Derek Jeter sold it like a professional, darting away from an inside pitch during the seventh inning on Wednesday, then shaking his arm in apparent pain while walking to first base.

Only later, after home-plate umpire Lance Barksdale had believed Jeter’s self-described “acting” job and ejected Rays manager Joe Maddon in the process, did the Yankees’ captain come clean about the performance he’d put on for the crowd at Tropicana Field.

“It hit the bat,” Jeter said. “He told me to go to first. I’m not going to tell him, ‘I’m not going to go to first,’ you know? My job is to get on base.”

The exhibition proved beneficial for the Yankees, because it meant that Jeter was aboard a batter later when Curtis Granderson cracked a two-run homer just over the right-field wall, giving New York a 3-2 lead at the time.

“It’s part of the game,” Jeter said. “I’ve been hit before and they said I wasn’t hit. My job is to get on base, and fortunately for us it paid off at the time. I’m sure it would have been a bigger story if we would have won that game.”

Replays showed the ball hit the knob of Jeter’s bat. Granderson’s homer came only after Maddon was done with his lengthy argument, during which he even instructed pitcher Chad Qualls to field the ball from the infield grass and get it over to first base for a potential putout.