Derek Jeter greeted well by Yankees fans at Marlins game

JUPITER, Fla. — It was a sellout crowd at Roger Dean Stadium Sunday afternoon, not a surprise given that Aaron Judge and the Yankees were here for a rare spring training visit.

And among the crowd for the Marlins-Yankees game was Marlins CEO and Yankees icon Derek Jeter.

Jeter, wearing dark slacks and a dark gray golf shirt, took a seat in a suite on the first-base side several minutes before first pitch.

The crowd of 7,648, about 50 percent of whom were wearing Yankees T-shirts, hats or uniforms, stood and applauded. Jeter, who is not nearly as popular with the Marlins’ fan base after overseeing the offseason trades of several of the team’s stars — including outfielders Giancarlo Stanton, Christian Yelich and Marcell Ozuna — smiled and waved back.

“I heard the people going crazy,” Judge said with a smile.

Judge, who hit his first homer of spring training — a moonshot to left-center — in the Yankees’ 7-5 loss to the Marlins, did not see Jeter before the game. He had spoken to him in the past, as Judge was part of a group of select Yankees prospects whom Jeter had treated to dinner as part of the “Captain’s Camp,” a program designed to instill leadership skills. It was instituted by Gary Denbo, a close friend and mentor of Jeter’s who used to oversee the Yankees’ minor leagues and now is the Marlins’ vice president of player development and scouting.

“Always been good,” Judge said of his interactions with Jeter, who in turn has spoken highly of Judge. “He’s a professional. A guy I looked up to, and just always played the game the right way. Just respected the game, his opponent, respects his teammates. Just a lot of respect for the game, that’s the biggest thing.”

A Marlins representative said before Sunday’s game that Jeter would not make himself available to reporters at any point during the day.

Jeter did spend some time outside the Yankees’ clubhouse before the game, catching up with, among others, general manager Brian Cashman, bullpen coach Mike Harkey, batting practice pitcher Danilo Valiente, vice president of communications and media relations Jason Zillo and director of team security Mark Kafalas.

Behind the scenes, Aaron Boone, a teammate of Jeter’s in 2003, met with him for a few minutes.

“It was good to see him,” Boone said. “It was fun to see him for a couple of minutes and to catch up.”

There are plenty more connections between the franchises than Jeter and Denbo, of course. Yankees fans also may have heard of the Marlins’ manager, Don Mattingly, a teammate of Jeter’s in 1995 and his predecessor as the Yankees’ captain.

“Derek’s talked about building this team from the ground up — making sure that we invest into our minor-league system, the draft, international,” Mattingly told reporters before Sunday’s game. “And then you go beyond that, it’s just the way we’re going to handle ourselves, the consistency of how we treat players. The accountability that we’re going to have as coaches and players and [as an] organization. Then I think the certain way he wants to go about his business and us to go about our business, and those are very similar to the Yankees.”

By Erik Boland

erik.boland@newsday.comeboland11

Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.