Ethics in baseball

Derek Jeter, captain of the New York Yankees and generally considered a “clean” player, has unwittingly thrust an ethics discussion into the often seedy world of Major League Baseball.

It all comes back to this play in last night’s game:

Ouch. That must’ve hurt. Except the pitch actually didn’t hit Jeter. It hit his bat, thus making it a foul ball.

But Jeter acted — in the real world we would call this “lying” — as if he was hit by the pitch.

“He (the umpire) told me to go to first base. I’m not going to tell him I’m not going to first, you know,” Jeter said.

“It’s part of the game. My job is to get on base. Fortunately for us it paid off at the time, but I’m sure it would have been a bigger story if we would have won that game.”

Cheater? Or savvy sports hero?