I've written some about steroids and baseball lately-one thing I've wondered is if baseball was better before it got rid of the steroids,presuming it has.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/03/is-it-time-for-war-on-war-on-steroids.html
In that vein I'm reading Canseco's Juiced which was a big moment in the moral panic over steroids; by then there was a clear desire to go on a crusade against steroids but Canseco's book which came out in 2005 assisted this effort mightily. It turned out to be a smoking gun.
http://www.amazon.com/Juiced-Times-Rampant-Roids-Baseball/dp/0060746416/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1426509985&sr=1-1&keywords=jose+canseco
I'm on pg 203 of the 284 page book. When I'm done I'll read his sequel Vindicated:
http://www.amazon.com/Vindicated-Names-Liars-Battle-Baseball-ebook/dp/B0015DWMDY/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1426509985&sr=1-3&keywords=jose+canseco
"Say what you will about Canseco, that he’s a self-serving buffoon who is obsessed with his own celebrity and out to make a quick buck. But Canseco was also a one-man reconciliation commission whose allegations, more than anyone else, pulled back the curtain on baseball’s secret."
http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/story/Tony-La-Russa-legacy-has-one-big-asterisk-next-to-it-110211
I read Juiced with some level of mixed feelings. It's certainly very interesting and I think you give Canseco some points for talking straight about steroids and other parts of his career-he has a chapter on when he was Madonna's 'bat boy.'
As he tells it, he and Madonna never did the deed which is one thing he says I do believe. I just listened to Madonna's interview with Howard Stern last week, and can imagine she's not for every guy. She doesn't strike me as someone so easy to connect with. A key with her seems to be that she chooses you not the opposite way around-though this is probably true with most women. Still, most are more subtle about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al2faMrJ_OQ
Also she changes her look too much which makes it hard I think to even get a image of what she looks like in your mind.
Still, overall, I have some mixed feelings about the book. I can well understand why McGwire doesn't accept his apology and wants nothing to do with him.
http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/07/mark-mcgwire-jose-canseco-apology-oakland-athletics-mlb
Thanks to the book, McGwire's reputation has been permanently sullied. Unfortunately, all these sanctimonious baseball writers are not going to want to vote him into the Hall of Fame because of it and you have the geniuses who think that McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds should all have asterisks next to their numbers.
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/tony-la-russa-put-steroid-cheats-baseball-hall-fame-asterisks-article-1.1880787
Canseco's book facilitated this. Basically thanks to that, McGwire and many other great players were thrown under the bus. At the time when the book first came out I was inclined to agree with the 2 Bash Brother's former manager, Tony LaRussa in 2005 when he said that Canseco wrote that book because he needed the money and wanted to be relevant again.
In the book, Canseco seems to often be resentful of McGwire, claiming that the media had it in for himself as a Cuban but McGwire could do no wrong because he was white. It still seems to me reasonable that maybe Canseco was frustrated because of McGwire's later success. If he felt that McGwire was the All American boy that a Latino like himself couldn't be then maybe he wanted to see his fellow Bash Brother taken down a peg or two. If this were the goal, mission accomplished.
Canseco, proudly tells us that he himself brought steroids to the game. He goes as far as saying he would never have been in baseball without steroids-which is quite an admission to make. I guess some might admire his honesty-presuming the claim is true-but I wonder if he realized just how much he was in the minds of the Steroids Scolds devaluing his own achievements.
Actually, he is more charitable about McGwire saying that he thinks he could have set the home run records even without the roids and thinks that McGwire didn't use them in 1987 when he hit 49 home runs as a rookie.
I'm not entirely sure what his position on steroids is. He argues that if you know how to use them properly-like he does; one gets the impression that he'd be willing to show you if you have any questions on where to stick the needles-they're a great thing and he seems to envision a future when we all take steroids guilt free. I actually think he may be onto something here. Yet his book's legacy has been to facilitate the very witch hunt against steroids he seems at times in the book to criticize.
Then in the sequel, Vindicated, he seems to embrace the idea that 'baseball needs to be cleaned up' of steroid use. In 2010, he was still calling McGwire and LaRussa liars for not admitting more about steroids.
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4819250
However, more recently, he's been begging both of them for forgiveness. It's hard to figure where he's going sometimes. Now he seems to regret ever having written the book and say it's given him nothing but trouble.
He may be right: as interesting as his books are, maybe it would have been better had he not written them at all.
I still wonder if baseball was better before the crackdown. I mean we're basically living in a second deadball era the last few years. Is this what a game with 'integrity' looks like?
UPDATE: Howard Stern interviewed Canseco soon after writing book.
UPDATE 2.0: I do find Canseco's tack on Stern a little dubious. He's saying that he didn't do it for the money or to hurt other players that it's just to get Major League Baseball and the Players Association but yet the only ones who got hurt by his book would be all the players who'd see their reputations sullied and their achievements tarnished.
However, he does make the interesting claim that the reason that MLB when on a witch hunt after turning a blind eye for years is that salaries were getting too high.
UPDATE 3.0 Robin Quivers makes a great point: the argument that those who used steroids can't be in the Hall of Fame because it's an unlevel playing field-as Babe Ruth and Roger Maris obviously didn't have steroids-is nonsense. Baseball was never a level playing field. All those older players didn't have to compete with Black and Latino players for one thing.
There's never a level playing field. The choice of who makes the HOF should be based on the numbers and their performance alone. Steroid use should not be a factor.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/03/is-it-time-for-war-on-war-on-steroids.html
In that vein I'm reading Canseco's Juiced which was a big moment in the moral panic over steroids; by then there was a clear desire to go on a crusade against steroids but Canseco's book which came out in 2005 assisted this effort mightily. It turned out to be a smoking gun.
http://www.amazon.com/Juiced-Times-Rampant-Roids-Baseball/dp/0060746416/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1426509985&sr=1-1&keywords=jose+canseco
I'm on pg 203 of the 284 page book. When I'm done I'll read his sequel Vindicated:
http://www.amazon.com/Vindicated-Names-Liars-Battle-Baseball-ebook/dp/B0015DWMDY/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1426509985&sr=1-3&keywords=jose+canseco
"Say what you will about Canseco, that he’s a self-serving buffoon who is obsessed with his own celebrity and out to make a quick buck. But Canseco was also a one-man reconciliation commission whose allegations, more than anyone else, pulled back the curtain on baseball’s secret."
http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/story/Tony-La-Russa-legacy-has-one-big-asterisk-next-to-it-110211
I read Juiced with some level of mixed feelings. It's certainly very interesting and I think you give Canseco some points for talking straight about steroids and other parts of his career-he has a chapter on when he was Madonna's 'bat boy.'
As he tells it, he and Madonna never did the deed which is one thing he says I do believe. I just listened to Madonna's interview with Howard Stern last week, and can imagine she's not for every guy. She doesn't strike me as someone so easy to connect with. A key with her seems to be that she chooses you not the opposite way around-though this is probably true with most women. Still, most are more subtle about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al2faMrJ_OQ
Also she changes her look too much which makes it hard I think to even get a image of what she looks like in your mind.
Still, overall, I have some mixed feelings about the book. I can well understand why McGwire doesn't accept his apology and wants nothing to do with him.
http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/07/mark-mcgwire-jose-canseco-apology-oakland-athletics-mlb
Thanks to the book, McGwire's reputation has been permanently sullied. Unfortunately, all these sanctimonious baseball writers are not going to want to vote him into the Hall of Fame because of it and you have the geniuses who think that McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds should all have asterisks next to their numbers.
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/tony-la-russa-put-steroid-cheats-baseball-hall-fame-asterisks-article-1.1880787
Canseco's book facilitated this. Basically thanks to that, McGwire and many other great players were thrown under the bus. At the time when the book first came out I was inclined to agree with the 2 Bash Brother's former manager, Tony LaRussa in 2005 when he said that Canseco wrote that book because he needed the money and wanted to be relevant again.
In the book, Canseco seems to often be resentful of McGwire, claiming that the media had it in for himself as a Cuban but McGwire could do no wrong because he was white. It still seems to me reasonable that maybe Canseco was frustrated because of McGwire's later success. If he felt that McGwire was the All American boy that a Latino like himself couldn't be then maybe he wanted to see his fellow Bash Brother taken down a peg or two. If this were the goal, mission accomplished.
Canseco, proudly tells us that he himself brought steroids to the game. He goes as far as saying he would never have been in baseball without steroids-which is quite an admission to make. I guess some might admire his honesty-presuming the claim is true-but I wonder if he realized just how much he was in the minds of the Steroids Scolds devaluing his own achievements.
Actually, he is more charitable about McGwire saying that he thinks he could have set the home run records even without the roids and thinks that McGwire didn't use them in 1987 when he hit 49 home runs as a rookie.
I'm not entirely sure what his position on steroids is. He argues that if you know how to use them properly-like he does; one gets the impression that he'd be willing to show you if you have any questions on where to stick the needles-they're a great thing and he seems to envision a future when we all take steroids guilt free. I actually think he may be onto something here. Yet his book's legacy has been to facilitate the very witch hunt against steroids he seems at times in the book to criticize.
Then in the sequel, Vindicated, he seems to embrace the idea that 'baseball needs to be cleaned up' of steroid use. In 2010, he was still calling McGwire and LaRussa liars for not admitting more about steroids.
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4819250
However, more recently, he's been begging both of them for forgiveness. It's hard to figure where he's going sometimes. Now he seems to regret ever having written the book and say it's given him nothing but trouble.
He may be right: as interesting as his books are, maybe it would have been better had he not written them at all.
I still wonder if baseball was better before the crackdown. I mean we're basically living in a second deadball era the last few years. Is this what a game with 'integrity' looks like?
UPDATE: Howard Stern interviewed Canseco soon after writing book.
UPDATE 2.0: I do find Canseco's tack on Stern a little dubious. He's saying that he didn't do it for the money or to hurt other players that it's just to get Major League Baseball and the Players Association but yet the only ones who got hurt by his book would be all the players who'd see their reputations sullied and their achievements tarnished.
However, he does make the interesting claim that the reason that MLB when on a witch hunt after turning a blind eye for years is that salaries were getting too high.
UPDATE 3.0 Robin Quivers makes a great point: the argument that those who used steroids can't be in the Hall of Fame because it's an unlevel playing field-as Babe Ruth and Roger Maris obviously didn't have steroids-is nonsense. Baseball was never a level playing field. All those older players didn't have to compete with Black and Latino players for one thing.
There's never a level playing field. The choice of who makes the HOF should be based on the numbers and their performance alone. Steroid use should not be a factor.
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