Derek Jeter Fakes Being Hit By a Pitch but He's Not a Cheater

On a day when The Chief ripped an ESPN writer for writing some garbage about Rex Ryan and his lack of control over his player's hormones, I couldn't help but follow suit on another article that was written by an ESPN writer. This time it had to do with the Derek Jeter antics from Wednesday night. On Wednesday evening, in a close game against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, Jeter was awarded first base for appearing to be hit in the hand with the ball. The only problem was the replays showed that the ball actually hit the butt of the bat and never touched him.

It wasn't long before a handful of people were quick to criticize the move by Jeter as unethical. That in itself is insane, but there's someone to critique everything these days. First of all, in every sport across the board, any athlete will take any possible chance they can to increase their team's chance of winning. Some call it cheating, but I call it gamesmanship. Football players are taught to sell the catch even if the ball hits the ground as are baseball players when they may not actually have caught the ball before it barely skimmed the ground. Basketball players are taught to sell the foul when it could appear that an opponent may have bumped them. Can you really blame an athlete in any of these scenarios? Would you expect any less?

 Sports in general are far too competitive and no one wants to see the athletes start calling their own fouls or deciding whether or not they actually completed a reception. The umpire thought Jeter was hit by the ball and was ready to award him first base, so is it DJ's position to say "no, actually I wasn't hit"? This would be the equivalent of a wide receiver hopping up and admitting the ball actually hit the ground even if the referee had already ruled it a completion. It would also be the same as a basketball player telling the ref that he wasn't fouled on a play when the ref obviously missed a call. Maybe he should say, "Actually that was not a foul, so please give the ball to the other team instead of letting me shoot my free throws." Is there anyone out there that actually would like to see this kind of thing happen in sports?

Wallace Matthews does.

Matthews wrote the article for ESPNNewYork.com that infuriated me enough to write this. He believes that Derek Jeter is a cheater for this and that for the first time in 15 years, Jeter has showed that he has flaws. Seriously, I can't get over it, is there anyone else besides Matthews that really thinks that we should have this kind of self-governance in sports? Please speak up if you do, because I would love to hear your reasoning.

The best way for me to tell you how Matthews feels about the Jeter incident is to just quote him directly from his article and offer my rebuttal. Everything next to the bullets below in parentheses is from Matthews' article. You can read his article in it's entirety at the link in the previous paragraph. Here is the first thing that caught my eye and got me just a little hot under the collar (I'm not furious yet.)

To read the rest of the article and The Phenom's personal thoughts on Matthews article, visit SPORTSorGTFO.com, where it's all about sports or you can GTFO.