Barry Syrluga of The Washington Post has the first interview with Carlos Daniel Alvarez Lugo, the player formerly known as Smiley Gonzalez.  Alvarez says his cousin thought up scheme to assume fake name, age.

In the interview, Carlos Daniel Alvarez Lugo — the boy who assumed both a fraudulent name, Esmailyn Gonzalez, and a fraudulent age, 13 when he was actually 17 — authored a whopper of a tale, helped by accomplices that he won’t, for now, identify other than a man he called his cousin. The Washington Nationals, whose officials from top to bottom say they were unaware of the scam, granted Alvarez a $1.4 million signing bonus in the summer of 2006 because they believed he was a promising 16-year-old shortstop, one who would turn 17 that September.

Now, Alvarez acknowledges, he was in fact a 20-year-old shortstop, one who actually turned 21 that November, and therefore a much less valuable commodity.

You can read the full article here.

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