All professional athletes go through slumps in their careers, and Derek Jeter had a special way of getting out of his.
The former Yankees player was on the “Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” on Feb. 1 and revealed he wore a gold thong underneath is uniform in 2004 to get out of the “worst offensive stretch in my career.”
The major revelation happened while he was playing “True Confessions” with Jimmy and Rita Ora. The game asks one player to read one of two envelopes—one contains a truth and the other a lie—while the other players determine whether what they are saying is true.
Derek was up first and chose envelope number two which read, “I once wore a thong in public in front of thousands of people.”
Rita and Jimmy hit him with a slew of questions before agreeing that his story was false, but Derek surprised them by revealing it was true.
“I’m going to ultimately regret playing this game but let me explain,” the 48-year-old retired MLB star said. “I had a new teammate that I played with in 2002, and he always had a gold thong hanging from his locker. And he told me, ‘Anytime you struggle, you wear the gold thong, you’re guaranteed to get a hit.’ Now, I thought the guy was crazy.”
However, Derek later changed his mind when he got in a major career slump.
“So, in 2004, I went through the worst offensive stretch in my career. And every day, I’d walk in, he’d point at the thong. So, finally, I wore the thong,” he said. “Now, it wasn’t a thong-to-skin. I had shorts on underneath. So I put the thong over the shorts. First pitch, home run.”
Derek didn’t reveal the mystery man who lent him the thong, but it seems the secret is already out there!
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View GalleryIn 2015, his former teammate Jason Giambi told ESPN that Derek did in fact wear his gold thong. Jason was the Yankees’ first baseman from 2002 to 2008.
“The golden thong is legendary. It’s never not gotten a hit,” he shared at the time. “Well, it was just, you know, it was his first slump. I don’t think the guy’s ever slumped in his career. He’s unbelievable. You know, the gold thong, he had to get out of it.”
-Emely Navarro