Derek Jeter’s Daughter Shares a Little-Known Secret About Succeeding at Sports

You may be familiar with the notion that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill. Derek Jeter might tell you it takes 20 years on the field to become the best baseball player you can be. But his 5-year-old daughter Bella Raine doesn’t buy into any of that.

In an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday, the Hall of Famer told Jimmy Fallon that Bella Raine started tennis lessons when she was 4 years old. Of course, it was an exciting time for the legendary athlete and his supermodel wife Hannah Jeter who he said used to play the sport.

“I was so proud because she actually got to be pretty good for the 15 minutes that she would focus. And I’m not one of those parents that scream at anyone, but I’m like, ‘Listen, focus, you’re embarassing us,’” he joked.

Everything came to a halt when one day, on the way to practice, Bella Raine told her parents she didn’t want to go. Jeter, being a flexible father, said that was fine and that they would find something else for her to do. But like any parent, he wanted to know where this change of heart came from.

“She said, ‘Dad, I already know how to play,’” he said. “So she is not lacking in confidence when it comes to sports.”

Iconic.

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We have to imagine she said it with a “Duh!” voice and an eye roll. And so the 5-year-old tennis prodigy schooled the retired Yankees shortstop, who clearly could have stopped practicing baseball a long time ago. After all, he already knew how to play. Right?!

Jeter and his wife Hannah have 3 daughters: Bella Raine, 5, Story Grey, 4, and River Rose, 1. Fallon, a dad of two girls, had to know what a typical day looks like in the Jeter household, prompting Jeter to ask the audience for some prayers.

“Let me be careful here,” Jeter said, thinking about the best way to explain having three girls. “‘Controlled chaos’ is the best way to put it.”

Bella Raine and her sisters can luckily spend the time she isn’t at tennis practice painting their dad’s nails, doing his makeup, and applying his lipstick. (And now we desperately want to see an all-dolled-up Jeter on the cover of Sports Illustrated).

“It’s the greatest thing I’ve ever experienced, though,” the proud girl dad said. “My girls are the absolute best.”

It’s not the first time he has gushed about fatherhood.

“Every day there’s something new, and they learn something new every single day,” he told PEOPLE (perhaps referencing the day his daughter learned you don’t have to practice if you know how to play). “It’s been wonderful. It’s been more than I ever could’ve imagined.”

These celebrity fathers are all proud to be “girl dads.”

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