KISSIMMEE, Fla.-- --This is the way baseball works in 2008.
Disgruntled slugger gets traded to new team for a fresh start.
Slugger has an additional spring in his step, a wider smile on his face, an extra-peppy, "just happy to be here" cliche on his lips.
Slugger then is asked about steroid allegations and federal investigations, averts his eyes and stumbles through typical, attorney-advised "no comment."
Yesterday, former Orioles star Miguel Tejada put on his No. 10 Houston Astros jersey for the first time and ran drills with his new teammates on a gorgeous Central Florida day.
There were no clouds in the sky. An ominous one, however, hung over Tejada's locker. Miggi chose not to look.
"It's got to be one of the best days of my career, because now I am on a new team," a beaming Tejada said, moments after bouncing into the clubhouse and shaking a dozen hands. "Now people are happy to see me here. And I am happy to be here, too."
He also said a whole lot of this:
"I can't really talk about my situation, because [of] everything with the investigation," said Tejada, who was dealt to Houston for five players in December, one day before he was implicated as a performance-enhancing-drug user in baseball's Mitchell Report. "Right now, I just want to talk baseball because that's really my focus."
With a new team, new hope and new energy, baseball should be Tejada's sole focus. But it's not that simple, because Tejada is caught between two worlds: reconstructing his future and fending off his past, which exploded with allegations (supported by canceled checks) in the Mitchell Report that he bought steroids from former Oakland Athletics teammate Adam Piatt.
Now, Tejada is the subject of a federal probe into whether he lied under oath in 2005, when he denied using performance-enhancing drugs as part of the Rafael Palmeiro perjury investigation.
Tejada has kept a low profile since the drug issue resurfaced. He said he didn't watch this month's congressional hearings because he was spending time with his family. He also didn't watch Monday's tell-all news conference with New York Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte, who has admitted to using human growth hormone.
Tejada said he didn't consider having a similar powwow yesterday.
"My agents are the ones in charge of that," he said. "My lawyers are in charge of everything."
So, his talk with the media yesterday consisted of a couple of informal sessions in front of his locker. It centered on his new start, and at one point, his new body.
He's about 10 pounds slimmer and noticeably more muscular than last year. He said he worked out all offseason in Boca Raton and feels better than he has in years.
He also seems much happier. He has escaped the Orioles' cycle of losing and joins a club that's three years removed from the World Series.
"This team has been trying to get me for the last three years and I know it," Tejada said. "One thing that I know is that this team really wants to win and I am happy to be here to be on a team that really wants to win."
If you were waiting for Tejada to rip the Orioles, that's about as edgy as he got - a veiled comment that the Orioles weren't as committed to winning as he had hoped. No revelation there.
Several times, Tejada talked almost glowingly about Baltimore, saying: "I am really thankful to the fans, to the organization [for] the way they treated me for four years. They are good people, and there is nothing that I can say [bad] about Baltimore. I had a lot of great memories over there."
But to hear his giddiness about becoming an Astro, you would think he had joined the 1927 Yankees. He was most impressed that club owner Drayton McLane attended the Astros' team meeting yesterday. Tejada, who met Orioles owner Peter Angelos twice in his four-year Orioles career, went up to McLane afterward and slapped him on the back.
"I was totally surprised, and it made me feel like this is the team that I really have to be [on]," Tejada said. "Because when you see the owner on the first day show up the same time we show up, it's like we are a group. Like everybody wants to win here."
McLane was equally impressed with Tejada, whom he had spoken with on the phone the day of the trade.
"We are happy with him," McLane said. "This is the 16th year I have owned the team, and he has one of the strongest personalities I have ever seen for a really, really good player."
Yes, it's honeymoon time here, but federal indictments are always buzz-kills.
"I'm a bit concerned, because [the Mitchell Report] happened a day after we made the trade and we had no idea that was going to be there," McLane said. "But just like in the Roger Clemens deal, we just to have to wait and see what unfolds."
Just waiting to see if this new lease on life ends in a legal nightmare.
Just another 2008 baseball story line on a clear - and cloudy - Florida day.
dan.connolly@baltsun.com