October 30, 2014
The tragedy of Jose Canseco: shoots self in hand
No one had to give Canseco a drug test, though. He admitted with some pride that he indulged in steroids and didn’t think there was anything wrong with them.
But if baseball was going to punish him, he wanted to take others down with him. Canseco began ratting out what seemed like a couple teams of All Stars, at least, and wrote a book in 2005, “Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big.”
In the book, he claimed that up to 85 percent of major league players took steroids, naming former teammates Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Jason Giambi, Ivan Rodriguez and Juan Gonzalez and admitting that he injected them
To his credit, though, Canseco wasn’t among the players who in 2005 lied in testimony before Congress on hearings that were brought about in part by his book.
“I have never used steroids. Period,” Palmeiro told members of a House committee investigating steroid use. “I dont know how to say it any more clearly than that. Never.”
Palmeiro soon tested positive in a steroids test and likely will also never get into the Hall of Fame despite his 500 home runs.
But the saddest figure in that House hearing as Canseco looked on, may have been Mark McGwire, his former “Bash Brothers” teammate with the Athletics and once the game’s most celebrated slugger, who was convincingly evasive and on the verge of tears.
It is all a disappointing chapter in American sports serving as a reminder to baseball fans of just what a tragic waste of talent there was in Canseco and how no one will really know how good he was and how good he could have been, with much the same that can be said of most players who used steroids and performance enhancing drugs.
Today, Canseco at last says steroids ruined his career and led to financial troubles, including loss of his home to foreclosure and to sterility.
http://voxxi.com/2014/10/29/tragedy-of-jose-canseco/