Database date and string question

[jm]

I have a field in my datagrid:

<asp:BoundColumn DataField="alrTime" HeaderText="Last Checked"
DataFormatString="{0:MM-dd-yyyy HH:mm}"/>

CAST(max(ta.alertid) as date) as alertid

however, when it prints it just puts

MM-dd-yyyy HH:mm

This is because the max() function (mysql) makes the column a string
and evidently nothing is going to change that. Is there a way to get
to the string before it is rendered in the datagrid so that I can
parse it out manually? Thanks