Jeter Makes 'Whoopee' Status Official

Since New York is ensconced in all things Derek Jeter this week, in the wake of DJ's historic 3,000th hit (not to mention # 3,001, 3,002 and, most important on the day, 3,003), we figured we'd offer up a Jeter-themed entry. (By the way, Mayor Bloomberg is in discussions with the Yankee principals to officially rechristen this Saturday, July 16, as "Jeterday," and anyone heard calling the day "Saturday" would be made to purchase one of the uber-expensive empty seats behind home plate at Yankee Stadium.)

In attendance over the weekend at the Stadium was the scout Dick Groch, who'd pushed the Bombers to draft Jeter back in 1992. Talking to the NY Times, Groch shared a little scout-speak that we found colorful.

Groch said that scouts often categorize players they sign as either a “whoops” (a mistake) or a “whoopee” (a star), and with Jeter, “I can’t give him a bigger whoopee.”

Whoopee has a pleasantly archaic ring to it, tinged with a dash of musk. The word of course was an oft-used euphemism for sex on The Newlywed Game, but goes back even further: "Makin' Whoopee" was a hit song in the 1928 musical called "Whoopee."

Writes Wikipedia:

The title is a euphemism for sexual intimacy, and the song itself is a "dire warning", largely to men, about the "trap" of marriage.

(A Whoops, meanwhile, might be the result of some careless Whoopee-making.)

Jeter paramour Minka Kelly was whooping it up with Dr. and Mrs. Jeter--her future in-laws, perhaps--in a private Yankee Stadium box Saturday.

Over a year and a half ago, the NY Post had a Jeter-Kelly wedding slated for Nov. 5 at Oheka Castle in Huntington, NY (coincidentally, the wedding locale of Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin, but that report proved spurious.

Perhaps the Yankee Captain, similar to the "Whoopee" protagonist some eight decades before, is carefully avoiding the trap of marriage while presumably enjoying the fruits of whoopeedom.


[image: NY Times]