Tejada’s 33? So What?

What could possibly come next in the sordid trials and tribulations of Migeul Tejada’s life?  Since the Mitchell Report dropped it has just been one thing after another.  There’s the steroid speculation, the perjury case, and now, on top of all that, he’s been lying about his age for the last 15 years.  This is nothing new, as many players from the Dominican Republic, most notably Julio Franco, have lied about their age, but in Tejada’s case it seems a little more serious.

This is a pivotal time in this man’s life.  Unlike Barry Bonds who will never actually be convicted on perjury charges, Tejada’s freedom is in serious jepordy.  There could be no more baseball, and next time he won’t be facing some schmuck from E:60, it will be a room full of pissed off congressmen looking to hang someone for baseball’s sins.  His credibility is all he has, and if he has to lie about something as trivial as his age, what else is he going to lie about?

The funny thing is, Major League Baseball believed this man to be 31, he’s really 33, but when asked by the reporter he stated that his age was 32.  Wow.  Now insert this man in the hot seat where Roger Clemens was seated not too long ago, and imagine Tejada trying to sow together his web of lies as the questions are being shot at him from every which direction, with people trying to exploit the smallest detail.  They don’t try to catch you on the meat and potatoes, no, they look into the details, which is why nearly half of the Clemens hearing was spent on trivialities such as the attire the nanny was wearing at the infamous party, or where Clemens played golf that morning.

The real victim in all of this is Ed Wade, the Astros GM.  If Tejada’s situation gets out of control, or if he ends up, god forbid, in prison for being an idiot, he’ll forever be the man that got duped on the eve of the Mitchell Report.  He constantly says that if he had known the circumstances that he still would have made the deal.  Yeah, right.  I’ll give him a pass on the steroid thing, but this whole age issues is another story.  Oakland and Baltimore really have no excuse either, but it doesn’t really affect them because they both employed Tejada during his prime.  This isn’t shame on Tejada, though.  Sure, he was wrong for lying, but Wade has no excuse for not knowing his real age when the information was readily available.  I don’t really know how MLB does their taxes, but you’d think at some point someone would have saw - oh say - his drivers license, green card, visa, passport, or any of the other legal US document that show his proper birth date.  It’s unbelievable that even ESPN never thought to check these documents while researching his birth date, and instead went all the way to the Dominican.

Tejada shouldn’t be ashamed, if he didn’t have all these issues surrounding him it’d be a minimal story.  Many players from the Dominican and Latin American countries suddenly became 2 years older after 9/11 when the United States government cracked down and began looking into the validity of all the foreign immigrants.  Of these, Alfonso Soriano and Julio Franco were the most prevalent, but even players from the United States have bluffed about their age in the past.  The American’s have no excuse, but the foreign players are coached to do this the same way they are taught to field a ground ball.  It gives them a better shot to escape the poverty of their homeland.  A 16-year old prospect with unlimited upside looks a lot better to a scout than an 18-year-old with the same skill set. 

A perfect example of young players being corrupted came during the 2001 Little League World Series when Danny Almonte captivated the nation with his sheer dominance on the mound.  Almonte dominated hitters with a 70mph fastball, picking up a no-hitter and another perfect game.  The problem was that he was 14 and his opponents were 11 and 12.  There were at least 4 people involved with falsifying the boys age, including the coach of his Bronx Little League team, the boys father, mother, and a town official from his city in the Dominican.

If no one would have ever found out Almonte’s age, and he were to have made his way through high-school, college, and eventually into the bigs, would it have been his responsibility to tell the truth?  He would have lost his eligibility in high school due to being too old.  All because of a lie adults forced him to tell as a child.  Should he sacrifice his career for another’s sins?  It gave him a competitive advantage, no doubt, but I hardly feel that he would have been responsible in such a case.

So give Tejada a break, it’s just like he said, he was a hungry kid trying to get on and all he wanted to do was play baseball.  31, 32, 33, however old he is, didn’t matter then, and it doesn’t matter now.  At least not for him, as far as Wade is concerned, he got got.  As for Peter Angelos, getting this man out of Baltimore before the storm hit should be reason enough to award him the executive of the year award.

Either way, just let Miggy play ball.  For now.