In case you missed it, there’s a picture of Derek Jeter making the rounds which shows him leaving a local Starbucks with a cup that has the name Philip written on it.

(Image courtesy of the New York Post)

This is how boring off-days are here in New York. Derek Jeter walking out of a Starbucks with the wrong name on a cup of something – because who knows if it’s coffee or some sort of tea – is big news.

And I know coffee snobs will be horrified that Jeter goes to Starbucks but I can tell you from second hand stories that he has frequented the coffee chain for a long time. My friend lived in the upper East Side years ago and literally bumped into him as he leaving one somewhere in the 70′s, maybe 72nd street? I can’t remember the exact location of the place and there seem to Starbucks on every corner of Manhattan these days so your guess is as good as mine.

Anyway, the story in the Post goes on to mention that Jeter has used other aliases in the past. Apparently, he checked into a hotel in Seattle in 2007 as Johnny Drama, the name of a character from the HBO show Entourage. Jorge Posada used Ricky Ricardo at that same hotel.

Personally, I think the idea of using an alias is fun and I have a word document saved with about three pages of them on my laptop. In the film Notting Hill, Julia Roberts played a movie star – I know, what a stretch! – and the character mentioned a whole bunch of cartoon names she used as aliases when checking into hotels.

Now, if you’re a regular Starbucks customer, you know that they sometimes spell names wrong. But to be fair, Philip sounds nothing like Derek so either he took someone else’s drink or the cashier has extremely bad hearing and doesn’t watch baseball.

As a joke, a former coworker of mine convinced me tell the cashiers at the Starbucks in the Rockefeller Center concourse that my name was B.T. which stood for Big, um, well, I’m a female so you can figure that second initial out all on your own. I did it a couple of times before I decided to go back to my real name. They were giving me weird looks every time I ordered because I was always laughing.

So, if you were famous or just in a goofy mood like I was when I was working at NBC, what would you Starbucks name be? Feel free to leave them in the comments.

Oh and to go one step further, what do you think Jeter was drinking? Since it’s a cup with a name on it, Starbucks drinkers will know that he didn’t order a regular coffee and that he waited at the bar for his order.

I’m imagining some sort of skinny latte but who knows.