I saw the video of the Derek Jeter acting thing from last night but I haven’t yet seen the way the Internet or newspapers are taking to it. Put me down for thinking it’s pretty awesome, though.

Look: It’s downright silly, and certainly something for which Jeter deserves to be taunted mercilessly by opposing fans. But he exploited the situation to gain a competitive advantage. Is that cheating? Kind of, but if you’re going to get bent out of shape every time a player tries to mislead an umpire you’re going to have a whole lot of blustering to do. It just so happens that this example was particularly egregious, the evidence proving it nonsensical particularly strong, and Jeter’s reaction particularly absurd.

But what matters most is, like he said, that he got to first base. And it’s cool that he recognized the opportunity, and that he appropriately values that chance. Probably realizing how important it is to reach first base and seizing every opportunity you have to do so is a big part of the mindset that makes you become Derek Jeter.

The doubling over felt a little unnecessary though.

Another thing I want to reiterate, since this is coming up all over again now: It really amazes me that so many people can be so certain that the quality of Major League umpiring has gotten worse in some tangible way. This strikes me as a combination of confirmation bias — there are lots of stories of how the umpiring is bad, so we’re seeing a normal amount of bad calls and every time thinking, “yup, more bad umpiring!” — and new technologies that allow us to better assess umpiring.

I imagine if we could watch back every game from the 60s, 70s and 80s in high definition with ultra-mo replay and a billion camera angles like we have today, we’d spot thousands of blown calls at first and a hundred gaffes like Jeter’s last night that just got shrugged off by fans and media in the past because they appeared too close to contend with.