Friday, September 17, 2010

DEREK CHEATER: There's wily gamesmanship, I suppose, and then there's outright lying:
Derek Jeter sold it like a professional, darting away from an inside pitch during the seventh inning on Wednesday, then shaking his arm in apparent pain while walking to first base.

Only later, after home-plate umpire Lance Barksdale had believed Jeter's self-described "acting" job and ejected Rays manager Joe Maddon in the process, did the Yankees' captain come clean about the performance he'd put on for the crowd at Tropicana Field.

"It hit the bat," Jeter said. "He told me to go to first. I'm not going to tell him, 'I'm not going to go to first,' you know? My job is to get on base."

As of right now, Jeter's only doing his job 33.0% of the time, and August is the only month this year he hasn't done it worse than the preceding month.

[Look: if you're going to cheat, don't brag about it. Is that such a hard standard to meet?]

11 comments:

  1. ChinMusic9:12 AM

    Hopefully this puts to rest the sanctimonious drivel about how Derek Jeter is the only guy from this era that we can be sure didn't juice.  Like he says, his job is to get on base.  Whether a guy has to fake a pitch hitting his hand or take a needle in his ass, he's just trying to do his job.  I am not accusing Jeter of roiding up and I am not suggesting that this incident leads to a conclusion that he did.  I am just saying that this article shows that Jeter is no different than the rest of the guys in MLB.  They are all trying to get whatever edge they can in a difficult sport played at the highest level.  Sometimes that pushes a player to fake being hit by a pitch, sometimes it pushes a player to cork his bat or put snot on the ball, sometimes it pushes the player to PEDs.  It doesn't seem unfathomable to me that a guy struggling to do his job could do one or more of these things.  Hopefully Jeter never crossed that line, but I don't think anybody should be surprised if he did.     

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  2. isaac_spaceman10:51 AM

    I have never been a Jeter fan, but I can't get overly excited about this.  If I'm going to get irritated every time he does something mildly positive and it gets blown wildly out of proportion by blowhard Yankees fans, then I feel obliged to get irritated when he does something mildly negative and it gets blown wildly out of proportion by non-Yankees fans.  I prefer to think of Jeter as a long-time player who was above average offensively (and had a couple of truly great offensive seasons), below average defensively (despite an undeserved reputation as a superior defender), and MVP-caliber romantically.  One embracing of a blown call by an umpire won't change that. 

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  3. Lurker David11:10 AM

    So by the logic that Jeter cheats because he took first base, Jason Donald (the batter who was awarded first base during Galarraga's near-perfect game) is also a cheater, because he should have declared himself out.  And every catcher who receives a ball that is out of the strike zone but is called a strike.  Baserunners who are tagged out, but the ump misses the call.

    As a Red Sox fan, I do not like any Yankees, however I cannot fault Jeter here.  The acting was a little much, but aside from that, I don't see a problem with this.

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  4. Jeter provided overt phony acts in support of the fraud; the others did not.

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  5. Maybe Jeter's been hanging out with too many soccer players?

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  6. Fred App11:58 AM

    Just proves the double standard. If A-Rod did this, he'd get hammered. Among Yankee fans and sportswriters, Jeter can do no wrong.

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  7. Daniel Fienberg12:10 PM

    <p>Adam - What about every catcher who frames a ball that he knows didn't cross the plate in the strike zone, but found itself in his glove in the strike zone? That's providing an overt phony act in support of fraud. What about the guy running to first on a bang-bang play who immediately starts clapping his hands as he makes it to first, just in case the umpire wasn't sure that he made it in time? Also an overt phony act in support of fraud. Any pitcher who stares down an ump or yaps at an ump after one close call and then gets the next close call in his favor? That's an overt phony act in support of future fraud. 
    </p><p> 
    </p><p>I HATE Derek Jeter. It's my birthright. But lying isn't inherently the same as cheating, especially not in a sport where there's no POSSIBLE punishment for that lying. In soccer, if a ref is convinced you took a dive, he can punish you. Therefore, that lie is cheating, because it can be against the established rules of the sport.
    </p><p> 
    </p><p>I can't find a rule Jeter broke. That's largely because I'm lazy, though. Is there an MLB rule against lying/theatrics/being-a-wiener? The same goes for the A-Rod shout. The A-Rod should was one of those things that violated an "unwritten" baseball rule. I'm not even sure that Jeter's acting violates an unwritten rule.
    </p><p> 
    </p><p>In contrast, there *is* a rule that A-Rod violated with the infamous ball-slap. Thus? He's a cheater.
    </p><p> 
    </p><p>-Daniel
    </p>

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  8. Robin1:22 PM

    I would like to throw in my enthusiastic support for the title of this post.  Vote Puns 2010!  Four more years!

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  9. There's a general rule against unsportsmanlike behavior.

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  10. Lurker David9:39 PM

    I disagree.  The examples I gave frequently (Not Jason Donald) are accompanied by "phony acts," such as making a safe sign, talking up the ump (about balls and strikes), even just arguing the opinion after the fact are phony acts.  An example is the holding up the ball as if it were caught in the outfield.  If the ump believes the fielder, and calls the batter out, that is an overt phony act in support of the fraud.

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