Reporter David Waldstein cites a Oakland-Toronto series in May 2001, during which Tejada and Blue Jays third baseman Tony Batista, a friend from the Dominican Republic, both hit well. Tejada went 4 for 10 with three home runs; Batista, 6 for 13, with a home run.

More significant in the eyes of some of the players was an incident in the second game of the series. Tejada did not get to an easy ground ball Batista hit off reliever Mark Guthrie with the Athletics leading, 8-2. When the inning was over, A's players fumed on the bench.

Tejada, now 35, said his teammates were skeptical because Batista dropped a foul pop-up he hit in the previous game.

Lacking any hard evidence, Waldstein places the accusations in the mouths of some of Tejada's former A's mates, whose suspicions were further aroused in July 2001 when Tejada "failed to catch what appeared to some as a soft line drive off the bat of Los Angeles Dodgers third baseman Adrian Beltre," a teammate of Tejada's in the Dominican Winter League. By the middle of the month, some A's players had grown so wary of their shortstop that manager Art Howe was forced to shake himself from his seasonlong nap and convene a team meeting:

Not surprisingly, several people who attended the meeting, in the A's home clubhouse, described it as contentious and ugly. Frank Menechino, an A's infielder at the time, said the veteran Ron Gant took control at the first hint that it might turn nasty.

"I think Ron Gant calmed it down before it snowballed into anything big," said Menechino, now the hitting instructor for the Class AA Trenton Thunder. "Like: ‘Hey, man, we can't worry about what the other teams are doing in this league. But we can't pull the Dominican guys out of our team and suspect them of anything until we catch them.' He basically calmed everything down. Everything was fine after that. I seriously can't prove, say, yes or no, that guys were doing it. But who knows?"

[...]

Johnny Damon, who played for the Athletics then, absolved Tejada by saying observant opponents had been interpreting Tejada's inadvertent cues.

"Miggy was telling guys there was no way he would be doing it," Damon said. "I think what we concluded was that the hitters were seeing him move on certain pitches. That happens, you'll see a young player move closer to the hole on a fastball away, you'll see him creep a little toward the hole. I think that's what it all came down to, Miggy not being able to hide the extra steps. But it seemed like all the Dominican guys were killing us."

And with that last bit, the team meeting sounds less like an airing of well-founded suspicions than an exercise in a sort of clubhouse McCarthyism. There's a persistent and especially odious stereotype in baseball that suggests Latino players lack a certain loyalty to their teams, that they act as a sort of free-floating junta within the game. Many years ago, the former Giants skipper Alvin Dark famously questioned their "mental alertness," adding, "You can't make most Negro and Spanish players have the pride in their team that you can get from white players," and, "One of the biggest things is that you can't make them subordinate themselves to the best interest of the team." (This has a political corollary in the longstanding notion that minorities, and especially blacks, are insufficiently patriotic.) Nearly a half-century later, you find no less than Keith Hernandez accusing the Mets' Latino faction of conspiring to get Willie Randolph canned. There's a vast and fetid history of this, and it has never been more than a lot of racist hooey, and so forgive me if I'm a little skeptical of a Times story whose every paragraph rings with echoes of Alvin Dark.

Friendship or Betrayal From Inside the Lines? [New York Times]

A federal criminal complaint was filed in U.S. District Court today, charging Tejada with "Misrepresentations to Congress" which is apparently frowned upon. The six-page indictmentinformation, which you can read below, basically says that the findings in the Mitchell Report contradict what Tejada told Congressional staffers during an interview conducted when they were investigating the steroids in baseball matter. Legally, that's the same thing as lying to Abraham Lincoln's ghost, so you can imagine how much trouble he's in. Tejada is due in court, in Washington, tomorrow morning.

This marks yet another athlete who will be put on trial not for using, buying, or selling steroids—but for lying about it to important people. U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

Tejada Charged With Lying to Investigators [Washington Post]

Update: According to some people who think they're better than me because of their fancy degrees, this is not an actual indictment, but merely a statement of the charges. Also, Tejada has reportedly reached a agreement with prosecutors and will plead guilty.

When Miguel Tejada met 8-year-old Jacob Scott on Friday, he was so touched by the little boy with muscular dystrophy he promised him a home run. Tejada fulfilled his vow to the youngster by hitting the first of three straight Houston home runs in a 7-4 win over the Milwaukee Brewers. The Astros hit five homers in the game.

"I was so excited," said Tejada, who'd never promised a home run before. "I know it's hard to tell someone you'll hit a home run and do it. But today when I went to lunch with this kid I wanted him to be happy. So I told him I'd do it."

We would like to see Tom Farrey interview Tejada afterwards. "Isn't it true that you actually promised him a ball over the left field wall, rather than over the right? Mr. Tejada? Mr. Tejada? Where are you going?"

Miguel Tejada Gets His Babe Ruth On [MachoChip]
ESPN Plays To Catch A Predator [Deadspin]

Chris Mottram, the younger, more virile half of the Mottram blog Hydra unloads on the Lester Munson article that accompanies the E:60 promo on ESPN.com:

Middle aged women beware: Lying about your age is the gateway lie to lying about much more harmful things. Like drug abuse.

So, remember, set your Tivo's if you want to watch this Tejada — sorry, Tejeda guy squirm like the lawless vermin he is. Plus, it's also fun to watch that gripping E:60 roundtable, as ESPN's elite muckraking corps vet each story like it's Watergate: THE MAN IS NOT USING HIS GOD GIVEN FEET TO WIN RACES...

Tonight, We Finally Find Out Tejada's Real Age! [The Sporting Blog]

Most journalists we've talked to dream of moments like this; you have a guy you know is lying to you, lies to you to your face and then you NAIL him as he scurries away. Everyone else, you know, regular people, think reporter Tom Farrey trapped Tejada and purposely embarrassed him on camera. (In uniform, no less!)

Frankly, we tend to veer toward the latter camp, despite, you know, being ostensibly (theoretically?) a journalist. As Shakedownsports puts it:

E:60's ambush of Miguel Tejada was flat out wrong. It was television at its lowest point. Pure exploitation in order to get ratings. What did Tejada do to deserve being lured into a studio and left bare in front of a camera on live tape-delayed TV? This isn't "To Catch a Predator." Nobody can think to themselves that the guy on camera deserved what he got. Nobody can think ESPN was helping out it's viewers by calling attention to Tejada's real age. It was simply entrapment. Tom Ferry tricked Tejada into lying and then he had the brazeness to keep yelling questions as Tejada left the room.

It is telling that Tejada took tougher questioning about his age than he ever has about steroids.

Despite being named in the Mitchell Report, having his older brother die in a motorcycle accident in January and dealing with a reality where being dealt to the Astros is an upgrade, Miguel Tejada can't really curse the heavens just yet. After all, he's still married to the stunning Alejandra, who in the past year has become a spanish-language pop star with a second album already announced for later this year.

UmpBump has a gallery of pictorial salaciousness.

I wonder if, like Rafael Palmeiro, she's let Miggy stick a steroid needle in her butt?

The Baltimore Orioles traded Miguel Tejada to the Houston Astros yesterday. Their timing was impeccable.

As you've surely heard by now, Trembley played Miguel Tejada for one inning yesterday afternoon so he could keep his consecutive games streak intact. This is shaky in the first place, but in Baltimore, which is home of freaking Cal Ripken, for cripes sake, it went across like a leady leaden piece of lead.

On the list of sham attempts to influence records, this, to me, exceeds Brett Favre lying down so Michael Strahan could get Gastineau's sack record. The whole point of being the Iron Man is that you not only show up every day, but you show up every day to play every out, and you're good enough to do it without hurting the team. I, personally, can't wait for the O's to trade Tejada, but they can replace Trembley without a suitor. Bring on Rick Dempsey!

Not that it matters now anyway: Tejada's wrist is broken and the streak's over anyway. That is, unless, Trembley keeps putting in for an inning anyway, regardless.

Tejada's Wrist Broken [MLB.com]
Miguel Tejada, Dave Trembley and Respectability [Oriole Post]
Fire Dave Trembley Now [East Coast Bias]

The Times says they got access to a non-redacted version of the document in which former Arizona Diamondback Jason Grimsley identified Major League Baseball players who used drugs. Grimsley, according to them, told investigators that Clemens and Pettitte used "athletic performance-enhancing drugs," (which could be anything, really) while Tejada, Brian Roberts, and Jay Gibbons "took anabolic steroids."

Of course, the Times also says that Grimsley's told friends of his that federal agents have misrepresented what he said. So, naturally, nothing's even close to being conclusive, but when is it ever? Gibbons and Tejada have already issued denials, and so has Clemens' agents.

My position has on steroids in baseball has long been that I just don't care. I'm a steroid agnostic, at least in terms of crucifying players who have used. It's not that I'm not disturbed by rampant steroid use in sports, it's that I've just accepted that we're never going to know for sure who did it and who didn't. I'm not going to get mad at a player who gets linked to steroids when the fact of the matter is that I've probably cheered in the past for guys who hit home runs just minutes after pulling a needle out of their ass.

More on this in the coming days, I'm sure.

Clemens Is Named in Drug Affidavit [Los Angeles Times]
Strap In For The Grimsley Express [Deadspin]

How reliable are these names? We feel pretty confident in them, but we can't go 100 percent, since the information is secondhand. We'll say this: If Bud Selig issuing a press release naming the names is a 10, and picking a player at random out of the Baseball Encyclopedia is a 1, we're at an 8.

So. Let's do it then. Remember: Betting lines are for entertainment purposes only.

First: The person who told Grimsley about the positive test in 2003. That's former Royals general manager Allard Baird.

As many people have guessed, one of the "former players" who were sold out by Grimsley: Sammy Sosa. Our source(s) couldn't confirm if the other was Rafael Palmeiro.

Nothing new or exciting about that name. Then it starts to get interesting. We've heard amphetamine rumors of Miguel Tejada, but we can't confirm that. What we can confirm? The doozy.

Grimsley says that a former employee of [redacted] and personal fitness trainer to several Major League Baseball players once referred him to an amphetamine source. Later, this source — not the trainer — provided him with "amphetamines, anabolic steroids and human growth hormone." This trainer? His name is Chris Mihlfeld, a Kansas City-based "strength and conditioning guru." (And former Strength And Conditioning Coordinator for the Royals.)

Does Mihlfeld's name sound familiar? If it doesn't, he — and we assure you, this gives us no pleasure to write this — has been Albert Pujols' personal trainer since before Pujols was drafted by the Cardinals in the 13th round of the 1999 draft. We have no confirmation that Pujols' name is in the affidavit ... but Mihlfeld's is. If you read the document, it doesn't say the trainer/Mihlfeld supplied all the HGH and what-not; it just says the trainer was the referrer.

Yeah. Sigh. We just report what we're told, folks. Ever hope your source is wrong? This is one of those times.

(UPDATE: OK, we've taken our head out of the microwave long enough to update you a bit. Here's a "diary" Grimsley wrote about his quick recovery from Tommy John surgery. (At MLB.com!) He thanks Mihlfeld for helping him with his recovery.

We repeat: We are not claiming that Pujols has taken HGH. We are simply pointing out that Milhfeld is reportedly mentioned in the affidavit, and that he has connections to be Grimsley and Pujols. Now, if you'll excuse us, we're going to go back to our silent screams of pain.)

First off, apparently Orioles players were passing around B-12 shots like they were amphetamines. Wait ... they were passing around amphetamines! (Or "greenies." We think that's an aggressively dumb name for amphetamines, by the way.) A player was asked how many players currently on the field were on amphetamines; he said "eight." We suddenly understand Luis Matos' season.

Also, it turns out that urine tests for steroids are notoriously unsupervised, with some players having as much as two hours between the time they were informed of the test and the time they actually took it, more than enough time for screening agents. Which just makes us think Rafael Palmeiro is even dumber than we had suspected.

Report Doubts Palmeiro [Baltimore Sun]

Palmeiro hasn't officially announced his retirement or anything, though it seems impossible that he would play for anyone next year. (We bet the mustache would go over big in Japan, however.) We were talking to a friend of ours a while back as to who is the most hated athlete in sports. He said Terrell Owens. We tend to go with Palmeiro; the guy's the only person we can think of who's hated equally by fans (for lying and for sucking), by the media (for lying and for blaming them for everything) and by teammates (for breaking the locker room code by implicating Tejada. Oh, and sleeping with Ryne Sandberg's wife). That's the trifecta: Very rare.

Palmeiro Speaks, Sort Of [Baseball Musings]

Tejada has been cleared by Bud Selig of any wrongdoing and has to be wondering what kind of fun he could have alone in a room with Palmeiro and a polo mallet. Fortunately, Palmeiro will not return to the Orioles this season and his career is likely now over. Which is probably for the best. A little known fact: Every picture of Palmeiro now looks like the one above, scared, evasive, mustachey.

Vitamin Given To Palmeiro "Clean" [Baltimore Sun]
B-12 Info [Vegsoc.org]
Raffy's Mystery Roiding Buddy [Deadspin]