History of players faking birthdates

[Boy Howdy]

All the hoopla about Miguel Tejada's "surprise" (that I recall being public knowledge since the aftermath of 9/11 anyway) reminds me of a recent article in one of the SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) publications.

While falsifying birthdates to make a player more appealing to scouts has become a cliche applied disproportionately to Latino players, the practice was actually quite widespread back in the 1950's when major league baseball (particularly in the American League) was still largely a lily white, all-American institution.

Dozens and dozens of players, 80 or more if memory serves, were confirmed to have fudged a year or two or five off their actual age. The article included a complete list of verfied names, a number of whom are still alive and freely admitted doing it in recent interviews.

The article may have run in issue 36 of National Pastime , which can be be purchased through the SABR website www.sabr.org by anyone interested.

I will dig through my publications in the coming days, and confirm the issue number for anyone who cares.

Amateur comedians and sociologists who think cracking jokes about Latino players ages makes them appear wise would do well to check their history.

[BaltimoreTerp]

All the hoopla about Miguel Tejada's "surprise" (that I recall being public knowledge since the aftermath of 9/11 anyway) reminds me of a recent article in one of the SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) publications.

While falsifying birthdates to make a player more appealing to scouts has become a cliche applied disproportionately to Latino players, the practice was actually quite widespread back in the 1950's when major league baseball (particularly in the American League) was still largely a lily white, all-American institution.

Dozens and dozens of players, 80 or more if memory serves, were confirmed to have fudge a year or two or five off their actual age. The article included a complete list of verfied names, a number of whom are still alive and freely admitted doing it in recent interviews.

The article may have run in issue 36 of National Pastime , which can be be purchased through the SABR website www.sabr.org by anyone interested.

I will did through my publications in the coming days, and confirm the issue number for anyone who cares.

Amateur comedians and sociologists who think cracking jokes about Latino players ages makes them appear wise would do well to check their history.

The majority of both probably come from the same social/cultural background, though: poor, generally rural, sports is the way to move out of their situation and up in the world. Combine that with poor record-keeping practices in much of the world now (and America before the 1950s or so), and you get a perfect situation to fib a little to help yourself.

Poor whites and latinos in baseball, Asians and Africans in basketball, probably others in other sports as well.

It's not racial, it's social.

[byrdz]

I hear ya and can certainly see why he and others do it as well and really don't blame him knowing the background he comes from. On another note, it's kinda weird that it's seemingly so hard to verify Tejada's or anyone else's age when all of his DR documentation and his freaking green card had his actual age listed. Do they just go off of what people tell them? What is this, give out contracts based on the freaking honor system?? Shame on the teams for not digging deep enough to find out his actual age before giving him a contract. If they didn't check it out they have no reason to bi*ch.

The Astros' media guide lists Tejada's birthday as May 25, 1976. However, Astros GM Ed Wade and Tejada both said the shortstop's green card, driver's license and other legal papers in the United States reflect his actual birthday as May 25, 1974.

This is really no different to the steroids stuff IMO. In the sense that MLB has known about this stuff for so long. You've turned your back on this stuff for this long and now you want to go on a witch hunt? It's all for the big story and entertainment. Case and point...

"E:60" plans to air its report on Tejada as part of its April 22 show (7 p.m. ET, ESPN).

Source

[blueberryale77]

Poor Miguel Tejada. He has really fallen out of the media's favor and now they are hitting him with everything they possibly can and trying to make it look like a) he is alone in doing these things, and b) they are really important. I hope he carries a pooper scooper when he walks his dog because if not there might be an expose on it.