Wins and Needles

        Let me just get this out of the way right now: I’m a big juice fan.  Always have been.  It started with apple juice when I was younger, then I later moved on to orange juice, and finally to cranberry.  So when I found out that my favorite baseball player of all-time was writing a book titled “Juiced”, I was thrilled.  I innocently assumed that Jose Canseco was joining the juice/health/low-carb/tofu/styrofoam craze that’s been sweeping the nation, coming at it from the creepy Jack LaLanne juice-and-smoothie angle.  Jose had always been careful about what he put in his body, so this book idea only made sense.  At least that’s what passed for my defense of him until recently.
          Ever since I was 6 years old, Jose Canseco was my hero.  Before I knew my multiplication tables, I knew I wanted to wear number 33 and play right field for the A’s.  I must have set some kind of California public school record for most consecutive Halloweens wearing the same costume: my green A’s batting practice jersey, with “Canseco” and “33” written in magic marker over pieces of masking tape on my back.  In short, I wanted to be Jose Canseco.

        When you’ve looked up to someone for nearly your entire life, it’s hard to pull the plug on your admiration.  I’ve known for at least a decade now that Canseco has used steroids, essentially making him a cheater.  I didn’t have any proof, mind you, but I have a brain, which can work in mysterious ways.  Mine, for example, helped me determine that while my favorite player had an unfair advantage over his competition, it was still possible for me to defend him publicly at every possible opportunity.  

        Without any hard evidence, my sense of denial blossomed, proving correct every teacher who ever said I had the potential to create something great.  Hey, Canseco helped the A’s win a World Series when I was 8 years old, back when my logic and reasoning skills were still in diapers.  I’m a loyal guy.  But now there’s this book, complete with an admission of guilt from Jose himself and a sleazy TV interview for any network who will have him.  This week, Jose pulled the plug for me.  This is where I get off, the final stop on the Cuban Jesus Express.  I was one of only 2 fans Jose had remaining, with the other being his twin brother Ozzie, whose tortured life doesn’t figure to get any better now that Jose’s book has been released (how would you like to trade lives with this guy: “All the ill effects of looking like Jose Canseco, without any of the benefits!”).

        It’s been a pretty rotten time to be one of my childhood heroes lately, what with Canseco admitting to rampant steroid use, Chris Mullin treating the Warriors’ salary cap like a teenager treats their parents’ ATM card, and Jerry Rice ending his career as a third receiver for mediocre teams.  If it weren’t for Steve Young entering the Hall of Fame and Slash winning a Grammy at age 59, I’d be ready to completely give up on anyone I ever liked in the 20th century.

        Canseco’s transition from God to dog has been a steady, gradual decline, so I’ve had some time to get adjusted to this.  For at least the past 7 years, Jose has looked more like a potential “Surreal Life” roommate or WWE celebrity referee than a serious athlete.  In fact, when previews for the movie “Alone in the Dark” started airing, I half expected Jose to show up in the credits.  Hey, if Christian Slater, Tara Reid, and Steven Dorff are all willing to hold hands and check themselves into the career nursing home together, why not Canseco?  Of course, I’m not convinced that he believes his career is over.  He’s mentioned on more than a few occasions that his playing days were cut short due to his being “blackballed” from baseball, and he still keeps himself in great shape.  He’s 40 years old, and he’s definitely not above a pity tryout (you hear that, Brian Sabean? He’s only 40!  Eh?  Eh?).

        While most TV personalities who yell about sports for living have divided themselves into 2 camps, those who believe Canseco and those who don’t, I really don’t care if what Jose says is true.  If the people in his book really did what he says they did, the truth will likely come out eventually.  Canseco’s book is more sad than anything, because he wrote it strictly for the purpose of making some fast cash.  This is the same guy who auctioned off his MVP award and championship rings on his web site, charged fans to spend the day with him at his home while he was under house arrest, and has always seemed to spend money faster than he could make it.  I guess no great “Chemist” can operate without receiving a grant every once in a while.  

        Jose’s tales of steroid major league steroid abuse aren’t the efforts of an ex-player coming clean to clear the record, or to help his sport regain some of its integrity.  Rather, they’re the final, desperate attempts of a once-great player who refuses to come to grips with the fact that people have forgotten about him.  And so Jose took his newly sculpted face (did he tell the plastic surgeons to make him look like a lizard?), his beach ball-sized head, and his trademark twitches to “60 Minutes”, where he named names.  Of course, it came out later that Jose provided steroids to guys like Tony Saunders, Wilson Alvarez, and Dave Martinez while playing for Tampa Bay.  But Tony Saunders and Dave Martinez don’t sell books.  So instead, Jose gave us Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi, and Pudge Rodriguez.  Apparently, Jose never made friends; he collected future assets.  Canseco is completely unrepentant about his steroid use, and picked the week after the Super Bowl (historically a dead news week in the sporting world) to release his book; what do you think he’s after here?  My only question is this: if Jose is apparently willing to provide steroids to anyone he meets, how can we introduce him to Mike Dunleavy?

        Despite the ugliness of Canseco’s claims, there is at least some good coming out of the mess left in his wake.  Personally, the most enjoyable part of this semi-scandal is watching McGwire and Tony LaRussa scramble to defend their honor like ants rebuilding their hill after it’s been knocked over.  Canseco claims that he personally injected McGwire with steroids back when they played together in Oakland (I’m waiting for McGwire’s Forrest Gump confession: “He shot me in the butt-ocks”), and that everyone affiliated with the A’s knew what was going on.  This includes LaRussa, who managed the team at the time, and led the A’s to the 1989 World Series championship.  LaRussa later left Oakland to manage the St. Louis Cardinals, where he oversaw McGwire’s record-setting 70-home run season, in which Big Mac broke one of the most hallowed records in sports.  So far, LaRussa has put in as much face time on television airwaves this week as Canseco, returning every serve Jose has sent his way.  For every accusation The Cuban Bee throws out there, Tony is ready with a sleazier story about his former superstar.

        The best part of this is that there are apparently no lengths to which LaRussa will not go to defend McGwire, his Hall of Fame meal ticket.  If LaRussa retired tomorrow, he would be remembered for 2 things: winning the World Series with McGwire and the A’s in ’89, and managing the Cardinals when McGwire set the home run record.  Notice the common thread?  If McGwire’s reputation is tarnished, Tony’s sinks along with it.  He’s covering his backside, just as he did when he conveniently failed to share his knowledge of Canseco’s steroid use while they were both in Oakland.  But it’s telling that not one of McGwire’s teammates has publicly defended him, despite Jose going on TV every other day telling the story of how he personally shot up with Big Mac.  Terry Steinbach has mentioned how hard McGwire worked in the gym, but that’s as far as McGwire’s connections seem to reach.  While Canseco may be calling out McGwire for the wrong reasons, not one other player has publicly refuted Jose’s claims.  By all accounts, the A’s of the late-80’s all like McGwire and despise Canseco, but not one of them is refuting Canseco’s claims.  Considering that baseball players are as tight a community as you’ll find anywhere, that says a lot.

        But LaRussa and McGwire aren’t this week’s only source of entertainment.  Canseco devoted an entire chapter of his book to former A’s first baseman Jason Giambi, calling him the “most obvious juicer in the game”.  No matter how far Jose has fallen in my eyes, I’ll always love him for that.  Not only did this lead to Giambi releasing a press statement taking shots at Jose to take the heat off himself, it has now come into question whether the Yankees knew about Giambi’s steroid use when they signed him 3 years ago.  All references to steroids were removed from Giambi’s contract, which means Yankees GM Brian Cashman should be giving a LaRussa-like interview inside of a week.  It’s always a great day when The Cash Man is being interviewed- no one wants to talk to him when the Yankees are doing well.  

        And the fun doesn’t end there.  Canseco’s literary debut also coaxed this gem out of Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter: “I don’t think it’s a good thing, obviously, because it’s bringing a bad light to the game.”  I don’t think I’m alone when I say that if there’s one person I trust to know what’s bad for baseball, it’s the captain of the New York Yankees.  In an unrelated note, Alex Rodriguez and Randy Johnson combined to make more money than the entire roster of 3 different teams last season.  But wait, there’s more fun in the Bronx: Wednesday’s paper produced this gem from Gary Sheffield, who has also been accused of taking steroids: “I’m not like Jason Giambi, I’m not going to sit here and cry about things being unfair or attacks are unfair.”  By the way, Giambi and Sheffield are teammates.  Jose Canseco took time out of his schedule to write a chapter in which he shovels dirt on the grave of Jason Giambi’s career.  I hope you don’t mind if I dance on it, while Mr. Sheffield reads the eulogy.

        The worst part of this entire thing for me isn’t that Canseco has admitted to taking steroids, or that I can no longer watch highlights of him without feeling that he was somehow fake or manufactured.  For me, the worst part is that my 2 favorite teams of all-time, the 1989 and 2001 A’s, were led by cheaters.  Canseco, McGwire, both Giambi brothers, and Randy Velarde have all been linked to steroid use, meaning that the two clubs I’ve received the most enjoyment from as a fan were little more than a traveling circus.  The fact that every other baseball team was likely littered with fellow steroid users, especially in 2001, does nothing to change that.  It only makes baseball’s recent history that much more disappointing.

        Essentially, every time I watched the A’s in 1989, I was watching a cartoon.  They were a team that became famous thanks to The Bash Brothers and their power image, and I ate it up.  But unlike Lion-O and the rest of the superheroes I watched on Saturday mornings, the A’s at least operated under the pretense of being steroid-free.  I don’t think anyone really cared if the Thundercats were juicing or not.  And it’s not just me; this entire steroids situation has left everyone unhappy.  My friends who were unfortunate enough to grow up as Giants fans are now calling for the 1989 World Series to be wiped from the books, Mike Greenwell wants to be retroactively named the 1988 AL MVP, and I find myself in the unusual position of searching for a new favorite baseball player.  My Canseco jersey will be on eBay by the end of the week, and there is no clear-cut favorite to take his spot at the top of the baseball food chain.  Maybe if Ken Griffey Jr. can stop doing his Mr. Glass impersonation, I can replace Canseco and redeem one of my many fallen childhood idols at the same time.

        In addition to the answers it may or may not provide regarding which players used steroids, Canseco’s book brings several questions to mind, none of which I have the answer to.  Every time steroids are brought up, the usual suspects are rattled off: Canseco, McGwire, Giambi, Barry Bonds, and BALCO.  The culprits are always tied back to the Oakland A’s or San Francisco Giants, which leads me to wonder: how did the Bay Area become the steroid capital of the nation?  The Bay takes pride in producing a lot of top-notch illegal substances, but steroids aren’t one of them.  Not one person I know is proud of the fact that steroid stories always begin and end in Northern California, just like I’m sure no one in Portland is proud of the fact that Isaiah Rider, Rasheed Wallace, Qyntel Woods, and several hundred others helped turn the Trail Blazers franchise into a minimum security prison.  They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but the steroid issue puts that theory to the test.  And why the fascination with steroids and baseball in the first place?  No one seems to care that half of the NFL looks like the Incredible Hulk, so why should baseball be any different?  Like I said, I don’t have the answers to these questions.  It’s like trying to figure out how Young Buck is able to play basketball for the University of Illinois under the assumed name of Dee Brown, while at the same time maintaining a full-time rap career.  Some mysteries may never be solved.

        Whenever I hear about professional athletes using steroids, my first concern is that they’ll end up dying at age 45 like most of the wrestlers I watched growing up.  Former MVP Ken Caminiti, an admitted steroid user, died last year at 41 years of age, and I don’t think he’ll be the last.  You can only abuse your body for so long before it gives in.  I think everyone’s hope is that baseball players will put their needles away and just play the game.  But that’s not realistic.  They’ll likely just move on to the next edge they can find, whether it’s methamphetamines or something new that we haven’t even heard of yet.  I guess there’s something to be said for being there when it all started, when guys first started turning their bodies into houses and hitting home runs farther than I can hit my 5-iron.  I was part of the first generation who wanted to be a G.E. Jose instead of a G.I. Joe.  That’s Genetically Enhanced, by the way, which sounds more like something out of a science fiction movie.  Then again, Jose always did seem more suited for Hollywood than for Cooperstown.  Maybe now he can get started on that acting career he’s been talking about.  And if it doesn’t work out, there’s always a spot for him on “The Surreal Life 13”.  I’m sure Jordan Knight will need someone to protect him while he sleeps.