Just got off the phone with Carlos Alvarez‘s agent, Stanley King, who said he talked to the former Esmailyn Gonzalez again last night. Aside from reiterating how sorry Alvarez is about the whole thing—and adding that he is planning to report to camp with the rest of the Nationals’ minor-leaguers on March 13 unless something changes—King expounded upon his impressions of how this might have happened.
“I’ve been doing this 22 years, and I’ve seen it from every different vantage point,” King said. “(The falsified credentials) can come from a friend, a relative, a trainer,a scout, any way imaginable. … Someone else guides them, directs them, facilitates that to make it happen. It’s just poor kids who play baseball. Someone with a little more savvy, someone who’s maybe a little more unscrupulous gets to them, and the kid becomes a pawn. He’s a good kid. He loves the game. I don’t think he cares about the money.”
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King would not comment on where he believes Alvarez got his falsified ID, but he said, “I will say this: He was under a tremendous amount of pressure to do what he did.” Later, he added he believed the pressure was coming from the “people who were facilitating this,” not Alvarez’s family.
“I don’t think the family is that sophisticated,” King said. “I don’t know where they would know how to put something like this in place.”
