the person) and the person did something that Jeter wanted to learn to do, that person became one of his role models, and Jeter would watch the person and try to do what he does.  This got my attention because in the book, Jeter talks so much about his role models, when Derek Jeter himself is such a great role model for other kids and not once has Jeter said anything about him being a good role model, this shows me that when it comes to role models he is very modest.

Finally in the chapter, “The World is Not Always Fair,” Jeter explains what life was like for him being half white and half black.  His mother was white and his father was black, so he is in between and Jeter tells how that was confusing and sometimes difficult for him.  I never in my life thought about it being hard to be half white and half black, I actually thought it was a cool thing.  But when I read this chapter, I realized that maybe it was not so cool for him when he was growing up because he got teased and people would ask him things like “Are you white OR black, because you cannot be both!”  I think that must have been hard, but he said it helped him learn to accept all different kinds of races, which is a good thing when you are a baseball player because you meet people of racial backgrounds you never knew existed.