Pull a Jeter

By now you have most likely seen the incident with Derek Jeter of the Yankees dozens of times when he was hit by a pitch, or was he. It depends on the camera angle used.

Your reaction may be determined by whether you are a Yankee fan or not. It depends on whether you believe in winning at all costs.

The excerpt below from a USA Today article by Mike Lopresti indicates it happens frequently in many sports - football, baseball, basketball.

The desire to win by both players and fans appears to override our values.

Should Jeter have told the umpire he didn’t get hit? I don’t know. Will this change the future of the world? Doubt it.

Aren’t there more important more pressing issues to be concerned with? Yea there are. Let’s forget the trivial stuff and make an effort to focus on the important stuff.

What we do in our everyday lives is much more important than one incident in a baseball game.

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‘Jeter is what makes this so fascinating. You wonder if that .262 average has him desperate to find new ways to get on base. You try to decide if there is something unsettling in watching a Bronx god indulge in human chicanery.

Perhaps. But there is really no more reason for condemnation here than there is for the receiver who holds the football high in the air with two hands after trapping a pass, trying to convince the side judge a catch was made.

Or the shortstop who holds up his glove, trying to win an out call on a tag he missed.

Or the basketball forward who collapses like a soufflé, hoping to draw a charge. Some notoriously flop, but nearly everyone at least ... emphasizes.

The word is "gamesmanship," and this is the way it is in professional sport, where not only glory but also livelihoods are at stake. More accurately, it is trying to make use of the power of suggestion. Feel free to throw this matter onto the pile of reasons for the use of more replay in baseball. The camera is immune to the power of suggestion.

If one could quibble with anything about Jeter's performance, it'd be his postgame script. He needed to be, ah, fuzzier in his memory of the event.’