Posted on 02/23/2005 10:41:01 AM PST by Howlin
Jose Canseco is ready to put his money where he mouth is, but you may have to pay to see it. Appearing on ESPN2's "Cold Pizza" yesterday, Canseco said he is trying to set up a Pay-Per-View event where he will take a lie detector test to prove the claims in his book "Juiced" are true.
"Something is being constructed right now," he said on the show. "We are going to set up some type of polygraph examination."
As for the Mike Greenwell controversy, Canseco said the former Red Sox - who complained last week that he was more deserving of the 1988 American League MVP award than the admitted steroids user - can have it.
"You have the award of MVP," he said.
Greenwell would be smart to collect sooner rather than later. In addition to waging a full media blitz for his book, Canseco has been been a busy salesman. He's already looked to sell his 2000 World Series ring he won with the Yankees, and collectors can purchase an autographed White Sox game jersey - and several other items - from Canseco's personal Web site.
Seventeen years ago, Canseco won MVP honors with the A's after he whacked 42 homers, drove in 124 runs, stole 40 bases and batted .307. Greenwell hit .325 with 22 homers and 119RBI in '88 for the Red Sox.
"Nobody remembers who finishes second," Greenwell told the Daily News last week, underscoring how his endorsement opportunities were compromised after he lost to Canseco. "It cost me my legacy."
Canseco's lack of remorse for steroid use damages kids
By ANA VECIANA- SUAREZ
This week I tallied up the number of years I've spent on or near a baseball field. Nineteen.
Yep, for almost two decades I've sat in the bleachers, by the dugout or on the sidelines to watch one of my five kids play the Great American Pastime. I figure that, with my youngest at 11, I probably have five or more good seasons left in me before I retire.
Which makes me, if not an expert in the game, at least a knowledgeable observer. In other words, I can — with some authority — tell my son he's hitting the ball late. I can also counsel from personal experience that losing 13-zip is not the end of the world.
Like most parents of sports-obsessed children, I've survived the wax and wane of major-league dreams. At some point in his Little League career, each of my four sons thought he would one day make it to the pros.
But one of the hard lessons of childhood — indeed, of life — is the bitter realization that you may be good, but not good enough, big enough, fast enough, strong enough. And there are many others who are better.
I wonder, though, how many young athletes now believe that a little pharmaceutical help might juice their way to the top. Maybe that gap between "great" and "good" is but a pill or needle away.
It's impossible to ignore ranting sports commentators weighing in on the latest chapter in the ongoing saga of steroid use in baseball. Slugger Jose Canseco, once and very briefly Miami's darling, has written a book about his use of the dangerous drugs. In Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits and How Baseball Got Big, he admits to taking steroids as early as 1984 and continuing throughout his career. He also names big names.
"I was the godfather of the steroid revolution," he writes. And you wonder what kind of sick pride there is in that kind of admission.
Plenty apparently. The player who was the first to steal 40 bases and swat 40 homers in one season appeared on 60 Minutes and issued statements that still make me wince:
"I don't recommend steroids for everyone. I don't recommend human growth hormones for everyone. But for certain individuals, I truly believe it can make an average athlete a super athlete."
So much for coming clean. So much for making good of a bad situation.
But an opportunity lost is not the worst part of this ordeal, not by a long shot. Lots of sons and daughters may have watched this completely unapologetic (and unforgivable) confession and entertained a tempting thought: Can 'roids do that for me, too? Already, one-fourth of high school athletes use anabolic steroids, according to the director of legal affairs for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.
True, Canseco's credibility is shaky at best. His off-the-field antics have matched his on-field ones, and not in a good way. Remember the nightclub fights? The speeding sports cars? The reports of domestic violence?
But credibility is beside the point. The damage has already been done when he declares on prime time, "I would never have been a major league-caliber player without steroids."
Can you hear all those young players' hearts breaking?
There is something pitifully sad in all this. Sad because we hope that participation in sports will help our children learn about perseverance, about teamwork, about playing fair. But instead, they are being taught that cheating with performance-enhancing drugs may be the only way the good-enough athlete can make it to the top.
After 19 years as a baseball mom, I can tell you that's a strike no matter who calls it.
He's turned into a celebrity for being a druggie, a betrayer of his teammates and now he's whining about racism at the heart of the criticism.
He's all over TV and radio these last few days.
Hannity acted like he was the man coming to save our children from drugs.
I just don't get it; that's why I was looking for SOMETHING to explain this to me, and I found this funny story.
That article is SPOT ON! Thanks for posting it. It deserves a thread of its own.
HAH! Canseco may be a prick but I LOVE what he is doing to Baseball. They deserve it. They need it and it couldn't happen to a better bunch of worthless slobs.
Anytime Sean Hannity wonders why some of us here on FR think he's a third-rate media hack, he should ask himself why he spends so much time on television and radio interviewing useless @ssholes like this.
Why else would Sean lower himself to have this sleaze in the studio. And then spend the rest of the show bashing the man after he left. UGH.
Did you see or hear him on his radio or TV show talking to this guy?
I was really surprised at how much credence he gave him.
Oh, shoot.....I should have searched! And I scream at people for not doing that......duh!
HHHHHHMMMMMMMNNNNNN
Well, well. What a coincidence.
And he's been on ALL the Fox shows; and Judith Regan has a "deal" with Fox, if I am not mistaken.
Loop up JERK in Webster's and find a picture of Mr. Jose Canseco!
Not that it would have mattered anyway.
Between Don King, Amber Frey, Jocelyn Elders, and now Jose Canseco . . . Hannity is really scraping around at the bottom of the food chain at this point. If Andrea Yates weren't in prison, I'm sure she would have been booked for a half-dozen appearances already.
DING DING DING!!! We have a winner!!
Though I wouldn't call Amber Fry an A-hole. I used a few other choice words for her....
The parody was too funny! Wonder if it's on the net anyplace?
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