Mission to Haiti Alters Tejada's Outlook

SARASOTA, Fla. – The longest hour of Miguel Tejada's winter had nothing to do with baseball, free agency or his future.

Instead, the 60 minutes or so that he spent on the ground in post-earthquake Haiti on Jan. 19 were a sobering reminder of just how good Tejada has it, and that there are untold millions who haven't had his advantages.

In the wake of the Jan 12 earthquake that devastated the Haitian capital, Port-Au-Prince, and much of the countryside, Tejada rented a helicopter in his native Dominican Republic, put together a 40-foot-long container of food and water along with a friend who runs a supermarket and flew the 40 minutes to Haiti on a mission of mercy.

He landed inside the complex of the Dominican embassy, supervised the unloading of the goods, looked around at the carnage, then flew back. Although Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean, Tejada had never been across the border before.

And while the earthquake leveled much of wretchedly poor Haiti, the more affluent Dominican was not greatly impacted except for the overwhelming feeling of a need to help.

"You look at what happened there, and you want to do something," Tejada told FanHouse Wednesday.

Tejada grew up in poverty in the Dominican but now is among the nation's wealthier individuals after spending half of his 35 years playing professional baseball in the U.S.

"I came back from Haiti appreciating more than ever what I have," Tejada said. "I was there for an hour and I saw stuff I'd never seen before. It was pretty bad. The people didn't have anything, didn't know where to go."

How bad was it? When another Dominican with a history of extensive charity work, Nationals pitcher Miguel Batista, called his friend Tejada to see if he could put something similar together, Tejada couldn't advise him to do it – the logistics were just too daunting.

"He said there was no real good way to get the food there, unloaded and distributed," Batista.

"I landed at the embassy, because that was the only place where the copter could land," Tejada said. "You couldn't use the airport. The staff at the embassy distributed the food I brought."

"I was there for an hour and I saw stuff I'd never seen before. It was pretty bad."
- Miguel Tejada Left unsaid is the notion that the staff of the Dominican Embassy, one of the largest in Port-Au-Prince, was entirely too few in number for the immense burden of trying to help Dominicans living in Haiti as well as help out as the world came to Haiti's assistance.

Those 60 minutes on the ground in Haiti have redefined priorities for Tejada, who said he's never faced anything in his life as difficult as what the average Haitian is now facing.

His biggest issue right now is making the switch from shortstop, a position he's played since he was a kid playing with a glove made out cardboard, to third base as he returns to Baltimore. He's been an All-Star shortstop six times and has earned in excess $80 million as a shortstop, but he's a third baseman now with deft defender Cesar Izturis the ensconced shortstop.

"That is so nothing compared to what happened in Haiti," he said of his need to learn a new position. "It's nothing that I can't do. For me, it's not a big deal."

In the Orioles' first Grapefruit League game Wednesday, it was fitting that the game's first ball, a sharp grounder hit by Tampa Bay's Jason Bartlett, headed Tejada's way. He picked it cleanly, made a full spin and gunned a throw to first base for the out. So there is some life in his glove.

On the other hand, when Bartlett hit a similar ball to a similar spot in the third inning, Tejada never touched the ball.

"It's going to be OK," he said. "I'm playing baseball, which is what I love, and playing a new position is just something I have to learn. The more game time I get this spring, the better it will be."