Tejada's tale

As if things weren’t bad enough for the last-place Astros, Miguel Tejada seems to have aged a couple of years even though the season has barely begun.

In fact, their hot free-agent signing in the offseason has gotten older. After ESPN found a copy of his birth certificate from the Dominican Republic, Tejada admitted he was 33, not 31.

You see, when he first signed a pro ball contract at 19, he said a local coach encouraged him to say he was 17 instead. So he did.

“It’s something that happened the first time I signed my contract,” Tejada said. “I had no intention of doing anything wrong.”

Apparently, this jock doesn’t understand that lying about your age could be, well, considered “doing anything wrong.”

If I were Astros owner Drayton McLane, I’d be ticked off.

He just signed a contract with Tejada that has a lot of zeroes behind a swiggly number, thinking the slugger had so much playing time and ability left. Now it turns out he has two years less of it.

Pro sports is a young man’s game. Old athletes don’t get better -- unless they’re juicin’.

Which brings us back to Tejada, who was mentioned in the infamous Mitchell Report as one of those ballplayers who occasionally got some pharmaceutical help that wasn’t exactly legal.

Tejada denied then that he did anything wrong.

Q: Do you wonder if he was fibbing about that too?

A: Does Roy Oswalt throw fast?