Who

Jeter is the talented shortstop for the Yankees and a heartthrob to countless ladies in New Jersey and Long Island.

Backstory

A Jersey boy by birth, Jeter was raised in Michigan by a black dad and Irish-American mom, and drafted by the Yankees out of high school in 1992. (He turned down a baseball scholarship to the University of Michigan.) He spent four years in the minor leagues before making his debut with the Yanks in 1995, winning the American League Rookie of the Year award and serving as a key member of the team's World Series-winning squad in 1996.

Jeter hasn't looked back since. He was the face of the team as they won three straight World Series from 1998 to 2000, and became the first player to win All-Star Game MVP and World Series MVP in the same year in 2000. Over the course of his career, he's racked up eight All-Star Nods, a career batting average well over .300, 250+ stolen bases, and a cool couple hundred home runs to top it off. He's also been among the best run-scoring machines in the majors, trailing only teammate Alex Rodriguez among players under 35. In 2003, Jeter became the first Yankee team captain since Don Mattingly retired in 1995, joining the likes of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and former Mets skipper Willie Randolph.

Of note

While he's never put up numbers like teammate and one-time friend Alex Rodriguez, Jeter is the most famous player on baseball's most famous team, and arguably the sport's most popular and marketable star. While baseball has turned more and more into a power game dominated by juiced-up mashers like Barry Bonds, Jeter is a throwback, known above all for his leadership, hustle, savvy, and clutch play. He's also known for his October heroics, most famously his spectacular running flip to home plate in the 2001 playoffs against Oakland.

His media-friendly image has led to a slew of rich endorsement deals: Jeter's been in ad campaigns for Nike, Gatorade, Ford, and Visa, among many others, and he has his own fragrance, Driven, which produced by Avon. It hasn't exactly hurt his public profile that he happens to be New York's most eligible bachelor, a man-about-town with a starlet perpetually attached to his arm. (Although his hard-partying ways were once considered a problem by the Yanks' front office, he seems to have reached a détente with the suits, and even appeared in a Visa commercial with George Steinbrenner that parodied his club-hopping.)

It's this mediagenic image that's made him a far bigger star than the moody A-Rod or the unassuming Mariano Rivera, teammates who will likely go down as better players on paper. Jeter does have his share of detractors, though. To critics, he's baseball's biggest hype job, a very good but not superlative player made famous by his movie-star looks and the constant exposure that comes with playing for the Yankees. Regardless, his on-field and off-field value to the club has earned him a long-term contract worth more than $20 million per year.

Personal

Jeter has gotten around over the years: His past romances include Mariah Carey, Miss Universe Lara Dutta, actress Jordana Brewster, Vanessa Minnillo, and Jessica Biel. Although his preference for models and actresses is well known, that hasn't deterred more plebian female fans: During a 2002 game, a woman ran onto the field to hand Jeter a note with her phone number.

Habitat

Jeter owns a $12.5 million, 5,425 square foot apartment in the Trump World Tower, as well as a $3 million apartment on the floor below, whose rumored occupants are his parents. Outside of the city, Jeter owns Tiedemann Castle, his grandfather's childhood home upstate, and a house in Tampa. The latter came to the public's attention in 2007 after officials from the State Division of Taxation and Finance faulted Jeter for filing as a nonresident from 2001 to 2003, thus avoiding having to pay state or city taxes.