Jeter's retirement announcement promotes foundation

TAMPA, Fla. -- Derek Jeter has often said that because of how much he values his privacy, the Yankees captain would never dabble with social media. So why did Jeter choose Facebook to make one of the most important announcements of his career?

The answer was simple, as Jeter explained on Wednesday. Jeter released his 15-paragraph note on the afternoon of Feb. 12 via the Facebook page for his Turn 2 Foundation, aiming to draw more attention to the organization's message.

"Everyone said, 'First of all, I didn't even know you had a Facebook page,' but if you guys scroll down a little further, you'd see a lot of this Facebook page has to do with my foundation," Jeter said. "So that was one of my hopes.

"One, I wanted to get the entire message out. I didn't want people to cut and paste it and put what they chose. I wanted people to read the entire message. And two, for selfish reasons, I thought it would draw a little bit more attention to the foundation."

Formed in 1996, the mission statement of Jeter's Turn 2 Foundation is "to create and support signature programs and activities that motivate young people to turn away from drugs and alcohol and turn to healthy lifestyles."

Jeter said that he wrote "each and every word" of the statement, which has received more than 74,750 "likes" as of Wednesday.

"I was sitting down at home and I had a few questions I wanted to answer, so I started taking notes," Jeter said. "I wish I would have brought the notebook to show you, but it was a lot of pages. I could have written another three or four pages, but I thought I'd lose interest of people after one.

"But I just answered a few questions I had, and I wrote down my thoughts and my ideas."