The Oakland Athletics suffered a serious setback in the very first full-squad working of their 2012 Spring Training camp, when Scott Sizemore made the mistake of planting his foot while fielding a ball. The insides of Sizemore's knee exploded like something out of Videodrome and the A's finally found themselves scrambling to find a third baseman for 2012. Never to fear, everyone: Miguel Tejada says he's available.
Susan Slusser of the San Franicsco Chronicle reported early Tuesday morning that Tejada would love to return to the team where he won an MVP award in 2002. He'd be happy to help his old team out in a pinch.
The veteran last played for the San Francisco Giants in 2011. He was released near the end of the season based on what the PR team tactfully referred to as "oh crap we signed Miguel Tejada what do we do you guys" and the team pressed ahead with Orlando Cabrera, who is a lot like Miguel Tejada, but in a much larger jersey.
Grant Brisbee pointed out that Tejada's MVP award was a long time ago. I would like to point out that the A's already had a few players at Spring Training who hoped to compete with Sizemore for significant playing time this year even before the inside of Sizemore's knee turned into the inside of Mark DeRosa's wrist. The A's almost certainly have better options in-house. It's possible that the slimmed-down Jonah Hill has more range at this point, in fact.
Tejada joins former A's star Jose Canseco in an elite group of fallen A's stars who believe they can make a valuable contribution to this year's team. Tejada told Slusser, "Have Billy [Beane] give me a call," which is pretty insulting out of context, but I'm guessing only slightly less insulting in context. The only difference between Miguel Tejada lobbying for a job with the A's in 2012 and Jose Canseco lobbying for a job with the A's in 2012 is that Tejada actually had contact with someone who knows Billy Beane. Well that, and Canseco can probably still get the ball out of the infield.
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