Miguel Tejada: The Career Leader In Unique Forms Of Cheating
How is Miguel Tejada not the most hated player in baseball?
No, seriously. Don’t shrug your shoulders. The guy was named in the Mitchell Report, the document that linked Jason Giambi and Barry Bonds to steroids. He lied to Congress about purchasing HGH. He lied to the Oakland A’s, the Baltimore Orioles and the Houston Astros about how old he was. He does nothing to raise the spirits of the dead Astros clubhouse. He considers Fig Newtons to be cookies (not cake) and leaves the wrappers all over the video room. And now, the New York Times reported Saturday that he was suspected of helping friends on opposing teams by signaling what pitches were coming and allowing batted balls to get past him during the occasional blowout in 2001.
Honestly, if this is all true – hell, if half of it is true – this guy is Gaylord Perry, Pete Rose, Jose Canseco and my grandmother – who still swears she’s 47 – all wrapped into one.
It’s unclear why this article is popping up now, eight years after it allegedly took place and eight years removed from the possibility of Tejada’s actions ever being proven or disproven. This article was written almost a week ago and there’s been no discussion. No outrage. No rebuttal. No backlash. There have been a plethora of villains in baseball from Ty Cobb to Roger Clemens to Milton Bradley, yet Miguel Tejada is never at the forefront of anyone’s ire.
I understand why MLB does nothing, but why the public? He was guilty of buying and using steroids. He was guilty of lying about it. And he was guilty about pretending to be two years younger than he was. In the court of public opinion, if you’re guilty of three crimes and you’re accused of a fourth … man, you’re guilty.
And if that’s how it works (and I bet Bonds will back me up on that it does work this way) then again, I ask: How is Miguel Tejada not the most hated man in baseball?
Even if steroids are not the dark mark the media has made them out to be and no one sees lying about being two years older as a big deal and even if lying to Congress is viewed as harmless as paying for one movie ticket then theater-hopping all afternoon (hasn’t Congress lied to us countless times? And hasn’t the production studio I’m ripping off, ripped me off first when they told me seeing two “Pirates of the Caribbean” sequels would be a good idea?), it still doesn’t explain the passivity with which this allegation is being met.
If there’s any truth to the NY Times article, isn’t this the worst and most basic of all cheats? It’s not cheating near the game like Pete Rose or in preparation of the game like Canseco and the others. Tejada’s cheating happened during the game and against his own team. One would think there would be noise just to disprove something like that, if for no other reason than to avoid confronting the implications.
But no. Nothing.
To be a fan of baseball or any sport you have to believe it’s at least more clean than dirty and you have to hope that it’s possible for the dirt to be expelled.
Perhaps everyone is just waiting for proof of the things submitted in David Waldstein’s article that was released apropos of nothing. Perhaps its conjecturous tone rendered the article irrelevent or unbelievable even among baseball cynics.
Perhaps, but not likely.
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Photo courtesy of Flickr
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