How Derek Jeter turned a simple number into an invincible brand

The pitch came shortly after David Price’s pitch on July 9, 2011, the one Derek Jeter deposited into the Yankee Stadium left-field bleachers for his 3,000th career hit. Upon delivery, it carried great potential.

“We wanted to mint $2 bills and have [Jeter’s] face painted on him,” Emil Bodenstein, then a Major League Baseball licensee for memorabilia, recalled in a recent interview. “It’s a project I wish I was able to get done.”

It didn’t get done because Jeter and his management team passed on it. Yet that Bodenstein, now a player agent, even conceived of the clever idea spoke to the hold that Jeter possessed not only on baseball and on the Yankees, but on his uniform No. 2.

Put it this way:…