Miguel Tejada Gets “The Business” from ESPN

By: D.K. Wilson

“This is how we do,” Scott Van Pelt said to Mike Ditka.

Van Pelt was agreeing with NFL Live analyst Ditka’s telling New York Jets quarterback Chad Pennington to refrain from chastising members of the media because, as Ditka explained, they would do anything to impugn his character if they felt threatened.

A few years back ESPN embarked on an “investigative report” into NBA players’ practice of philandering, with expensive strip clubs - sometimes called “gentleman’s clubs” - as their main place of doing dirt. One of players interviewed for the segment was then New Orleans Hornets and now Golden State Warriors point guard, Baron Davis.

Davis answered some generic questions about the clubs but he was also circumspect and actually revealed little in the way of information that would act as an indictment of his brethren. In fact, his responses appeared to be “wink-wink, nod and a smile” in tone and expression. The five minute or so segment of a multi-day report was full of the contrived gravity that goes along with brief television “exposes” that, because of time constraints are almost always more about what they portend than what they actually reveal.

But in the end, it wasn’t the substance, or the fact that the story lacked revelatory material or meaningful information, that made this report stand out.

What imbued the alleged expose with meaning was the revelation a few days later that Davis told anyone who would listen that he was tricked into conducting the interview. Davis, through his agent, said that a producer at ESPN approached him for an interview for a humor/joke fake expose piece about the off-court doings of NBA players. After the news of Davis’ remarks were reported, ESPN immediately went on the defensive. During the 6 p.m. EST broadcast of their primary general sports news show, SportsCenter, a host of that show read an official ESPN-sponsored statement denying Davis’ claim. The sports media giant’s representatives stated that in no way was Davis tricked into conducting his interview and that the producers stand behind the manner in which they procured the interview.

Davis, though, was adamant in his claim that he was duped into conducting the interview; that ESPN caught him in one method of “ambush journalism.” As proof he proffered as further evidence of his innocence that his agent was also present for the interview and, before the interview could convene they asked repeatedly about the nature of the interview and were ensured that it was a humor piece - not an investigative report. When this information was revealed, ESPN, publicly, fell silent on the issue and never again mentioned Davis in relation to the interview. Soon after, it was reported by numerous sources that Davis avowed that he would never give anyone from ESPN another one-on-one interview. And there, public knowledge and consumption of the events surrounding the interview ended.

Interestingly, after Davis’ accusations ESPN did not further pursue the strip club-gentleman’s club story.

Now, with Miguel Tejada, we have another version of ambush journalism by ESPN. On Tuesday, April 22, ESPN will air an “E:60″ segment where ESPN.com and ESPN, the Magazine writer Tom Farrey interviewed Tejada and, without his prior knowledge, confronted the Houston Astro infielder with a copy of his birth certificate. The document showed that Tejada’s present age as 33, not 31, as originally believed. It also revealed that his true surname is Tejeda, not Tejada.

On ESPN commercials advertising Ferrey’s E:60 piece a voice-over ominously intones, “ESPN uncovers the secret and shadowy life of Miguel Tejada.”

Miguel Tejada was born on May 25, 1974, not 1976. And his actual last name is Tejeda. After September 11, 2001, many baseball players from the Dominican Republic were found to possess altered birth certificates or used a relative’s or friend’s birth certificate in place of their own. All of this is generally done to make the player appear younger, making then appear more valuable as prospects to MLB teams. And if the players themselves are not performing this birth date sleight-of-hand, the middlemen who act as scouts for MLB teams but take a percentage of Dominican players’ signing bonuses and even their salaries, obtain altered birth certificates to magically turn a 20-year old who needs three years of minor league training before he might hit the bigs into an 18-year old prodigy.

With all this obfuscation floating around the Dominican baseball players - around the “training camps” set up by MLB teams - that Tejada is among these players should not be too much of a surprise. Also, according to Tejada, his green card and driver’s license reflect his actual age, so perhaps all Ferrey needed to do was to ask him for I.D. instead of digging around in a less than forthright manner.

Beyond this not-so revelation is the revelation that Tejada was under the impression that he was being interviewed for entirely different subject matter and was asked other questions when Farrey hurriedly broke out a copy of Tejada’s birth certificate and confronted him with it. According to Tom Weir and Reid Cherner of USA Today, Farrey’s act was reprehensible:

Here’s video of the ambush interview that led to Miguel Tejada telling the Houston Astros that he’s really 33 years old, not 31.

The discrepancy was revealed because of an interview by ESPN’s “E:60.”

Reporter Tom Farrey talked with Tejada on Tuesday and, with cameras rolling, surprised him with a copy of his birth certificate. Tejada reacted by taking off his microphone and walking out of the interview.

Yes, Farrey’s act was called “ambush journalism” by a mainstream publication. In the Houston Chronicle, Ex-NBA superstar Charles Barkley went further:

“I thought what they did to Miguel Tejada was one of the most Bush League things I’ve ever seen,” he said on Dan Patrick’s radio show today.

“I would have slapped the hell out of that guy. To sit a guy down for an interview for something else and to ambush him like that, that pisses me off.”

In the same Chronicle article, former MLB player and manager turned analyst, Buck Martinez, explained the plight of the Dominican player:

“You just don’t understand what these people are going through, how they are living and how baseball is their only avenue for any kind of life…Miguel Tejada was 19 and one of his coaches said, ‘You’re a little older; the best situation for you is tell them [the scouts] that you’re 17′… Juan Marichal signed him with the Athletics thinking he was 17.

“What’s the harm in this, really, when you think about it? Unless you’ve been to the Dominican Republic and see the conditions these people grow up under…many of these players come from the poorest, possible conditions. I remember Tony Fernandez talking about using a crushed milk carton for a glove to cushion his hand; they had nothing and played for the love of the game.”

Tejada’s explanation of his upbringing only confirms Martinez’s observations:

“I’m a poor kid that wanted to be a professional big leaguer,” he explained as he discussed his reasoning for claiming he was 17 instead of 19 to sign with the Oakland A’s in 1993. “I was thinking that was the only way that I could help my family. By the time we did it, it wasn’t because we wanted to do anything wrong to be a professional. “The scout just did it just because at that time I was two years older than I (told the A’s). And to play in the Dominican Summer League you got to be like 17. That’s why he changed the year. Because the only change is the year.”

Farrey surely knows the impoverished and desperate conditions in which many MLB players from the Dominican Republic are raised. However, Farrey has justified his low-handed tactics by saying that Tejada’s lying about his age and surname are an extension of the FBI investigation into allegations that he lied about steroid use though he was prominently mentioned in both Jose Canseco’s book “Juiced” and by way of that book in the Mitchell Report.

It is particularly specious and altogether unbelievable that Farrey went scrumming around Tejada’s past like he was a private detective caught head first in a corporation’s dumpster for the altruistic reason of aiding the government with its investigation of Miguel Tejada.

Unless, of course, Farrey is revealing that he is a paternalistic jingoist at heart.

No no no, since neither of those excuses for Farrey’s actions are likely to be true, this boils down to yet another ESPN sports journalist willfully feeding the beast that is the 24-hour sports news cycle with unpalatable sensationalist pap intended only to elicit its share of knee-jerk reactions and generate a poll, or two.

Ambush journalism, yellow journalism, and idea theft (though this idea was previously used elsewhere on the Internet) are becoming par for the course for the sports news behemoth.

That ESPN is periodically outed - publicly - is a form of punishment for choosing ideology over merit and who you know or your “name” over the quality of the work produced; punishment for the many, many other instances of chicanery that go unwritten, unspoken, and remain unknown to sports fans, at large.

Because, as Miguel Tejada found out, at the Entertainment and Sports Programming Newtork, this is how they do.

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D.K. Wilson is a freelance sports writer. He is better known on the internet as "DWil," and writes for Sports On My Mind.

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2 Comments

  1. Great article. As an aspiring journalist myself, it really pisses me off what ESPN does.

    Comment by BlueWorkhorse.com on April 22, 2008

  2. [...] had a nice piece on the site today by D.K. Wilson regarding Tejada-gate, ESPN’s “revelation” of sorts that Miggy Tejada is actually [...]

    Pingback by Listen, who really cares how old Miguel Tejada is? | The Big TA on April 22, 2008

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