Yankees star Derek Jeter has received a threatening letter reportedly warning him to stop dating white women or "he'll be shot or set on fire."

FBI special agent Scott Wilson, speaking by phone from Cleveland, confirmed the bureau's probe Monday, saying "we have an ongoing open investigation into racially threatening letters to Jeter and others across the country." He declined to comment further.

The New York Police Department has also investigated the matter.

The Daily News reported Monday that the hate mail to the Yankees' 31-year-old captain called him a "traitor to his race" for dating white women. It warned him "to stop or he'll be shot or set on fire," the News said.

The Daily News reported that others received similar threats, including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Miami Dolphins defensive lineman Jason Taylor, and the parents of tennis star James Blake, of Fairfield, Conn.

Jeter, picked by People magazine as one of the world's most eligible bachelors, has been linked with models, singers, actresses and athletes of various racial and ethnic backgrounds in New York's gossip columns. His mother is white and his father is black.

The NYPD's hate crimes unit recently completed a four-month investigation into the letter to Jeter -- mailed to Yankee Stadium earlier this season, according to Detective Brian Sessa. The department has not made public the investigation's outcome.

Yankee spokesman Jason Zillo declined to comment.

In an interview broadcast Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes," Jeter said that he and his sister were taunted for being bi-racial while growing up in Michigan. But the soft-spoken, cool-headed Yankee said that he has never heard any racial epithets from the fans at Yankee Stadium in his 11 seasons as a Yankee.

The threats have been traced to the Cleveland area.

Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said the reports of the letter to Jeter show that racism can target anyone.

"Celebrity status does not immunize anyone from the poisonous arrows of hate," Foxman said. [AP]

I would hope that with all the evidence they have, all the letters sent to these celebrities, the FBI would be able to find this bastard and lock him up. (I believe that profilers have said that the writer is a man, probably a white man, masquerading as a black woman.) But then I remember that we still don't know who sent the anthrax letters.

It's hard to know with celebrities what they are like behind their public personas. Taye and Idina I've done a show with, and I can vouch for their characters. With Jeter, all I can say is that in 10 years of watching him play and seeing him interviewed and profiled in the media (most recently on 60 Minutes on Sunday), I've never seen even the slightest hint that he isn't exactly what he appears to be: a gentlemen and a very decent person. If that's true, it's a testament to his character, because it's got to be difficult to maintain that under the kind of pressure he lives and performs under.

Addenda: For Yankee fans, like myself, I've added an MLB standings box on the sidebar on the right, to follow the end of the regular season. The links in the box should work.