One of the biggest perks of being Derek Jeter, outside of the obvious, is that he has no problem landing interviews with high-profile people for his site The Players' Tribune. It's how the site was able to land a sit-down interview—or, er, a sit-down "conversation" as Jeter called it—with President Obama recently inside of the Roosevelt Room in the White House, even though, as the Washington Post pointed out, other publications with way more history than TPT have had a much tougher time landing interviews with the President in the past.
It's not hard to see why President Obama allowed Jeter into his world for a few minutes, though. While other newspapers and web sites would likely ask Obama about foreign policy and Donald Trump and a bunch of other things that he probably doesn't like to talk about in his free time, Jeter tossed him a bunch of softballs. For example, he asked the President what he would tell his 15-year-old self if he could go back in time and got this answer:
"Hit the books and stop goofing off. Because at 15 I was not the most responsible young man. I loved basketball, but outside of basketball I was getting by on charm and wit, but not taking my school as seriously as I could have."
He also asked the President about meeting his future wife Michelle, which prompted Obama to talk about the first time he picked her up in his "old raggedy car":
"When I first met Michelle I had this old raggedy car. It had rusted out so bad it had a little bit of a hole on the passenger side, you could see the street as you were driving by. So I knew Michelle liked me because when she saw that car she wasn't marrying me for my money."
And at one point, the President joked with Jeter about retirement. He told Jeter he looked "old" at the end of his career—"I mean, come on, man," he said, "we saw you trying to run those bases"—and officially became one of the few people who is allowed to make fun of the Yankees legend.
You can check out the entire conversation between Obama and Jeter above. You can also watch them play a game of "First Thing That Pops" below:
