You should hear Francesa sheepishly defend Jeter. He's playing the "you're the one who's crazy" game while deflecting the whole thing by saying, "Is he supposed to tell the umpire he's out??"

No Mike, but he is supposed to run to first base when he hits a fair ball, not pretend he was hit by the pitch--which is what led to the ump giving him first base in the first place.

If you're gonna tell me he's doing "what anyone else would do," then you have to start treating him like everybody else. This is exactly the type of thing where if it was anyone else, you'd say "you wouldn't see Derek Jeter do that." (If you've actually paid attention instead of repeating what you hear on TV, you've noticed Jeter does things that "Jeter would never do" all the time.)

There's always an excuse for this guy. Shouldn't his supporters at least be saying something like, "I can see other players trying to take the easy way out, but I wouldn't expect it from Derek" instead of acting like he did nothing wrong? "Golden Boy made a mistake" sounds better than "If Golden Boy did it, it wasn't a mistake."

And even when Jeter himself talks about it, he's deflecting the real issue. He says, "hey, sometimes I get hit and the umpire doesn't give me first base." Yeah, well is that because the catcher played a recording of the sound of a ball hitting a bat at the moment the ball hit you? This wasn't "the umpire made a mistake, that's not my fault." This was, "I tried to make the umpire make a mistake (like I always do) and he did."

So make sure you point that out when someone gives you the "at least he was honest" excuse.

And an even less mentioned fact is how the ball was fair. The Jeter we know (ha!) is supposed to see that he hit a fair ball, and immediately start hustling to first. We'd be told that his incredible instincts allowed him to recognize that the ball went forward and he needs to run. Then the fielder would have made a bad throw and we would have been told that it was only because of Jeter's sneaky quickness that the fielder had to force it. Then the ump would have awarded him three extra bases for the ball going into the stands as a well-deserved "distinguished career/lifetime achievement"-type reward. And we'd be told that you can't teach that. And the camera would somehow cut to a shot of Jeter clapping in the dugout as he himself crossed the plate.

Ya know, I don't even care if every single person in the media and every fan comes to the conclusion that Jeter did nothing wrong. I'm just glad that finally, after 15 years, this guy's name is finally being mentioned in the same sentence as "cheating" somewhere besides this blog.