My roommate and I were having a discussion last night about the now famous Derek Jeter play, and really, we were focusing on why the media was making such a big deal about it. In case you haven't watched sports news anywhere in the United States (seriously every time I turned on ESPN yesterday, this was the story), Jeter was hit by a pitch in a game on Wednesday night. Except he wasn't. The ball hit the knob of the bat, Jeter was a good actor and he got his base then a lot of argueing happeneded. Blah Blah Blah.
The question was then, is Jeter a cheat?
In a normal world, when one person decieves another person, in order to recieve some sort of beneficial reward or treatment, that action of deciption qualifies as cheating.
Except in the world of sports.
There is a gray line in Sports of what is cheating and what is not. Using Performance enhancing drugs? Cheating. Scuffing the Baseball? Cheating. Acting like you got hit by a pitch? Actually not cheating.
To some degree in sports, it is permissible to do things in order to get an advantage. In football for example, one could call holding on almost every single play. In basketball and soccer, players act more injured than they actually are in order to get a penalty of sorts on the other team. In baseball, this tradition of not exactly fair play falls on the hitter acting like they got hit by the pitch. What Jeter did is exactly what any ball player should do in that situation because you are trying to create an advantage on the team. The responsibility here falls on the umpires, who are bestowed with the job to make sure players do not create these unfair advantages.
If this happens all the time, why isn't it covered like it was yesterday? Simple. When Jeter does something that pushes moral boundaries, the world overreacts.
