Bezball Has Not Been Bery Bery Good to Me

Another baseball scandal, this time involving a guy who never played professional ball but was willing to let you believe he almost did:

Gov. Bill Richardson is coming clean on his draft record - the baseball draft, that is, admitting that his claim to have been a pick of the Kansas City A's in 1966 was untrue.

For nearly four decades, Richardson, often mentioned as a possible Democratic presidential candidate, has maintained he was drafted by the Kansas City Athletics.

The claim was included in a brief biography released when Richardson successfully ran for Congress in 1982. A White House news release in 1997 mentioned it when he was about to be named U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. And several news organizations, including The Associated Press, have reported it as fact over the years.

But an investigation by the Albuquerque Journal found no record of Richardson being drafted by the A's, who have since moved to Oakland, or any other team.

Informed by the newspaper of its findings, the governor acknowledged the error in a story in Thursday's editions.

"After being notified of the situation and after researching the matter ... I came to the conclusion that I was not drafted by the A's," he said.

Just to come clean, I was never drafted either, though I didn't have to research whether or not I had been. I would think you'd know that sort of stuff without having to do research.

For some reasons professional politicians (often Dems) seem to have to need to embellish their history. That's how we get Al Gore inventing the internet and such. I think Richardson was all too happy to be introduced in bios and such as having been drafted, but with a possible White House run on the horizon, realized he better come clean now and not wait for the press to do it for him during the campaign.