Wednesday, February 18, 2009

108 minus 85 does not equal 19


For those of you who don't know today a Nationals minor leaguer Esmailyn Gonzalez was found to have falsified his age and identity. It turns out his actual name is Carlos Alvarez Daniel Lugo and he's 23 not 19. Apparently this was not some simple scheme but some elaborate plot involving bribes, falsified hospital and school documents, as well as other family members changing their identities. For more information you can go to http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dcsportsbog/2009/02/stan_kasten_and_the_player_to.html which has quotes from Nationals president Stan Karsten on the issue.

Now this got me thinking how deep of a problem could this potentially be in baseball? Would it really shock you to hear that foreign players such as Albert Pujols or even our very own Alfredo Aceves were a few years older than they claim to be (I'm not accusing here just using them as examples). Perhaps even A-rod is a few years older than he claims, there goes his young and stupid excuse, ok I kid I kid. In all seriousness, I expect teams will do much more thorough background checks in the future in order to prevent this from happening in the future.

On a lighter note the first spring training game is only 7 days away! Go Yankees!!

8 comments:

Ulises Jorge Bidó said...

"Perhaps even A-rod is a few years older than he claims.."

He was born in New York. Are you implying that is easy to falsify age records in the U.S. too..?

Ace said...

right after that I wrote I kid I kid as in im joking, I don't actually belive arod is falsifying his age records, just my attempt at humor which looks to have failed pretty horribly

Alex H said...

hahaha i condone your efforts Mike

Ulises Jorge Bidó said...

Oopss! Sorry, you're right.. didn't see the "I kid I kid"...my bad!

:-(

In my defense I want to say that as a Dominican I'm very ashamed for this story and the A-Rod thing (you know.. blaming his cousin? Come on!). I probably wasn't very careful reading your blog, so please don't take it too hard.

I think this Gonzalez (or whatever his name really is) thing reflects pretty bad about our country. Our "anything goes for a pay off" culture is worse than the days of the wild west and is the main reason that our country remain one of the poorest in the western hemisphere after years of "economic growth".

Well... thanks for letting me rant...

:)

J said...

That was the most emotional blog comment I've ever seen.

Anonymous said...

im sure my cousin vinny will appear somewhere and we will learn the truth about all of this... or maybe he doesnt even exist, but anyways i hope the yanks can put this behind them

Anonymous said...

I haven't heard of too many problems with bad birth certificates out of Mexico. I thought it was just Cuba and the Dominican for the most part.

And yeah, obviously Arod is American and I doubt that his birth certificate is fake.

Alex H said...

Idk Rob, i think Alfredo Aceves is lookin kinda older than he claims, lol