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Canseco
breaks baseball brotherhood in tell-all
book
Jesse Munoz
Bash
• Jose Canseco book titled "Juiced:
Wild Times, Rampant Roids, Smash Hits, and
How Baseball Got Big" was released
Feb. 14.
Jose Canseco puts together a pretty good
career resume. He was Rookie of the Year
in 1986, followed by a unanimous MVP selection
in 1988 after he became the first man in
Major League Baseball history to hit 40
home runs and steal 40 bases in the same
season.
He
was also a leading member of the Oakland
Athletics near-dynasty team, which went
to three consecutive World Series in '88,
'89 and '90, but won only once, in 1989.
Canseco,
along with teammate Mark McGwire, formed
the famed "Bash Brothers" tandem,
which terrorized American League pitchers.
And
while various injuries slowed his career,
he still managed to slug 462 career home
runs, several of which were memorable moon
shots that rocketed into the upper decks
of stadiums across the country.
Today
Canseco isn't hitting any home runs or playing
in the World Series, but he is still "bashing."
Monday's release of his highly anticipated
book titled "Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant
Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got
Big" is already No. 3 on the Amazon.com
best seller list and does plenty of bashing
in its pages.
In
it, Canseco openly detailed his own steroid
usage. He theorized how and why steroids
became so rampant within the game, and named
teammates he supposedly introduced the illegal
supplement to. Canseco even admitted to
personally injecting several of his teammates.
The
names include former single-season home
run king McGwire, former league MVPs Ivan
Rodriguez, Miguel Tejada and Juan Gonzalez,
500 home run club member Rafael Palmiero,
and former Long Beach State slugger and
current New York Yankee Jason Giambi. According
to Canseco, all of the name-dropping is
to let the truth out and clean up the game.
I
am all for cleaning up baseball, restoring
its sanctity and reestablishing it as the
great American past time, but not like this,
and not with the help of Canseco.
While
his book will undoubtedly keep an already
hot topic in the headlines, raising questions
about the legitimacy of players' statistics,
both past and present and force MLB to confront
the steroid issue—I question what,
if any, greater good will come from it.
Let's
start by taking a look at Canseco himself.
While I will take his word that he is in
fact the "Godfather of Steroids"
as his book suggests, he does not have a
lot of credibility, surely not enough to
point the finger at highly respected future
hall-of-famers McGwire and Rodriguez without
the public second-guessing him.
We're
talking about a guy who feels he has been
blackballed by MLB owners, kept out of the
league and denied the opportunity to reach
the magical 500 home runs, which would virtually
assure a spot in Cooperstown.
Do
you think that might have made him mad enough
to use his book to put a permanent black
mark on baseball?
Or
maybe he was jealous enough to try and tarnish
the reputations of well-liked players, who,
unlike Canseco, will one day be enshrined
in Cooperstown.
This
is the same guy who has been so hard-pressed
for money in recent years that he has put
personal memorabilia up for auction, including
his MVP plaque and Rookie of the Year ring,
on his website www.JoseCanseco.com.
I
wonder if the multi-million dollar contracts
of Giambi and Rodriguez have made Canseco
envious enough to turn into a rat and point
the finger?
He
even went so far as to auction off "Spend
a day with Jose" tickets at $2,500
a piece. The winning bidder would be able
to hang out with Canseco at his Miami Beach
home while he was
on house arrest for a probation violation
stemming from steroid usage.
Do
you think maybe the publishing of this book
could have something to do with those financial
problems?
Canseco
has an extensive rap sheet, including arrests
for carrying a loaded pistol in his car,
ramming his Porsche into a car driven by
his then-girlfriend, slapping his estranged
bride and most recently for a 2001 bar brawl
at a Miami Beach nightclub that left one
man with a broken nose and another with
22 stitches in his lip.
Despite
all the allegations and finger pointing,
Canseco offers little, if any proof about
the accusations he has made in the pages
of his book. While his devious financial
motives for writing such a book are pretty
clear, how he violated his teammates' trust
is beyond me.
Talk
about being spineless and Canseco's name
must be mentioned. The funny thing is, if
he had not implicated himself, written this
book and started pointing fingers, no one
would even care about him today. The steroid
scandal would have been focused on the Barry
Bonds' and Giambi's of the league, not washed-up
ex-superstars from the late '80s like Canseco.
There
is no doubt that the game of baseball is
in dire straits right now. Canseco's book
comes at a period when the potentially greatest
player of all time, Bonds, is set to break
Hank Aarons' career home run record while
deeply entrenched in the BALCO steroid scandal.
The
book also comes just 10 years after the
'94 baseball strike, from which baseball
only recently recovered. Back then, fans
were sickened by the greediness of the players—just
think what kind of a backlash there will
be if fans now believe their favorite players
are "greedy needle-shooting cheaters?"
Canseco's
book couldn't come at a worse time for MLB,
that much is clear. But we must wait to
see what kind of effect it will have on
the game as a whole. Odds are it will not
be good for anyone.
Actually
I take that back, a best selling book tends
to put money in the author's pocket—so
maybe Canseco will not have to slang his
memorabilia anymore. However, I do not think
I would be able to rat out my friends, taint
my name and reputation and throw a potentially
devastating blow to the game that gave me
life just for a book deal. But that's just
me.
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