The Houston Astros made what has been seen by some as a curious move when, the day before the release of the Mitchell Report, they traded five players to the Orioles for SS Miguel Tejada, a man whose name wound up being mentioned in said report. Of course, as I said, the trade was made prior to the release of the report - but still, one assumes the Astros would have advance knowledge of the names to be released, right?

Wrong, according to Astros owner Drayton McLane.

McLane says the owners were not given advance warning of the names to be included in the report, meaning the Astros pursued Tejada in ignorance. And this does not sit well with McLane who said of Tejada:

I was certainly disappointed. We certainly did not [anticipate this].

None of the owners had any knowledge. It was a surprise. We knew there was a problem. I'm disappointed, but we then need to sit down and understand with each player we have a responsibility which is to see how this can be solved.

McLane goes on to say that, had he known about Tejada's status as an accused doper, he would've proceeded differently:

If we knew, certainly we would have looked at it totally different. We didn't have any of that knowledge at that time.

So McLane wants me to believe that, as late as a day before the release of the final report, he had no knowledge as to the names in that report. He had no inkling that a man he was pursuing in a trade was about to be implicated in the biggest steroid scandal in the history of the universe. Not only did he not see a copy of the report before the trade, he didn't even hear anything - not a bit of scuttlebutt or gossip, not a whisper or a rumor.

All I can say is: Pull the other one.

This statement by McLane reeks of desperate P.R. scrambling. Clearly, this is an owner who wanted a certain player, because for whatever reason he was convinced said player could help his team, and he wasn't going to let anything stop him from getting that player, not even the player being accused of using steroids (lest you doubt McLane's desire to get Tejada at all costs, consider how many players were surrendered in exchange for him). Then, after it happened, McLane realized how bad it looked for him to apparently knowingly acquire a tainted player - especially bad after the names of other recent Astros, Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte, came up in the same report. So, he went straight for the trusty damage control manual, and turned to page one whereupon the words "Make something up" are emblazoned in large, bold script. And make something up he did - a load of hooey about not knowing Tejada was a steroid user.

I want to reiterate this: I am willing to accept that McLane never saw an actual copy of the report before it was released. I can buy that he never saw the name "Miguel Tejada" printed on any piece of paper related to any investigation. But if I, and you, knew the rumors about Tejada - and there were several over the years, including ones that had him shooting up Rafael Palmeiro - then certainly McLane knew them. And if he hadn't had such a hard-on for Tejada - hard-ons being known to rob the brain of blood needed for thinking - he would've anticipated how bad it would look if the player did end up being named in the report. And since Tejada is this close to washed-up anyway, and certainly not worth five players, it should've been no trouble to reverse direction on the whole trade plan.

Now the Astros are stuck with a player they paid too much for and a P.R. headache. And this team made the World Series a couple years ago? Angels must've been shining bright lights on their butts.