From PEOPLE Magazine Click to enlarge
Growing up in Kalamazoo, Mich., his nickname was D.J. But in the locker room of the New York Yankees, Derek Jeter is better known as E.P. "He's just like Elvis Presley," says third baseman Scott Brosius. "Girls, especially the younger ones, always scream for him. I've never seen anything like it."

There's lots to shout about. The 24-year-old shortstop is a hard hitter (a .324 average in '98) and a straight shooter. He dated Mariah Carey but is too much a gentleman even to speak about it. "We're friends," he says of their relationship last year, "but I don't know, man." He recently bought a new Mercedes, yet still favors his scruffy 1992 Mitsubishi 3000. And his new house in Tampa, he claims, is no bachelor pad. "I don't have any leather couches," he says. "It's more homey." Yankees manager Joe Torre spoke for many who know Jeter when he told Newsday, "Jeter is a very special guy. There's something about his presence that makes you feel good."

The beauty that the 6'3" Jeter inherited from his drug-counselor father, Charles, who is black, and his accountant mother, Dorothy, who is Irish-American, helps that impression, but doesn't impress the man himself. "I have skinny legs, so I don't wear shorts too often," says Jeter, whose idea of grooming runs to quick showers and clean T-shirts. As for all the female attention, he shrugs it off like an outside curveball. After all, he has been getting it all his life. "My mother was the first one who told me I was good-looking," he says with a dazzling smile. "But that's a mother's job."