tejada cheated?

The More You Don’t

Or the subtitle could be: “It didn’t start yesterday” Cobb and many others were notorious in the early part of the last century for favoring opponents who were trying for batting titles and other recognition.

One thing this story clearly suggests is that this stuff happens. And maybe far more than we’d like to believe. Whether Tejada did it or not the fact that a team meeting had to be called suggests that it was a credible enough allegation— i.e, it was not an unheard of practice in the bigs. As other references in the story bear out.

Brett Favre took a dive so Michael Strahan could have the sack record; we’ve heard of pitchers in runaway games grooving a pitch to a hitter on the other team looking for a memorable home run. Is this so different?

My guess is that Miggy was guilty, but on a fairly limited basis… and that it happens a lot.

Miguel tejada is, was, and always will be my favorite Athletic. He played with so much heart and emotion, I have a hard time buying this. If he was guilty, it would crush me, my fond memories of the late 90s and early 2000s A’s teams, and make it difficult for me to ever get that close to a team again.

I therefore choose to ignore this article, classify it as bologna, and lash out at anyone who suggests negative things about Miguel Tejada.

Obviously, it’s less compelling because it is eight years old. But think of what would have happened if it had become public then.

There are an awful lot of on-the-record quotes from active major leaguers in that story, which is pretty impressive given the subject matter. It isn’t like Miggy is some nobody.

Mets third baseman Fernando Tatis said that he had never seen or heard of an actual case of pitch tipping or helping an opponent, but he added, "It happens."

Never saw it, never heard of it, nevertheless convinced that it happens. Perfect!

The entire piece is like that. Rampant speculation, hearsay, and a whole lot of drawing lines between widely separated dots that may not be connected at all.

Could it be true? Sure. But the fact that a hothead like Frank Menechino thought something was true is not especially strong evidence that that thing was actually true. As long as we’re speculating, how about some counter-speculation: These stories could be rooted in the age-old human tendency to be suspicious of outsiders and foreigners. The same impulses that, on a darker plane, led to witch burnings, the Japanese relocation, and centuries of pogroms resulting from whispers about what Jews purportedly did in their rituals to Christian babies.

My guess is that the false suspicion of cheating was more frequent than actual cheating of this kind.

Remember that the 2001 team was probably the best team the A’s have fielded since 1989, and went on to post one of the most amazing 2nd half performances of the post WWII era. And was the Wild Card team— because Seattle cold-cocked the A’s and everyone else on their way to a record-shattering 116-46 season.

At the time of the supposed controversy— which occurred after a three game series in Toronto on May 8-9-10— the A’s were already 11 games behind the M’s (they would fall as much as 20 games back in late June) and were reeling— boasting a poor 11-20 record before the Toronto series.

WHICH THEY WON IN A SWEEP. Yep, they won all three games that supposedly sparked this team meeting and accusation against Tejada.

I looked at all 28 games through the Toronto series and the subsequent 3 game set in Boston where the A’s either a) lost or b) won but allowed 5 runs or more— which would be leading candidates for the kind of pitch-tipping behavior that was alleged. All 3 Toronto games fell into the latter category. In each case I identified the opposition player who did the A’s the most damage. (if someone wants to go back and compute every single BA, OPS, etc.. for all Dominican and non-Dominican players, be my guest)

So Johnny Damon— here we go!! Lots of Latin players hurt the A’s early— in the first 10 of these 28 games, 8 of them featured Latin players who were the most damaging. Only problem is— they were Edgar Martinez (Puerto Rican born in NYC— 3 games— who happened to be just about the best right hand hitter in the AL back then), Benjie Molina (PR also), Carlos Guillen (Venezuelan), Benji Gil (Mexican) and, yes, Alex Rodriguez (2 games) who, while he was born in the DR, grew up in Miami and doesn’t really count as someone Tejada would be helping out. Plus he might have been the best player in the game.

But then up to a series with the Red Sox just before the trip to Toronto the only Latino players who hurt the A’s were Jose Valentin (walk-off HR— he’s Puerto Rican) , Carlos Lee (Panama) and Alfonso Soriano, who was Dominican but went a measly 1-2 with a run and a RBI in a Yankee game the Bombers won. Instead we were burned by the likes of Fullmer, Greer, Knoblauch, Tino Martinez (from Florida).

Until… and here we get into the Damon territory: Jose Offerman— a Red Sock from the DR— killed us in back to back games in Oakland: 5-9 with 2 HRS, 3 R and 5 RBI. And then Batista went 6-13 in that Toronto series with 5 RBI, but remember a) the A’s won that series, and b) Brad Fullmer and Scott Fletcher were Blue Jay batting stars in two of those games. And then ManRam— also from the Dominican— lit us up twice in Fenway. As if that was caused by pitch-tipping.

So it seems that for a team coming off a playoff appearance and an ever-so-close defeat to the Yankees who was playing badly at 11-20 and already nearly hopelessly behind their chief division rival, the performance of Jose Offerman and Tony Batista in back-to-back series raised some eyebrows. Of course the team went 91-40 from the time their plane set down on Canadian soil till the end of the year.

So either the meeting a) helped unify the team, b) convinced Tejada to stop “throwing” games (I am being facetious, of course), or c) was inconsequential compared to the rest of that year’s course.

But one final note: I will never forget Giambi, for whatever you thought or think of him, knowing he was probably headed elsewhere in the off-season and very likely to NY, screaming at Tejada for not taking an extra base on Giambi’s hit in the late stages of Game 5 when the A’s were trailing. Was it a by-product of this earlier incident? Who knows?