Last month, former pitcher Tom Candiotti told the San Francisco Chronicle a remarkable story about how he used his influence to help his fantasy team back when he was a pitcher for the Dodgers. He claimed that in order to bolster his fantasy numbers, he told a fib that launched a thousand plunkings of the widely disliked Jeff Kent, many of them by Dominican pitchers. Turns out, the story is too good to be true.

Here's the tale, as related by the Chronicle's Scott Ostler:

"It's '92 or '93," Candiotti says. "I'm playing for the Dodgers, Jeff Kent is with the Mets. I'm in a fantasy baseball league. I don't have Kent on my team and he's off to a torrid start and he's killing me."

The Dodgers are in New York to play the Mets. Ramon Martinez is warming up in the Dodgers' bullpen to pitch the series opener. Candiotti strolls to the pen and, within earshot of Martinez, tells pitching coach Ron Perranoski, "Perry, I just talked to Bret Saberhagen, and Sabes told me that if Kent gets drilled his first time up, he's mush for the rest of the series."

First inning, Kent steps to the plate.

"Ramon just absolutely buries one in Kent's ribs," Candiotti says. "It was so bad that he went down on one knee, and he had to come out of the game. I sat there thinking, 'What did you just do? You told a complete lie, you got this guy drilled!'

"After that, it was funny. Pedro Martinez (Ramon's brother) started drilling Kent, and so did all the other Dominican pitchers. For years, Ramon drilled Kent every time. …
That winter I'm at a charity golf tournament, I wind up in Kent's group. We sit together at dinner. He's the nicest guy in the world. I didn't tell him."

Gelf asked Stats, Inc., to run some numbers on Candiotti's story, and it didn't fly. First of all, not a single Dodgers pitcher hit Kent in 1992 or 1993. Ramon Martinez did hit Kent once, in 1994, and again in 1997—the only two times Martinez did so in his career. Pedro Martinez hit Kent just once, in 1997.

Why would Candiotti botch this story so badly, especially when it makes him look bad (affecting an actual game in order to boost your fantasy team approaches Pete Rose territory)? Gelf's guess: He's projecting. For the only man to ever hit Kent four different times is…Tom Candiotti. He did it thrice in a 10-day span early in 1995 season, and again a couple of months later. Tom Candiotti, a Walnut Creek, Calif., native, is no Dominican.

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