OK, looks like I need to clarify something. Andrew Johnson at his Defensive Indifference blog accused me of dropping an unsubstantiated allegation that Vicente Padilla has a drinking problem in my chat yesterday. I just want to point out that Padilla’s addiction to alcohol is no secret; he was driving drunk in Nicaragua two years ago with a friend in the passenger’s seat, got in an accident, and caused his friend’s death. Here’s an article from a Nicaraguan newspaper that says that he was drunk at the time of the accident and driving over 150 km/hour, and implies that the whole incident was smoothed over by local police. He was also arrested in Dallas in 2006 on suspicion of DUI. Now, on top of that, I’ve talked to plenty of people in baseball who’ve confirmed that Padilla has a problem, but that seems like icing on this cake. If you drive drunk and kill your friend, and yet get behind the wheel drunk again a few months later, isn’t that the very definition of a drinking problem?