Tejada lied about his age

[Bart]

I first heard of this story while listening to a baseball game. After giving the details, the broadcaster said, " Tejada may have been caught in a fib."Actually, it wasabig lie. He appeared to the scouts as being a much better prospect than he was for his age.The Astro should redo his contract, but I'm sure they won't.


[url]http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ap-tejada-wrongage&amp ;prov=ap&type=lgns[/url]


PHILADELPHIA (AP)â€â€￾Houston Astros shortstop Miguel Tejada told the team he's actually 33, two years older than he's listed in the club's media guide and other baseball records after being shown a copy of his birth certificate by ESPN.


Saying he wanted to rid himself of a burden, Tejada approached general manager Ed Wade and asked to correct misinformation he gave the Oakland Athletics when he signed in 1993.


"I was a poor kid," Tejada said before the Astros finished a three-game series against the Phillies on Thursday. "I wanted to sign a professional contract, and that was the only way to do it. I didn't want or mean to do anything wrong. At the time, I was two years older than they thought."


Tejada was actually 19 when he signed out of poverty-stricken Bani, Dominican Republic. At the time, he says, a local coach encouraged him to say he was 17.
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ESPN said it showed Tejada a copy of his birth certificate from the Dominican Republic during an interview Tuesday. Tejada said at the start of the interview that he was born in 1976. After he was shown the birth certificate, he walked out of the interview, saying: "Right now I just play baseball bro'. I just play baseball, and I don't have to be here to talk about this."

 

[GiovaniMarcon]

What was the purpose of claiming to be seventeen when he was actually nineteen?

Was there some kind of incentive?

On a side note, chicks who are like 33 claim to be 25 all the time, and look and sound just as dumb as this tool.

 

[Bart]

What was the purpose of claiming to be seventeen when he was actually nineteen?

When a scout evaluates talent the age of the prospect is taken into consideration. If a nineteen year old kid displays skills which are normal for his age it is not a big deal, but if he is playing at that levelat seventeen,scouts will run over themselves to snatch him up.Of course, over the years he had gotten older and was given a long term contract by a teamthatthought he was two years younger.If all theparties in the bidding warhad known his actual agehis value would have dropped and he most likely would have signed a contract for many millions less.

 

[Van_Slyke_CF]

I think it has more to do with the younger age at which Latin American prospects, those who are not part of the MLB draft, can be signed to a contract. I believe it is 16 for the countries south of our border.

This issue comes up from time to time. I can remember a few other Latin American players admitting they were one or two years older than their teams thought this decade. I bet the problem runs somewhat deeper than this, too.

 

[Don Wassall]

It even happens in Little League.Who was that dominating pitcher who helped his club win the Little League World Series a decade or so ago? Danny something. Was big for his alleged age and later turned out to be 2 or 3 years older than the allowable age to participate.


Systematic, unapologetic lying is inherent in non-white cultures. Unfortunately in today's ruined society there are two types of whites -- the ever-trusting, mind-boggingly naive ones who still believe everything a minority (and the government and the media) tells them; and those whites who have been reduced to their level and who routinely lie about everything.

 

[LabMan]

From little league on,White American baseball players are forced to provide birth certificates to league officials,if they do not,they can't play,if found to be lying about their age,they are off the team.

 

[Poacher]

I bet the problem runs somewhat deeper than this, too.

With so many "Tejadas" in the league it is a veritable certainty.

That little league pitcher's name was Danny Almonte if I'm not mistaken.

The alacrity with which minorities prevaricate is astounding and frightening.

 

[GiovaniMarcon]

From my own personal experience, blacks and Mexicans will lie to your face, then when you catch them at it and call them on the carpet for it, they compound their dishonesty by lying some more.

example:

Security camera shows black or mexican shoplifting.

Store security apprehends criminal and takes them to a back room for processing.

Criminal lies about having attempted to steal anything.

Store security shows criminal the surveillance tape.

Criminal says the tape is wrong or fake, and calls the security officer a racist.


I'm waiting for Tejada to say the media is after him because he's hispanic.

 

[white is right]

I remember Junior Felix lying about his age. Supposedly a super scout in the Dominican republic saw him at a power lifting competition many years before and swore that he was at least 6 years older than he said he was. Soon after this Felix faded from baseball at 28(he might have been 35).I also recall a Sports Illustrated or Inside Sports article that talked a White American doing this for pitching(it was an undercover piece).

 

[Bear Backer]

I am waiting for Albert Pujols and Alfonso Soriano to be outed. I think they are both older than the ages at which they are listed. Albert Pujols especially. there is no way that Albert Pujols is only 28 years old. I saw a picture of him in spring training this year and he looked like he was old enough to be a Grandpa in Latin America. Of course that would make him about 32+

I have always suspected alot of black athletes are older than their listed ages as well. When I was in highschool there was a black guy who was a senior that played basketball who had a 8 year old son, no joke. Even if he had that kid very young, say at a minumum 14 or so, that would still put him around 21-22 or so when he graduated. Edited by: Bear Backer

 

[PhillyBirds]

A number of black players on my high school football team were 18+ (including one fellow who was rumored to be 21) and were somehow still eligible to play ball. One of them actually got a scholarship to play D2 football. Wonder how he managed that? Colleges I applied to asked me my birthdate at some point...

 

[Riddlewire]

I am waiting for Albert Pujols and Alfonso Soriano to be outed. I think they are both older than the ages at which they are listed. Albert Pujols especially. there is no way that Albert Pujols is only 28 years old. I saw a picture of him in spring training this year and he looked like he was old enough to be a Grandpa in Latin America. Of course that would make him about 32+

.

Although I suspect many of the Caribbean players lie about their ages for the same reason Tejada did, it seems very unlikely that Pujols is one of them. They lie to scouts who come to watch them play so that they can seem like advanced players. But Pujols's family moved to the U.S. before he even played high school baseball. They would've had to have started lying about his age when he was a pre-teen, since his records would be tracked from the moment he entered the school system. Did they start planning to dupe major league baseball scouts about Albert when he was only 12 years old? That's some pretty bold long-term thinking. A better explanation for his advanced athletic abilities (and premature baldness) is that Albert likes the juice. This season will be a good indicator of the extent of steroid and HGH usage in MLB. With increased testing and far more eyes trained on them, not to mention increased pressure from law enforcement to clamp down on the juice pipelines (along with encouraging arrested dealers to 'give up' names), I would bet that the gains made from chemical-enhanced training during the offseason start to wear off by the second half. Pay attention to all these players who have been putting up statistically out-of-bounds numbers this decade (A-Rod, Pujols, Manny). Many of them will probably have career-worst seasons.