Former Yankees manager Buck Showalter is the new manager of division rivals the Baltimore Orioles, and he's wasting no time stoking the fires of competition. In an interview in the April edition of Men's Journal, he rips into both the Red Sox and the Yankees, and in particular, greatest NY athlete Derek Jeter. "The first time we went to Yankee Stadium, I screamed at Derek Jeter from the dugout. Our guys are thinking, 'Wow, he's screaming at Derek Jeter.' Well, he's always jumping back from balls just off the plate. I know how many calls that team gets -- and yes, he [ticks] me off."
Showalter is essentially accusing Jeter of playacting, publicly calling him out for being overdramatic to get some close calls in his favor. But it's something which is incredibly common in all sports, let alone baseball. Just earlier this week, Big Baby Glenn Davis took an elbow to the face against the Knicks, and proceeded to flop onto the ground like a beached whale; as Walt Clyde Frazier puts it, he truly has "aspirations of Hollywood." In soccer, it's such a common occurrence, it has even spawned its own subculture on "taking a dive."
Below, you can see one such example of Jeter exaggerating his injuries. In a game last season against the Rays, he is seemingly hit by a pitch, and awarded first base...even though on replay, you can clearly see that he wasn't actually hit by the pitch:
