Yanks' Jeter a cheater?

I’m very black and white. Yes, my girlfriend Tina just rolled her eyes and suggested about a dozen more very’s. Rules are rules and that’s just the way it is. Well, has been. I am realizing that there is a lot of gray in all facets of life. Even sports.

While there certainly are rules in sports, they are generally open to interpretation. A foul is what the ref calls a foul. A strike is what the ump calls a strike.  The beginning of a game is often spent with the players figuring out what the ref/ump is going to call. Then the rest of the game settles in.

So selling the call is part of it. Making sure you jump back at a little contact helps the ref see the foul. Is that cheating? Of course not. Last night the Yankees’ Derek Jeter sold the home plate ump on the fact that he got hit on the wrist by the pitch, when clearly the pitch hit the bat. Cheating? No, no, no.

The decision is the officials’ to make. The official has to take everything into account, even the sales abilities of the players involved. Then they make their call. It always has been and always will be part of sports. Part of life really, These things go on in business all the time. Product managers spinning and manipulating whatever they have to when making their pitch to get more funding from the VP.

Is all of this a bad influence on kids? No.  My daughter was taught to frame pitches as a catcher when she was 10. She picked it up right away. Five years later she was the catcher for a travel team but multiple concussions kept her from ever playing in any tournaments. We went to watch a game and it was painful for her. Her replacement didn’t have a great game. Passed balls, bad throws. At the end of the game my daughter said she couldn’t come watch again. It wasn’t watching the passed balls and bad throws that upset her. She said there were so many pitches that she could have gotten called strikes.