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YES, I SAID IT FIRST.
ADVANTAGE JETER
By Patrick Morand, Senior Editor, “YES, I SAID IT FIRST”
Some think the outright lie played out by the Yankees and their star player when Jeter turned away from an inside pitch, just not enough to avoid the appearance that the ball hit him is against some sort of conduct code in sports. After the game they called it cheating, but really is it? In most pro sports there are not one but three opponents to overcome. In baseball with Jeter it is no different. The first is yourself, the batter, who needs to dangerously crowd the plate and threaten to hit the ball to get your pitch. The second is the other team, the pitcher and the infielders who might try to trick you on a play. And the third significant influence on baseball is the umpire, who is an impartial bystander but they are involved in every play. What they see or think they see is a big part of what baseball teams need to take into account. Pitchers and hitters have always had to sell the umpire on balls and strikes. Even if they know a pitch is off the plate a pitcher or catcher will not be turning to the umpire to tell him he got the strike call wrong. They do not give it back. We might actually assume it all balances out somehow, but every team keeps a book on what every umpire likes to call. Catchers will try and obscure how the umpire sees a pitch over the plate by setting up and finishing his glove in a line that makes it hard to follow the break of the pitch. It’s never been considered cheating, but we all know it is taking advantage of built in nuances of the game. It is after all a dangerous game standing inside on those fast inside pitches. It is one reason why most of us would never make it to pro ball. Those pitches would scare the living daylights out of us. They all look like they are coming at you. How many times in Jeter’s career has he been actually pinned by one of those pitches? How many times has it really hurt when he did wear the wounds to first base? I was once hit by a pitch in little league ball, and it hurt. What was worse is that the umpire that day did not award me first base even though I was sore he said I did not try and move out of the way of the pitch. No, I had to stay in there and wiggle at two more pitches until I got called out. I know the umpire was mad at some of the things I said to him, but hopefully he would not be looking for strikes on me – but we know they do with some players. As much as we talk about the book on umpires that players keep, there is also a book on hitters and pitchers that they keep. For every game where we watch two pitchers going head to head and one guy getting all the called strikes and the other guy getting none with the same location on pitches there is your answer. Derek Jeter did sell the call that the ball hit him. What was his alternative? Try to make it look like his bat hit the ball? That would be a foul strike call. I’m pretty sure that Jeter did not really intend to hit that ball with his bat. The pitch was a ball anyway. So it would be a ball as long as it hit no bat. Since it did hit his bat and he knew it his thinking is the same as if he were to swing on a pitch that was off the plate. How often do players try to hold up their swing late and get away with it because the umpire up the line misses the end of the bat that should be pointing at them if it was a full swing? Smart catchers will point immediately up the line to get an appeal call on those so that the umpire may quickly decipher what he just saw (or missed) in their favour. If the batter gets away with that check swing should he tell the umpire that he did go around? Of course not, and I have never heard it ever as a bone of contention in three and a half decades of watching baseball. All this activity falls under the category of gamesmanship not cheating. That in no way discounts the fact that some players, Jeter included as a savvy veteran of the game that umps like, get more calls their way than others. It is Jeter’s job to get on base and keep the inning alive as long as possible. He owes that to his teammates and his manager to take advantage of otherwise human elements of the game of baseball. He may have acted it out heavy with the trainer coming out on the field. He could have danced around behind plate, and walk off the shakes of the pitch being in close, waved off the trainer and trotted up to first base. For Jeter that would have been the right call. Taking a free base is the best outcome of that pitch – unless I am batting behind him and I wasn’t...chuckle...chuckle. Jeter though created that opportunity to get a free missed call base. His stature and ability to hit cause pitchers to risk throwing inside to move him back. A human mistake here because the pitch could have hit him, and the umpire thought it did so it’s the same difference. They were giving Jeter a ball, but ended up giving him a base. I guess the problem people have is technically it was strike because it knocked his bat, but that was not the pitcher’s intention. The pitcher intended to knock Jeter back. So Jeter took advantage of a calculated offering by the pitcher, a mistake by the umpire, and a mistake by himself accidentally getting bat on the ball to make the play look worse than it really was. In the heat of the moment it is first base for Jeter, and a few months ago in the heat of another missed call Armando Gallaraga of Detroit lost a perfect game because the umpire missed an obvious call at first base. I didn’t see the Cleveland batter on that night, despite the temptation to become a hero on the spot point out that umpire’s mistake. It’s not cheating. Is it cheating when a fielder pretends to catch a ball that he trapped in his glove? Is it cheating when an outfielder gets a runner to hold up by pretending he is right under a ball that is hit towards him but he can’t catch? No its not but it is called selling the play and it is smart game play. Cheating is when a player goes up with a corked bat or a pitcher takes an emery board out to the mound to scruff up a baseball. Let’s face it calls get missed all the time, and like Tampa’s Maddon we only hope that our own players get more of the breaks in the game. That means taking advantage of things that happen in the game enough to get calls in their favour. It doesn’t seem to be as big of a dispute in other sports where coaches know that continually lobbying officials tends to win them more calls. I have yet to see a football player guilty of a face mask infraction that the officials miss come over to the ref and tell him his team should be penalized fifteen yards because he feels sorry for what he had done. It doesn’t happen, and that player would probably be kicked off his team if he did. The game is partly about playing the officials. Officials do not always know who jumped offside on a football scrimmage line first. They miss pass interference calls and they miss calls with ball possession. In the NFL replay was invented to help teams that feel they were severely wronged on some plays make their case. It is limited though and never does it apply to judgement calls like penalties. Coaches do call officials to the sidelines and make their case about missed calls. Officials do huddle and begin to look for things that are going on in the game that they might be missing after coaches complain about them. They usually do clamp down on players committing offenses in the second half when a coach gets their ear. So complaining works, and those who know how to do it the best get bonus results, and they may even be results in the future. Referees and umpires have long memories. The risk of being Jeter and embarrassing an umpire publicly by acting can come back and bite him later. There are some umps that will take it as an affront to their brotherhood and just maybe his throw to first will not be on time some night. That is the risk he takes. Players that get reputations, and I believe Jeter is far from gaining a label like that, often put their coaches in difficult situations. In NHL hockey Sean Avery and Dan Carcillo are perfect examples of players that take it too far to the point that officials do not trust them. They do not want to be made public fools of and replay of games usually makes fools out of someone. That hurts their teams because those types of players often do not get legitimate calls in their favour during key moments of games. In hockey that can be critical. If nine guys on the ice would draw a penalty for the same elbow to the head and one guy would need to be brutally stabbed out there to draw a penalty then it gives a physical advantage to the team without the player the refs do not trust. In sports like hockey and football players are committing fouls of some sort on every play. The referees can’t see everything that happens. They miss things, and it is not called cheating by those who are breaking the rules it is instead called “not getting caught”. There are limits to it though. Players can try something for a little while until enough people complain and then the officials watch for it. Yet it seems that everyone knows what those limits are. In the NFL there is dissension over the new rule where the umpire now stands behind the quarterback for most of the game instead of on the defensive side of the ball. For a while players will learn how they can take advantage of that. They will hold players in places where now it will be impossible for the umpire to see the infraction. Not unlike the hockey goalie that covers a puck with his big glove or pad to prevent any angle of camera from showing if it may be a goal. Even if he knows it is not his job to tell them. Everyone has a job to do in the game. The player is to hit the ball, get on base, fake a tag or whatever, but they usually do not ask them if it was a full swing or a check swing. They usually do not ask you if your hand was on the bag before the tag was made and so on. Sometimes they get it wrong and the player seethes off the field in disgust. So what incentive will there ever be for when they are wrong the other way for him to disclose their error. Balance out? No probably not, but everyone gets a bad call on them and nobody expects they owe to give one back when it works in their advantage. On most teams coaches will want their players to just play the game. Play their style and focus on their jobs of making saves, sacking quarterbacks or holding the arms of receivers trying to make a catch. The coaches take over the role of policing officials and fighting for an edge in the rules department. In hockey they have team captains that act as go betweens with the refs and the coach and other players. They wear the little “C” or assistant “A” on their jersey and legitimize a formal way of communicating with the officials. Good captains bargain all game long with the refs. The officials know their concerns and this is really a huge part of the game that does not get much mention but does sway games. In the 2010 NHL playoffs the Pittsburgh Penguins lost the first game of their series with the Ottawa Senators. At the end of that game their all-star captain Sidney Crosby had a lengthy discussion with the referee as they left the ice. He was complaining about things his team felt the Senator players were getting away with. As I watched the encounter I was thinking how badly the Senators coaches had dropped the ball. So immersed in their upset first win they probably should have had their captain in that discussion as a shadow to know everything that was said. In the next game the Penguins were the winners. Yes it was a different officiating crew for that next playoff game but the officials keep notes on the series and the officiating crews are told what things to watch for. The Penguins had the penalty advantage in that game. Maybe that made a difference. It’s all part of the game and we see it in every game. When Maddon came out and argued the Jeter hit by pitch call he knew for sure that the ball hit Jeter’s bat and that Jeter could not possibly be injured. He also knew that he would probably be ejected from the game for making his correct case with the umpiring crew. Given that nothing will change and it never does why do managers go out and dispute calls? I have always insisted that suspensions should be automatic when they do because they can’t change the call and it makes a slow baseball game crawl to a stop. Maddon’s actions brought more public attention to the play, called out Jeter for everyone to see, and maybe it will help his team or hurt Jeter’s team further down the road. Managers like Maddon generally take their time to make sure their players get the same benefit on future calls. We always hope this doesn’t actually work, but we know it does. Just like the hockey game where penalty calls begin to be more noticed or the baseball umpire calls that tend to shift a little as we know that humans do get intimidated by that sort of pressure. I have always wondered what would happen if a team avoided ever questioning calls all season. Would the officials like them more and give them breaks, or would not knowing them face to face make them more dispensable? They call each other by their first names in those conferences. “Hey Ron...” “Hi Steve how’s the family.” “Good, doing well, but you know ...those nose tackles out there keep holding up my guys and I don’t think your guys are seeing because your view is blocked.” “Really, yeah that guy on the left there is pretty tall and there has been some picks in the back....I will keep an eye on it.” A game is a living and breathing event and it takes on a life of its own depending on the circumstances. We try to predict what will happen from a static moment before the game and make assumptions. Coaches and players though change things up as a game goes on and their needs for a certain type of officiating changes with it. If they see a way to buy time and space in a hockey or football match and get away with it they will. They will accept missed calls by the refs and when the other team complains they will act like they did nothing. That’s what Jeter did, but in baseball. Jeter got away with it and people do not understand how because there is one ball and one play going on with all eyes focused in one spot. On this play that spot was at the plate. However, baseball probably has more questionable calls than any other sport. Every play has three evaluation points. Pitch location, fielder position, and tag or force play. So when watching baseball games we just don’t comprehend such obvious misses. It probably helped us rationalize it when Jeter feigned the injury, which was surely over the top, but maybe a good way to buy time and make sure nobody else on the field reversed the call. Remember ANY other umpire could have come in there and made the case that they heard or saw the ball hit the bat. It was Jeter’s job though to do one thing – get on base. Taking his time was a way to do that and the trainer coming out, the trainer probably thought in a blink of the eye that he was hit, sold it. If it’s cheating then it is cheating to compete. It was a high stakes game. This particular Jeter fake play did not determine the game but it is a fight for top spot in a division, and these teams have ruffled things up before in recent years with players diving into home plate or second base spikes up. Those who make the biggest issue with what Jeter did are supposedly standing up against players lying to the umpires. To which I say whenever I see a play develop in any sport with a consequence one party does not agree with the umpires, referees or other officials never ask the player what he thinks. They just make the call. NHL referees remind me of highway patrol guys. They are not interested in hearing how you were not speeding they just want “license and registration” please. Players try to complain that they didn’t do, he tripped on a rut in the ice maybe and not because of a stick between his legs. It never works. On a pitch inside they never ask if you swung at it, instead they assume what they thought they saw was right. Umpires do not go out to the mound to tell the pitcher that he is giving him the low pitches tonight – they have to figure it out for themselves. I have no problem with Jeter expecting the umpires to do the same. “Really, you missed the ball hitting my bat, you didn’t even hear it?” No it hit me and as soon as I shake this one off I am taking my base, case closed. There are no give backs in baseball either. If the Indians never gave back the perfect game to the Detroit pitcher which would have made no difference to Cleveland why should Jeter not take full advantage of this comedy of error? Jeter did his job at the plate and made it to first base, and in doing so created enough controversy to get the other team’s manager kicked out of the game in a pennant race. He may even have given a Ray’s pitcher one more obstacle, second thought about his next inside pitch. This can only be good for Jeter going forward. That is taking advantage of what they give you at its best. And you know what...they never asked him if that pitch was really a strike – they never do. YES, I SAID IT FIRST is a weekly Internet article from the Media Division of OJC-Inc.
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“I wish our guys would do the same thing.....” said Tampa Bay Rays Manager Joe Maddon after New York Yankee’s Derek Jeter acted out a hit by pitch performance that got him to first base even though admittedly the ball hit his bat and did not really inflict him. 
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