Derek Jeter: Hardly 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’s 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.)

• “The guy is not above occasionally doing what lesser mortals do on a regular basis, which is trying to grab something he did not deserve to have … in this case, first base. That, in a word, is cheating. There are other words for it, as well, such as lying and stealing, but for now, let’s stick to the C word.”
  • He didn’t deserve first base, but the umpire offered to him after Jeter’s immediate appearance of being hit by the pitch. Jeter had a split second to spin around and act like he was hit. It was almost like it was second nature for him to try and sell it. He literally spun around in one motion and shook his hand. It was a natural reaction that any baseball player would have made. Once Jeter noticed the ump was giving him first base, should he really have backtracked and told them he was faking? This is the exact same thing as a spontaneous reaction in basketball when a player flops. Sometimes, the player really thinks they’re going to be fouled and acts out of that anticipation to sell the foul. Jeter really thought he was going to be hit and acted out of that anticipation. Does that make him a cheater, liar, or thief? Yeah right… GTFO.
• “In real life, it might translate to lying on your resume or fudging your sales figures. In my business, it would be equivalent to “borrowing” someone else’s work and passing it off as my own, or inventing a quote and putting it into the mouth of some nonexistent “unnamed source.”"
  • Now, this is where I get a little furious. Did he really just compare Jeter’s actions to lying on a resume or fudging your sales figures? How does this compare to plagarism? I just can’t make the connection. Matthews is using examples that can send people to jail. Jeter’s actions are something that take place in a game and are widely accepted in the entire sports industry. Like it or not, refs make good and bad calls. It all balances out. I’ve seen too many umpires miss too many calls in baseball that have hurt teams or individuals. If players can use a situation to their advantage, so be it. Until MLB decides to add replay, then there’s always going to be someone getting screwed in just about every game. “In real life” this would actually be more like two competing firms trying to land the same client and one of the firms using some kind of “widely used loophole” to gain a tactical advantage over the other. Fudging your sales figures only hurts yourself and your company; lying on your resume only hurts yourself and potentially your future company. Jeter’s actions did neither of these. He was just helping his team and gaining an advantage over his competition. Don’t try to use real life examples of things that are far above and beyond anything comparable to what Jeter did… GTFO
• “and no one in his or her right mind could have expected him to tell the umpire that the ball did not, in fact, hit him, which he readily admitted after the game.”…”It reveals a fundamental lack of integrity we have come, sadly, to expect of the average person, but not from Derek Jeter, who over the past 15 years has shown himself to be anything but average.”
  • This is two seperate quotes and I just want to point out the contradiction. He actually admits that no one should expect him to instantly admit that the ball did not hit him. This statement alone nearly contradicts his entire article, but it definitely does so with this second quote. Notice his use of the word expect. “No one in his or her right mind could have expected him” and then he turns right around and says we haven’t come to expect this from Jeter. Well, which is it? Should we expect it or should we not? The previous 15 years of Jeter’s career has no bearing on what we should expect him to do instantaneously in this situation.
• “For the past 15 years, Jeter has been everything we want our ballplayers to be, and everything we would like our kids to become. Except for one split-second Wednesday night, when he became something he has never been before: Human. And therefore, flawed.”
  • And this is where I became over the top infuriated. Most of me knows he doesn’t mean Jeter really isn’t “human”, but there is a slight part of me that thinks maybe he really believed it. Jeter has always been human and for “one split-second” he remained human. Of course every human is flawed, but I believe Matthews is using “flawed” as a synonym to tainted. Suddenly Jeter went from being an upstanding athlete to someone who is now a bit tarnished because he did something every other athlete would have done, and as Matthews said himself, no sane person could have expected him to handle differently.

When the smoke clears and it’s Jeter’s day to enter Cooperstown, will anyone remember this moment? Will people now be apprehensive to allow their children to idolize him? I highly doubt it. Let’s not make this a big deal because it’s Derek Jeter. The man made a strategic move to attempt to increase his team’s chances to win the game. That’s the nature of sports. The referees are part of the game and they’re going to make good and bad calls. If you can use that to your advantage, then more power to you.

I guess since this is such a big deal, we should start telling catchers that they cannot move their hand when a pitch hits the glove, because then they might fool the umpire and that lacks integrity. Also, we’re going to need to make sure that when there is a fumble in football, no one tries to rip the ball away from the original recoverer amongst the scramble. We need integrity on the bottom of those piles. GTFO!

Let’s close the book on this issue and act like it was never opened.