This book does not intend to condone or encourage the use of

any particular drugs, medicine, or illegal substances. It is based

on the personal experiences, research, and observations of the

author, who is not a qualified medical professional. This book is

intended to be informational and by no means should be con-

sidered to offer medical advice of any kind. It is recommended

that people seek the advice of a physician before embarking on

any medical treatment or exercise or training regimen. The

publisher and the author specifically disclaim liability for any

adverse effects arising from the use or application of the infor-

mation contained herein.

I want to dedicate this book to my fans, who have supported me

and cheered me on for many years—and deserve to know the

truth.

Contents

INTRODUCTION: A Look to the Future

1

15. Giambi, The Most Obvious Juicer

in the Game

1B5

PROLOGUE: The First Time Hurts Most

11

IB. Baseball Economics 101

175

1. "You'll Never Add Up to Anything"

15

17. The Night My Daughter Saved

2. A J.V. Player at Coral Park High

25

My Life

187

3. A Vow to My Dying Mother

37

18. Steroid Summer, The McGwire-Sosa i

Show, and the Fake Controversy

4. "The Natural"

47

over Andro?

197

5. Rookie of the Year

57

19. The Godfather of Steroids

205

6. The Bash Brothers

71

20. Clean Living

219

7. My First Lamborghini

81

21. "Not Really Here to Play"

227

8. Imports, Road Beef, and Extra

22. Nice Guys Finish Last

239

Cell Phones

89

23. An Education Money Can't Buy

247

9. Madonna's "Bat Boy"

99

24. Did He or Didn't He?

257

10. Thank You, Tom Boswell

111

25. The Future of the Game

269

11. Texas-Sized Sluggers

127

EPILOGUE: Forever Young

277

12. Fatherhood Changes Everything

139

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

285

13. The Strike

147

INDEX OF NAMES

287

14. The Men in Black

155

A LOOK TO THE FUTURE

These past few years, all you had to do was turn on a radio or

flip to a sports cable channel, and you could count on hearing

some blowhard give you his opinion about steroids and baseball

and what it says about our society and blah blah blah. Well,

enough already. I'm tired of hearing such short-sighted crap

from people who have no idea what they're talking about.

Steroids are here to stay. That's a fact. I guarantee it. Steroids are

the future. By the time my eight-year-old daughter, Josie, has

graduated from high school, a majority of all professional all)

letes—in all sports—will be taking steroids. And believe it or

not, that's good news.

Let's be clear what we are talking about. In no way, shape, or

form, do I endorse the use of steroids without proper medical

advice and thorough expert supervision. I'll say it again: Steroids

are serious. They are nothing to mess around with casually, and

if anything, devoting yourself to the systematic use of steroids

means you have to stay away from recreational drugs. I was

never into that stuff anyway, cocaine and all that, but if you're

going to work with steroids, you have to get used to clean living,

smart eating, and taking care of yourself by getting plenty of

rest and not overtaxing your body.

I'm especially critical of anyone who starts playing around

with steroids too early, when they are barely old enough to shave

and not even fully grown yet. Your body is already raging with

J U I C E D

hormones at that age, and the last thing you want to do is wreak

havoc with your body's natural balance. If you want to turn

yourself into a nearly superhuman athlete, the way I did, you

need to wait until you have matured into adulthood. That way

your body can handle it. And you shouldn't fool yourself into

thinking that all you need to do is just read a few articles on

steroids, either. What you need to do is to absorb every scrap of

information and insight on the subject—to become an expert

on the subject, the way I did.

We're talking about the future here. I have no doubt whatso-

ever that intelligent, informed use of steroids, combined with

human growth hormone, will one day be so accepted that every-

body will be doing it. Steroid use will be more common than

Botox is now. Every baseball player and pro athlete will be using

at least low levels of steroids. As a result, baseball and other

sports will be more exciting and entertaining. Human life will

be improved, too. We will live longer and better. And maybe

we'll love longer and better, too.

We will be able to look good and have strong, fit bodies well

into our sixties and beyond. It's called evolution, and there is no

stopping it. All these people crying about steroids in baseball

now will look as foolish in a few years as the people who said

John F. Kennedy was crazy to say the United States would put a

man on the moon. People who see the future earlier than others

are always feared and misunderstood.

The public needs to be informed about the reality of steroids

and how they have affected the lives of many star baseball players,

including me. Have I used steroids? You bet I did. Did steroids

make me a better baseball player? Of course they did. If I had it all

to do over again, would I live a steroid-enriched life? Yes, I would.

Do I have any regrets or qualms about relying on chemicals to

help me hit a baseball so far? To be honest, no, I don't.

Introduction: A Look to the Future

We human beings are made up of chemicals. High school

chemistry students learn to recite "CHOPKINS CaFe," which is

all the chemical elements that make up the human body: car-

bon, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorous, potassium, iodine, nitro-

gen, sulfur, calcium, and iron. Maybe it bothers some people to

think of our bodies as just a collection of those elements, but I

find it comforting.

I like studying the body and how it works. I like knowing all

about what makes us stronger and faster. If you learn about the

chemicals that make up life, and study the hormones coursing

through our bloodstreams that give our bodies instructions,

you can learn how to improve your health through controlled

use of steroids. And you can do it safely.

Yes, you heard me right: Steroids, used correctly, will not only

make you stronger and sexier, they will also make you healthier.

Certain steroids, used in proper combinations, can cure certain

diseases. Steroids will give you a better quality of life and also

drastically slow down the aging process.

If people learn how to use steroids and growth hormone

properly, especially as they get older—sixty, seventy, eighty years

old—their way of living will change completely. If you start

young enough, when you are in your twenties, thirties, and for-

ties, and use steroids properly, you can probably slow the aging

process by fifteen or twenty years. I'm forty years old, but I look

much younger—and I can still do everything the way I could

when I was twenty-five.

When I talk in detail about steroids and how I single-handedly

changed the game of baseball by introducing them into the game,

I am saying what everyone in baseball has known for years. To all

my critics, to everyone who wants to turn this into a debate about

me, Jose Canseco, let me quote my favorite actor (besides Arnold

Schwarzenegger, that is) and say: You can't handle the truth.

J U I C E D

That is the story of baseball in recent years. Everyone in the

game has been hoping the lie could last as long as possible. They

wanted steroids in the game to make it more exciting, hoping

they would be able to build its popularity back up after the dis-

astrous cancellation of the 1994 World Series. So when I taught

other players how to use steroids, no one lifted a finger to stop

me. When I educated trainers and others on how to inject play-

ers with steroids, there was nothing standing in my way. Directly

or indirectly, nearly everyone in baseball was complicit.

How do I know that? I was known as the godfather of steroids

in baseball. I introduced steroids into the big leagues back in

1985, and taught other players how to use steroids and growth

hormone. Back then, weight lifting was taboo in baseball. The

teams didn't have weight-lifting programs. Teams didn't allow

it. But once they saw what I could do as a result of my weight

lifting, they said, "My God, if it's working for Jose, it's gotta work for a lot of players."

So all of a sudden ballparks were being built with brand-new,

high-tech weight-lifting facilities, and at the older ballparks

they were moving stuff around and remodeling to make room

for weight rooms. I definitely restructured the way the game was

played. Because of my influence, and my example, there were

dramatic changes in the way that players looked and the way

they played. That was because of changes in their nutrition,

their approach to fitness and weight lifting, and their steroid in-

take and education.

If you asked any player who was the one who knew about

steroids, they'd all tell you: Jose Canseco.

Who do you go to when you want information on steroids?

Jose Canseco.

Who do you go to if you wanted to know if you were using it

properly?

Introduction: A Look to the Future

Jose Canseco.

If you picked up this book just for a few juicy tales about

which players I've poked with needles full of steroids, or what it

was like when Madonna sat on my lap and asked me to kiss her,

that's fine with me. I've lived a colorful life, and people have al-

ways been curious about the things I've done. If you want to flip

through the chapters looking for the highlights, I have no prob-

lem with that (as long as you pay the cover price, of course).

But let me be clear that I'm writing this book for people who

are ready to think for themselves. That's all I'm asking. Hear me

out, listen to what I have to say about baseball and other things,

and come to your own conclusions. That might sound easy, but

believe me, coming to terms with a true picture of what has

been going on in baseball in the past ten years or so might not

be what you really want.

Do I expect some skepticism from people? Of course I do. I've

made some mistakes in the past. I've made mistakes in my per-

sonal life, and I've made mistakes in public, too. There have

been times when I spoke out without realizing how my com-

ments might sound to people. That's all water under the bridge.

Now, I'm looking to the rest of my life, not dwelling on what

might have been.

I'm telling the truth about steroids in this book because

someone has to do it. We're long overdue for some honesty and,

as any ballplayer will tell you, I know the real story of steroids in

baseball better than any man alive. I'm also in a position to tell

you the truth because I no longer have any ties with Major

League Baseball, and I have no interest in the politics and dou-

ble standards of Major League Baseball. I'm my own man and

always have been.

Back when I first started using steroids, I tracked down as

many books as I could find on the subject, and I studied the

J U I C E D

science behind steroids. I started becoming something like a

guru. I wanted to know everything about each steroid and what

it did, especially pertaining to athletes and sports and baseball.

Could it make me faster? Could it make me stronger? Could it

make me injury-free? I started experimenting on myself, using

my own body to see what steroid could do what. Today, I proba-

bly know more about steroids and what steroids can do for the

human body than any layman in the world.

I believe every steroid out there can be used safely and bene-

ficially—it's all a question of dosage. Some steroids you cycle

off and on, depending on the dose. You just have to make sure

you give your liver enough time to filter them out. There are

other steroids that have very low toxicity levels. Those can be

taken continuously by most healthy people. It just depends.

Growth hormone? You can use that all year round. Same thing

with your Equipoise, your Winstrols, your Decas—taken prop-

erly, those are fine all year round. But something like Anadrol,

and some high dosages of testosterone—those have to be mod-

erated, taken more selectively. This is all important because

when ballplayers talk about steroids, they really mean a combi-

nation of steroids and growth hormone, and that requires

some serious planning if you don't want to get yourself in

trouble.

Believe it or not, I first found out about the benefits of

growth hormone in a book. That was when I was first educating

myself, years ago. There were certain bookstores that had a big

selection of books on body building and related subjects, and

you could go into the stores and flip through the books, or buy

them and bring them home like cookbooks full of recipes to try.

Or you could just go talk to bodybuilders. They were always on

the lookout for the latest information themselves, so often they

would sell the books or magazines with the newest tips. It took

Introduction: A Look to the Future

me some time, and a lot of effort, but I educated myself. I read

and I listened to bodybuilders talk about the subject. Little by

little, I turned myself into an expert and that gave me a huge

edge as a baseball player.

There's always that competitive angle in baseball: The pitch-

ers trying to stay in front of the hitters, the hitters trying to stay

in front of the pitchers. As hitters, we were always looking for

better equipment and for any other edge we could gain. We

may keep a video camera on a pitcher, trying to find out if he's

tipping his pitches. The game has become so technical. You can

go back during a game after every at-bat to look at what you

just did. You have five computers with ten different camera an-

gles, and you can slow it down, fast-forward it, break it down,

this and that. You can use the computer to break down where

your hot zone is and know exactly what you're doing wrong

pitch by pitch.

You feel like a damn scientist back there: They play back

every one of your at-bats, watching them in slow-mo, and from

every different angle. It's just incredible. You can reexamine

each at-bat to analyze every element of your performance:

where your hands were, how your feet were placed, the speed of

your swing. This radical new technology has taken over base-

ball, and all of sports. It's awesome, really—but it makes sense,

given all the money at stake now. And that applies to every kind

of technology, running the gamut from digital video and high

powered software to steroids and growth hormone, and what-

ever comes next.

Remember back when Mark McGwire and I were called the

"Bash Brothers" during our time together on those memorable

Oakland As teams from the late 1980s to early 1990s? I didn't al-

ways like that tag, but people were right that McGwire and I

spent a lot of time together. Of course, we didn't talk much.

J U I C E D

What we did, more times than I can count, was go into a bath-

room stall together to shoot up steroids.

That's right: After batting practice or right before the game,

Mark and I would duck into a stall in the men's room, load up

our syringes, and inject ourselves. I always injected myself, be-

cause I had practiced enough to know just what I was doing, but

often I would inject Mark as well.

It helps to have a partner to do the injecting for you. It's diffi-

cult to inject yourself, especially when you're first starting out,

because you have to get the needle at just the right angle to hit

the glute muscle in the ideal spot. Whenever you're going to in-

ject into muscle tissue, you have to hit your spot just right. I

don't recommend injecting steroids into yourself in the early

going. Get a friend, or a doctor, to do it.

Growth hormone is a little different. For best results, you

want to inject growth hormone into your abdominal mus-

cles—you just pinch a thin layer of fat and inject yourself right

there. It's pretty easy, and you can get good at it quickly. Some

of the players were injecting growth hormone every day, or

every third day. It all depended on how big you were and what

results you wanted.

As a rookie, McGwire was a skinny kid with hardly any mus-

cles on him at all. There's no doubt that Mark was always a great

hitter, even before steroids: He hit forty-nine homers in his first

season, 1987, which is still the rookie record for home runs. He

always had a smooth, compact, and powerful swing; he had

amazing technique. But the steroids made Mark much bigger

and much stronger; perhaps most important of all, I personally

observed how they made him feel more confident and more

comfortable with his own body. All of that definitely helped him

break Roger Maris's record in 1998. I don't know of anyone in

Introduction: A Look to the Future

baseball who won't tell you that's true, so long as they're talking

off the record and in private and don't have to worry about

being quoted in a splashy headline somewhere.

Have other superstars used steroids? If you don't know the

answer, you've been skimming, not reading. The challenge is not

to find a top player who has used steroids. The challenge is to

find a top player who hasn't. No one who reads this book from

cover to cover will have any doubt that steroids are a huge part

of baseball, and always will be, no matter what crazy toothless

testing schemes the powers that be might dream up.

Is it cheating to do what everyone wants you to do? Are

players the only ones to blame for steroids when Donald Fehr

and the other bosses of the Major League Players' Association

fought for years to make sure players wouldn't be tested

for steroids? Is it all that secret when the owners of the game

put out the word that they want home runs and excitement,

making sure that everyone from trainers to managers to

clubhouse attendants understands that whatever it is the play-

ers are doing to become superhuman, they sure ought to keep

it up?

People want to be entertained at the ballpark. They want

baseball to be fun and exciting. Home runs are fun and excit-

ing. They are easy for even the most casual fan to appreciate.

Steroid-enhanced athletes hit more home runs. So yes, I have

personally reshaped the game of baseball through my example

and my teaching. More than that, I am glad that soon enough

the work I've done will help reshape the way millions of you

out there live your lives, too. Why should only top athletes with

huge salaries reap the benefits of the revolution in biotechnol-

ogy that will define our times? Why shouldn't everyone get to

ride the wave?

J U I C E D

I hope this book will help you get over any biases you may

have about steroids. I will do my best to help you unlock your

own potential, so that even if you are not a professional athlete,

you can look like one and feel like one and, in some ways at

least, perform like one.

I was really scared the first time I used steroids. It all started for

me late in 1984 when I was twenty years old. I had vowed to my

mother that I would become the best athlete on the planet, no

matter what it took, and I was totally focused on making that

happen. I came back to Miami after playing minor-league base-

ball in the Oakland A's system for the 1984 season, and I was

more determined than ever to turn myself into an amazing

physical specimen. Fortunately for me, I had a friend from high

school (I'll call him Al) who knew a lot about steroids and had

experimented with them. He had enough firsthand experience

to know what the hell he was talking about.

After I finally decided it was time, I looked him up when I got

back to Miami. I had asked him a few general questions before,

but now it was like I was cramming for a test. I pressed him to

give me as many details as possible about how steroids actually

worked and what they actually did to you. I was always thinking

about trying to make myself better and stronger and faster, and

since I was still a runt at that stage, five foot eleven and one him

dred and ninety pounds, I knew I had a lot to gain from dab

bling with steroids.

The first time I injected steroids was in Al's room, over at his

house. We'd been talking about steroids so much, I knew it was

just a matter of time before I gave it a try, and one afternoon we

went to get something to eat at this pizza joint near Coral Park

High and had one more discussion about what I would need to

J U I C E D

do, and how long it would take to work, and what sort of in-

creases I could expect in size and strength.

I remember being very nervous as we went back to his house.

I was worried about allergic reactions and things like that, but at

the same time I had my doubts about whether steroids really

worked. That may not seem like so long ago, but let me tell you,

it was another era as far as knowledge about steroids goes.

Nowadays, you can hop on the Internet and dive right into a

mass of information about steroids and find out anything you

want. There are tons of Web sites that offer precise breakdowns

on every steroid imaginable. Twenty years ago, there was not

much to go on. You always heard stories about fake steroids, and

I was wondering about that, too. Would it be something fake I

was injecting? I had no idea. It could be anything. Back then,

nobody even knew if steroids were illegal at all.

The first time is strange. You're so scared; your nerves are

heightened and you kind of exaggerate the feeling. I'm serious.

You actually feel the needle penetrating your buttock muscle

that first time. Then the needle is pulled out, and you expect

that to hurt, too, but it doesn't. And then it takes about eight to

ten seconds for the oil-based steroid to get into your body.

From then on you pretty much know what to expect, and the

next time it doesn't hurt nearly as much. Soon you're totally

used to it and it doesn't feel like anything, at least no more than

pulling off a Band-Aid. I was always trying to learn more by

talking to other people who injected themselves, asking them

for the details of how they did it right. If someone does it per-

fectly, you don't feel anything at all. Al was pretty good, and that

was lucky for me.

Steroids don't do you any good unless you're working out

hard, and that afternoon when Al injected me for the first time,

we headed straight for the gym and did an upper-body session,

working on the shoulders, back, and triceps. Back then, I was

Prologue: The First Time Hurts Most

bench-pressing only around 200 pounds, usually five reps.

Those first injections were with an oil-based steroid, so it took

about two weeks before there were any noticeable effects.

The first thing you notice is an increase in strength. If you

stand there in front of the mirror and really check yourself out,

you won't see any actual differences for a good two weeks. But

you start to feel stronger much sooner. That's partly psychologi-

cal, but I remember noticing about ten days after that first injec-

tion that I really felt stronger, especially when I was lifting. The

first injection hurt a little, and so did the others that followed

every two weeks or so after that, but to me the pain felt almost

good, because I was so determined to live up to that promise I

had made to my mother.

I always told Jose and Ozzie,

"Do better next time."

I'm obviously a very serious man.

I never fool around with anything.

But I was never stern or a dictator.

JOSE C A N S E C O SR.,

My father

If

My dad earned a good living in Cuba during the Batista

years, working as a territory manager for Esso Standard

Oil. He also picked up a little extra cash working nights as an

English teacher at the Professional School of Commerce in Ha-

vana. He worked hard and was a good provider for our family.

As soon as Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, though, my fa-

ther was smart enough to know that before long the new leftist

system would control the entire country, and that would not be

a good thing for people like my father. He figured that every-

thing he had worked for in Cuba would be lost, and he was

right, too. Soon after Castro came to power, my father lost his

job. Then he lost his house. And then his car.

He was in an unusual position in that he had already spent

time in the United States studying English. He had gone to

Shreveport, Louisiana, as a teenager and lived with an uncle

there for several years, starting in 1940, and his time in Ameri-

can schools gave him enough of a grounding in the language to

teach it in Cuba. As much as he would have liked to stay in Cuba,

his country, he was also comfortable with the idea of diving into

a new life in the United States—if that was his only choice.

So my father notified the Cuban government that he wanted

to leave the country, and the government basically answered:

Tough luck. There was a serious shortage of skilled profession

als, and Castro could not afford to lose white-collar workers like

17

J U I C E D

my father. The government announced that such workers would

only be allowed to emigrate if a specific replacement could be

found to handle their particular job. But no one was available

who was qualified to take over my father's job with the oil com-

pany. The government wrote him a letter saying that because of

his professional ability and expertise, he was not allowed to

leave the country until further notice. He would have to wait

years for them to change their minds.

My dad was born in 1929, in a town called Regla, on the out-

skirts of Havana. Both my father's parents had come over from

Spain and his father, Inocente, had a big, light-green Packard

car that he used to earn a good livelihood. He would load six or

seven tourists into the Packard and drive them all over the

place showing them the sights of Havana. Back then, baseball

and boxing were the top sports in Cuba. My dad used to listen

to New York Yankee games on the radio; his favorite players

were Babe Ruth and, later, Roger Maris and Joe DiMaggio. But

my father was not much of a baseball player himself. He

shagged a few balls when he was a boy, but that was about it.

My father met my mother, Barbara, when they were both

teenagers in Regla. He had come back from Louisiana and was

studying at the Institute of Havana, from which he graduated

with a degree in English. They used to go ballroom dancing or

take strolls together around the town's central park. Sometimes

they would go to the movies to catch the latest Errol Flynn pic-

ture or sweeping sagas like Gone With the Wind.

My parents and older sister, Teresa, were living in Regla in

July 1964 when my mother gave birth to me and my twin

brother, Osvaldo. People like to say that Ozzie and I were like

pocket-sized atom bombs when we were babies, but my father

says we were actually nice and quiet. People were always fussing

over us. They usually had trouble telling the two of us apart

18

You'll Never Add Up to Anything

because we looked the same and were the exact same size and

weight. But I had a birthmark on the back of my hand, so that

helped family members know which of us was which.

Those were bad times to be living in Cuba, especially since the

government knew my father did not support their system. My

father had to wait until the year after Ozzie and I were born for a

chance to leave. The Castro government announced in 1965 that

it would allow an airlift of people from Varadero, Cuba, to Miami.

Ozzie and I were just babies when my parents took us and Teresa

to the airport, where we climbed into a small propeller plane.

There was only room for about twenty people inside, and appar-

ently it was stuffy. I don't remember any of that, but it was an im-

portant day for the family and we heard about it later.

"It was very, very hot inside the plane," my father used to tell us, looking back on that momentous day.

He would always tell us how sad he was, leaving behind his

home country and his parents, and the rest of his family. Bui he

knew he had to do it, and he was eager to start a new life, ma king

the most of his knowledge of English. We were also lucky to have

family members living in south Florida, ready to help us out. My

Aunt Lilia was there at the airport, waiting to meet us, but first

my parents had to go through an inspection. They had no money

or identification, but they stripped my father and searched him,

and then stripped my mother and searched her, too.

"We had nothing," my father would tell us.

But he had English, and the work experience to land a good

job soon after he arrived in America. He found work as a ten i

tory manager for Amoco Oil, which was a good position, but to

him it was only a start, and he was always looking for other ways

to bring in extra income. He also worked nights as a security

guard at two different places. We grew up in an average environ

ment, in the southwest section of Miami, but my dad was always

19

J U I C E D

working like crazy to improve our position. He always had

dreams of bettering himself and took some college courses, and

was always studying something.

He never had much extra time, but sometimes he would take

a break from his work in the afternoon and drive Ozzie and me

to a nearby school in Opa-locka so he could teach us baseball.

He started this when Ozzie and I were real small, just three or

four years old, and continued for years, helping us develop. We

would wait until school was out for the day so we could use the

school building as a backstop. We just needed a bat and a ball.

"Jose, see this bat here?" my father would ask me.

"Yes, Dad," I'd say.

"You put that bat on your shoulder and I'm going to pitch the

ball to you." "And when I say 'Swing!' you swing, so you can hit it."

Each of us would get ten hits. One would take his swings, and

the other would stand behind my dad to field any balls that

made it that far. My dad says that Ozzie learned faster than I did,

and used to hit the ball farther when we were both little kids,

but I don't remember.

Ozzie and I started playing organized baseball when we were

twelve or thirteen. You could say we were both late bloomers. We

were always just average baseball players, and that was really

frustrating for my father. He had worked so hard to give us a

good life in America, and he wanted us to do great things. Aver-

age was never acceptable, and my dad would criticize us a lot be-

cause we weren't better. He would come to all of our games, and

every time we would play badly, my dad would scream at us in

front of everybody. It was embarrassing and really hard to take.

Sometimes we'd leave the game crying.

"You're going to grow up and work at Burger King or Mc-

Donald's!" my father would scream at us. "You'll never add up

to anything!"

20

You'll Never Add Up to Anything

Ozzie and I were both pretty lousy baseball players at that

time, and we gave my dad plenty to scream about. But we were

just kids, twelve or thirteen years old, and his yelling was pretty

hard to take. I guess it kind of stuck with us, even today.

"You stink!" he would shout.

My father was a real perfectionist. He was tough on himself,

always trying to do everything in life perfectly. And he was hard

on us, too. But my father was expecting too much of us, and we

couldn't live up to such high expectations. Now he says he hopes

he did not push us too much.

One day, in an effort to help us get better, my father made a

deal with us that he would give us five dollars for every home

run we hit. He stuck with that long after I had made the major

leagues and was hitting plenty of homers every year.

But early on, after he first made that offer, I didn't get many

chances to collect. I don't know if it was because my father was

always pointing out everything I did wrong on the baseball

field, or if it was because I was skinny and weak at that age, but

I never felt like I had any real talent as a baseball player. I did

love to watch the game, though.

I used to watch the Cincinnati Reds a lot, and on Saturdays I

would catch the television show This Week in Baseball. Back then, Reggie Jackson was the big hero; he was my favorite player—the

big power hitter—and I used to watch him whenever I could and

try to study what he did. But I never tried to imagine myself in his

shoes. That was just not for me. Guys like me didn't make it.

As a little kid, I played with Rafael Palmeiro and Danny

Tartabull, two guys who you just knew were automatic major

leaguers. You could just take one look at them and see that they

had what it took to become some of the best baseball players in

the world. You could tell from watching their swings or checking

out the little details about the way they played the game. They

21

J U I C E D

were so talented, it was incredible. Palmeiro had the sweetest,

most compact swing. Both of them stood out among us kids.

Raffy went on to hit more than 500 home runs. Tartabull fin-

ished with 262 homers. Between the three of us, we've hit more

than 1,250 major-league home runs. But back then, when we

were boys, those guys were way ahead of me. They were already

superstars, confident and physically developed at thirteen or

fourteen. I was so puny, it was a joke. Now it turns out I'm proba-

bly twice their size and twice their strength. Life's funny that way.

Baseball was such a struggle for me. I never even had a set po-

sition until I got to high school and started playing a lot of third

base. Basically, when you're a kid you just play everything. You

catch. You pitch. You play some outfield. You play some infield.

You're trying to find what position you'll actually do well in, so

you play all over, waiting for something to click.

Ozzie and I kept plugging away, and my dad kept criticizing us.

For both Ozzie and me, it would have been a lot harder to handle

my dad's constant criticism and yelling if it weren't for our

mother. She was always there for us, taking care of us, feeding us.

If we got beat up by some other kids—and believe me, that hap-

pened from time to time when we were little—we'd go to my mom

and she'd make everything better. She was a stay-at-home mom

and a great cook. There was always something on the stove, usu-

ally Cuban food, and she would look after that and look after us,

and she always maintained an even disposition. I don't remember

her ever being angry with us, not once, even though sometimes we

definitely deserved it. My father took care of supplying the anger.

My mother came from a quiet family back in Regla, the Capas

family, and she was just the quietest, nicest lady in the world. All

of my memories of her are set in the house. My mother was al-

ways restrained in her emotions; she loved Christmas, and I'll

always remember the half-smile she had as we decorated the

22

You'll Never Add Up to Anything

tree. That smile was how you knew she was really enjoying her-

self. On Christmas Day, when we woke up to find a pile of toys

under the tree, my mother sat there beaming at us. She was so

giving. I think it must have been her favorite day of the year.

My mom never learned much about sports. My father was the

one who took us to practice, telling us what we needed to do to

improve. My mother almost never came to our games; she just

wouldn't have understood what was happening out there, and

anyway that was my father's domain.

My mother was very old-fashioned and hardly spoke any En-

glish. She loved to sing to us in Spanish. I remember when we

were little, she would put us to bed and sing us Spanish lullabies.

My mother was our rock.

She was our protector when my dad had a bad day at work or

was after us for some other reason. Don't get me wrong. Ozzie

and 1 were not what you would call little angels. Sometimes we

would misbehave and we probably did deserve to get spanked

for it. But that was only some of the time. My mom was the one

who was always trying to soften the blows or the issues with my

dad. From the time when we were young boys and all the way up

until high school, Ozzie and I would always run to mom for

protection if my dad criticized us or spanked us. We loved her

very much.

People always laugh when I tell them what ordinary kids

Ozzie and I were growing up, but it's really true. We looked for-

ward to the same things as any other kids, like going to

the movies. A lot of times, we would head up to the Jerry Lewis

Theater in Carol City, which was a little to the north of Opa-

locka, to check out the double features they were showing. I al-

ways loved the movies and as crazy as it might sound, I always

thought about being in movies myself. That was a dream that

seemed more real to me than playing professional baseball.

23

J U I C E D

One weekend, when Ozzie and I were about eleven, we went

with our two cousins to see Bruce Lee in a double feature of

Enter the Dragon and The Way of the Dragon. I don't remember much about the plot of Enter the Dragon; what I do remember

was the action. Bruce Lee was so fast, nobody could touch him,

and that was long before computer-generated special effects.

That first time we saw Bruce Lee and all the amazing things

he could do, we came out of the theater into the bright sunlight

of South Florida and started messing around, kicking each other

in an attempt to recreate what we'd just seen. We knew we had to

try to learn some of his tricks, and from the beginning we were

pretty good at it. It was fun, too. Bruce Lee was so cool; we all

wanted to be like him. Back then, he was the foremost martial

artist in the world, and not only because he was extremely fast,

but also because of his ideas and philosophy. Once we had seen

Bruce Lee on screen, it kind of stayed with us. I remember every

now and then, Ozzie and I would play around, either kicking

each other or trying out some of Bruce Lee's other moves. It

didn't take long before we found a way to get some actual lessons

to learn how to do some of these things properly. We didn't have

enough money to go to a dojo, of course, but a friend knew

someone who was an instructor and we were able to arrange pri-

vate lessons for a group of us, two or three times a week.

I enjoyed those lessons a lot. We were learning Tae Kwon Do,

and I took to it quickly. Finally, something I was good at! I was

the highest kicker in the group, almost right from the start, and

as I practiced more, I got better. The lessons were sporadic, but

even when we weren't taking lessons, Ozzie and I practiced by

ourselves. We turned into serious students of the martial arts.

Later on, as we got bigger, we put that on the back burner, but I

knew we would get back into it when the time was right.

24

Staring down at this poor sap from the pitcher's mound,

his uniform flapping loosely in the breeze,

I remember thinking, Jesus Christ, this guy could

Hula-Hoop inside a Cheerio.

The toothpick's name was Jose Canseco,

and before this game was over, I'd beat him for four

dribbled groundouts and a nice, fat K.

DAVID WELLS,

Perfect I'm Not

You hear many players say that they'd been dreaming

ill about the majors since they were old enough to hold a bat.

Not me. I was always a scrawny kid, not very athletic, and in my

wildest dreams I couldn't see myself playing at the major-league

level. I never, ever thought that I would make it, or that I was

good enough. After all, I was so shy and wimpy-looking back in

high school, everyone ignored me most of the time, especially

the girls. Seriously, I was probably the ugliest kid at my high

school. I did have a girlfriend in high school for a while, a beau-

tiful girl named Anna, and I don't even know what she saw in

me. I was the ugly duckling.

I remember having a crush on a cheerleader named Dawn

Alba, who was drop-dead gorgeous. Every guy at the school

must have had a crush on her. She was Cuban, of course, but

looked kind of Italian, with dark hair, dark eyes, and an incredi-

ble body. You know how high school crushes are. My jaw would

drop when I saw her, but I never talked to her. I was basically too

dweeby and yucky-looking to approach her.

I never really said much of anything to anyone. I kept to myself,

rather than having to deal with communicating with other people.

Every week in social studies, the teacher made some of the students

go up to the front of the class to give a verbal presentation on

something we had been studying. I couldn't do it. It was too scary

for me. I would just take the bad grades on the verbal presentations

27

J U I C E D

because I knew I didn't have the courage to talk in front of the

class. Not once did I go up there. The idea of speaking in front of

people made me too nervous. You could have offered me a million

dollars to go up to the front of class and speak, and I still could

never have done it. I just refused and took a failing grade.

My high school physical education teacher, Glenn Dunn, was

also one of our baseball coaches, and he made an effort to bring

me out of my shell. We still talk about those days. He'd tell me

that if I had more confidence in myself, good things would hap-

pen. My brother was always more confident than I was, and that

might have helped him make a better impression on people, in-

cluding the coach. But Ozzie was also more aggressive than I

was, and tended to mix it up in a way I didn't.

Coach Dunn remembers that I got in more than one fight at

school. But he also remembers how reserved I was. "You were

usually laid back," he says. "If four guys started a fight, you

would be right in there, kicking butt, but you would never be

the aggressor. That was never your style. You never went and

picked fights."

He coached me in a lot of ways. "You're a smart person, Jose,"

he would tell me. "You could be a tremendous student if you just

applied yourself, but you really don't care about school."

I'd just nod my head and try to get out of the spotlight.

He was right, though. I didn't care about school because I

never felt like I was a part of things. I'm not going to say it was

because of my father, and the way he was always so hard on

Ozzie and me, but let's just say I was used to having the feeling

that I was always doing something wrong. I always felt a little

out of it, like I never quite felt the same way about things as the

people around me.

I always liked sports, though. I remember sometimes we

would have three-on-three basketball games, the coaches

28

A J.V. Player at Coral Park High

against whichever students wanted to challenge them. Some-

times Ozzie and I would play together in those games. Since our

father wasn't around, it was just us, so I could relax and have a

little more fun. I was still a runt, five foot eleven and 155

pounds, and I wasn't much of a basketball player, either. Coach

Dunn told me I was a good natural athlete, but I thought he was

just trying to be nice. The one sport I was excited about playing

was football, but my parents forbid me from doing that because

on my size.

"They'll kill you out there," my dad told me. "There's no way we're going to let you play football."

So I stuck to baseball, even though I was too small to be very

good at that, either. I didn't even make the varsity team until my

senior year of high school. How many future major leaguers can

you say that about? If you're going to be skinny, like I was, you

needed to be quick, and I wasn't especially quick, either. It was

hard to find a good position to play.

"You're too skinny to play third base," my father would tell me.

The one thing I started doing pretty well was hitting the base-

ball. I guess I just had good hand-eye coordination or some-

thing. Even with that skinny, lanky body of mine, I showed some

talent for hitting some baseballs pretty far. That's what people

remember who knew me back then.

One time, we had a practice game where half our team was

going against the other half. A guy named Val Lopez was on the

opposing team, and he was a friend of ours. A lot of times, he

would pick us up and give us a ride to practice or to games. He

was a pitcher, and that day he threw me a fastball up and in, and

I hit that ball as hard as I'd hit a ball up to that time.

"You crushed it!" Val told me.

He couldn't believe it. You almost never saw someone hit a

ball on that field that made it to Twelfth Street, which marked

29

J U I C E D

the edge of the school. The houses beyond the street were con-

sidered untouchable.

"You hit it so far, it nearly hit a house in the air," Val said.

Back then, Ozzie was more outgoing than I was, and we were

together so much, it made it easy for me to hang back and let

him do the talking. Val, who is now a CPA in Miami, says he re-

members me having some kind of presence.

"You always had charisma," he tells me. "When you would

enter the game, even at the age of fifteen or sixteen, we knew

you were there."

It was true that by then I could drive the ball, and pitchers

worried when I would come up. But I was a limited baseball

player. I really had no foot speed, and my throwing arm was only

decent to average. I never knew where baseball was going to take

me. To me, it was psychologically out of my reach to consider

playing at the major league level.

Even so, I guess they were impressed by my home runs, because

they named me most valuable player of the junior varsity team

during my junior year. That, and the fact that the varsity team had

lost a bunch of guys to graduation, meant the varsity coaches had

no choice but to put me on the team my senior year. I had a good

year in varsity, and was named MVP again. I still had a long way to

go as a baseball player, but at least I had improved enough to

where my father couldn't find as many things to criticize.

He was there at all the games, screaming at us the same way

he had been doing ever since we were little boys. If you did

something wrong, you always knew you would hear from him. I

had a lot more positive games than negative games in high

school, and he didn't scream at me quite as much. But even

many years later, after I made it all the way to the big leagues and

did things no one had ever done in the history of the game, it

was never enough for my father.

30

A J. V. Player at Coral Park High

Think I'm kidding? Let me give you an example: In June

1994,1 had a monster game for the Texas Rangers, hitting three

homers and finishing with five hits and eight runs batted in. We

crushed the Seattle Mariners that day, 17-9. So I talked to my

dad after that game, and what do you think he said?

"How'd you do on your other at-bats?" he asked me.

I was dumbstruck. I felt like saying, "Gee, I don't know, I was

probably still out of breath from my three home runs!"

I don't think I was ever good enough for him. Later on, I

could handle that. But back in high school, it was really tough. I

was just happy they let me play baseball at all, because I had so

little confidence and the whole time I was out on the field, I was

always bracing myself to hear some jab from my father. That was

definitely the worst part of playing baseball for me.

"Don't scream at us!" Ozzie and I would yell back at my fa-

ther sometimes, and even though we would be crying, it never

made any difference. He didn't listen. You know how parents are.

To me and Ozzie, it seemed like each of our teammates heard

every single thing our father said, and we cringed every time

he'd rip us for not doing something or just for doing something

different than the way he thought we should. But I guess to

some of these other guys, whose dads didn't come to games very

often, it seemed like it would have been nice to have a father so

involved with what you were doing.

"Your dad is dedicated," Val Lopez used to tell me. "He's at games, he's at practices—and you always know he's there."

Another guy from that high school, Pedro Gomez, ended up

as a sportswriter in California, covering the Oakland A's when

I was in my heyday there, and now he works as an on-air re-

porter for ESPN. He says I was kind of a character in high

school, which just goes to show that different people have dif-

ferent recollections.

31

J U I C E D

"You were like the Judd Nelson character in The Breakfast

Club," Gomez tells me now. "You know how the assistant principal kept turning the knife into Judd, inside the library, and he

would respond by saying things like, 'Does Barry Manilow know

you raided his wardrobe?' You just never knew when to turn it

off. You were a smart ass."

Gomez was kind of a smart ass, too, the way I remember it.

And maybe I did like to goof off back then. It was only high

school, you're a different person for every class.

The Oakland A's ended up drafting me in the fifteenth

round of the 1982 amateur draft, and that came as a surprise to

me. I didn't think I was going to get drafted, and I was amazed

even to be picked in the fifteenth round. The scout who

drafted me was Camilo Pascual, a star pitcher for the Min-

nesota Twins in the 1960s, who won twenty games two years in

a row.

Pascual's son Bert was one of my teammates at Coral Park

High, so he had seen me swing the bat quite a few times, and

thought that I had potential. Pascual thought I should have been

picked sooner in the draft, and he actually got into kind of a

fight with the A's about signing me. I was only asking for a

$10,000 signing bonus, which was not much money at all, com-

pared to what other players were getting, but they didn't even

want to pay that much.

Pascual couldn't believe it. He thought they were crazy, and

he let them know just where he stood. He was in a meeting with

the A's general manager, Sandy Alderson, and all the scouts, and

maybe an owner or two, and he reached into his pocket very

dramatically and pulled out his wallet.

"You don't want to give this kid his bonus?" Pascual asked

them. "I'll pay the extra amount from my own pocket. That's

how sure I am that Jose is going to make it."

32

A J. V. Player at Coral Park High

They decided to sign me, and to be honest, I wasn't that

thrilled by the news. People always assume that if you get signed

to play professional baseball, you must be unbelievably excited,

like it's one of the best moments of your whole life. I didn't feel

that way. Probably a lot of ballplayers have the same feeling, but

don't talk about it. Basically, I was too scared to be very happy. I

had no idea what to expect, and it seemed totally obvious to me

that I didn't belong, and soon enough they would realize it had

been a mistake to sign me at all. I just had no confidence in my

abilities. I was always waiting for bad things to happen.

So when I talked to people about my future, I tried to play

down what baseball meant to me. My attitude was more like,

Hey, I have nothing better to do. I figured that once my brief experiment in professional baseball ran its course, and I had shown

the whole world that I didn't have what it took, I could go to col-

lege and figure out what kind of work I wanted to do for the next

forty or fifty years. My plan was just to give baseball a shot for a

few years to make sure I wouldn't have any regrets later.

I played in Idaho Falls in the Pioneer League that first season

as an eighteen-year-old, and that was a big change. A predomi-

nantly Mormon community, Idaho Falls was a long, long way

from South Florida. We hardly had any money, so seven or eight

of us all lived together in a place that was almost condemned, it

was such a dump. It had no heater, no nothing, and if you

wanted to use the bathroom, you would have to wait until you

went to the ballpark.

A lot of us slept on the floor there, and we took to calling that

place the "Animal House." I was making six hundred bucks a

month. I'd send some of that back home to my dad, because I

had hardly any expenses. I had two pairs of jeans I wore all the

time, when I wasn't in uniform, and only paid thirty bucks a

month in rent. People in town felt sorry for us, because we were

33

J U I C E D

living on so little, and they would give us coupons so we could

eat two breakfasts for the price of one and stuff like that.

You could say I was the mascot in the Animal House. I was a

scrawny young kid, so a lot of times the other players would pick

on me, telling me I was stupid, that I sucked as a baseball player.

That was an old tradition, the older guys hazing the younger

guys, picking on them and running them down. You expected it

as the natural order of things, but still, as a skinny eighteen-year-

old kid, I got picked on more than anyone. They would just throw

me around from one to the other and ridicule me all the time.

"What are you thinking?" they would all yell at me. "You're never going to make it to the major leagues!"

We had some fun times there. One player I knew there, a

heavy-set guy named Greg Robles, was probably the funniest

person I've ever met. He never made it to the major leagues, but

a couple years later he did hit three home runs in one game, play-

ing minor-league ball in Madison, Wisconsin. He was definitely

the funniest guy in baseball. He had these dumb magic tricks

that he would do, and those always busted everyone up. You have

to see it for yourself, but to give you an idea, we would be having

a family party, with kids and everything, and Robles would set

up a whole gag involving a slice of pizza.

"I'm going to eat a slice of pizza now," he would tell everyone.

He would eat it, and then drop his pants and bend over—and a

slice of pizza would fall out of his ass. It would hit the floor—

whap!—and no one could believe their eyes. He'd set it up before-

hand, of course, wedging it between his ass cheeks, but even if you

knew that, it was still funny. I know it's pretty revolting, but I've

got to admit, it still makes me laugh, thinking about that crazy guy.

Idaho Falls made a big impression on me, and not because of

anything having to do with baseball, either. That was the first

time I ever drank liquor. Back home in Miami, I had tried beer

34

MM. Player at Coral Park High

and wine, but I was not a big drinker at all. I'd never touched the

hard stuff. So one night at the Animal House, there was a bunch

of guys and girls drinking and they invited me to take part and

join them. I didn't realize until later that the reason they had in-

vited me was so they could get me drunk and laugh about it

when I made a fool out of myself.

I was young and innocent. It sounds funny now, but it's true.

Like any kid, inexperienced and shy, I was just trying to be part

of the crowd, so I started drinking and trying to keep up with

them. The thing was, they gave me this bottle that was just nasty.

I think it was something like 120 proof. At the time, I had no

idea what I was drinking. I just drank—and then I noticed that

everyone around me couldn't stop laughing.

"Come on, drink another!" one of them would say.

So I drank one or two.

"Come on! One more!' someone else would cry out, and so I

drank one or two more.

That didn't last very long, as you can guess. Pretty soon I was

in really bad shape. I almost died of alcohol poisoning. I was sick

the next three days, and on the fourth day I was still recovering.

That's how bad it was. It traumatized me so much; it gave me a

lasting distaste for liquor.

To this day, I don't really drink much, especially not hard

liquor. Maybe it was good that I had that traumatic experience

because it really shook me up; I never forgot it.

As for baseball, I didn't make much of a mark playing in

Idaho Falls. I played in twenty-eight games in the Pioneer

League, and only hit two homers. I think I barely hit .260 there,

and I could not have been less impressive. I still didn't have any

meat on my bones; I'm sure I looked like just another kid who

wasn't going anywhere.

Things turned out a little differently.

35

One year later... Canseco and I would cross paths again . . . and I was stunned to find that "the Idaho skinny guy" had somehow grown up to become a freaking Macy's balloon. Brand-new biceps

ripped out from under his uniform sleeves. Thick slabs of beef

padded his formerly bony frame. A pair of tree trunks now

connected to his ankles. Seven innings and two 450-foot moon

shots later, I still had no idea what to make of this new improved

mutant. Was this kind of super-size growth spurt even possible?

What the hell was this monster eating?

DAVID W E L L S ,

Perfect I'm Not

So much has changed since then: Now there are so many

huge Latino stars in the game, it's totally common to have

several Latino players on your team, or a lot more than that. But

I remember as a Cuban kid in the A's farm system at that time, I

was very aware that baseball was closed to a young Latino like

me. That was only twenty-three years ago, but for baseball it was

a completely different era.

There were no Cuban players at the major-league level at

that time. Previously, there had been some great Cubans, like

Luis Tiant, who actually pitched in six games for the California

Angels that year, before finally retiring at age forty-two. That

same year, another great Cuban, Tony Perez, turned forty—and

was still playing, too. Perez had made his name with the

Cincinnati Reds, but he had become more of a part-time player

by the end, and bounced around from team to team. Still, he

could always hit and actually batted .328 in 1985, not bad for a

forty-three-year-old.

But they were the exceptions that proved the rule. Many tal-

ented young athletes were playing street baseball in Cuba,

Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and many other Latin

American countries, but the barriers to breaking into the major

leagues were almost impossible for most to get around. Later, it

made me mad that there was such a pervasive double standard

for Latinos, especially compared with an all-American boy like

39

J U I C E D

Mark McGwire. But back when I was eighteen, I just figured it

was the way it was. If there were no Cubans in baseball, there

must be a reason. Who was I to think that I was going to make it

to Major League Baseball?

My second year in the minor leagues, 1983,1 was still a long

way from making any kind of mark in baseball. I was kind of

sleepwalking through games at that point. I played in almost

sixty games for Class-A Medford in Oregon that summer, and I

had almost two hundred at-bats—but I still only hit eleven

home runs, and my batting average was less than .270. True, I

was considered the most powerful hitter in the Northwest

League, and I did make the All-Star team, but I was a long way

from looking like a major leaguer. I also played some games that

year in Madison, Wisconsin, which was also Class A, and I had

three homers in thirty-four games, and my batting average was

.159. How's that for impressive?

Even during that off-season, I was still in a fog when it came

to baseball. If you had asked me at the time what I was doing, I

wouldn't have known what to tell you. But looking back, I can

see I was just going through the motions. The next season, 1984,

they sent me to Class-A Modesto, the next step up. And I got off

to a pretty good start there—until a call from my sister brought

that period of my life to an abrupt end.

My mom had been sick for years, going back to a bad blood

transfusion in Cuba in 1964 that infected her with hepatitis. She

had to take medicine for the hepatitis, and that was bad for her

diabetes. My whole life, she was sick with hepatitis and diabetes.

A lot of times she was really weak and had to stay in bed. But in

1984 I got a call from my sister, Teresa, and I knew that this time

it was different.

"Come home," she said. "Mom is sick."

"What's wrong?" I asked her.

•w

A Vow to My Dying Mother

But that was all she would say. I knew it was really bad. My

mother had been suffering so much, just getting weaker and

weaker. She had a blood clot in her back, and it had somehow

worked its way to her head. They admitted her to Miami's Can-

cer Research Center that weekend, but the terrible headaches

she was having only got worse. I flew back to Miami to see her

and went right to the hospital, but by then she was in a coma.

She had never seen one of my minor-league games, and when I

got there, the doctor told me she never would.

"The brain is dead," the doctor told us. "That's it."

We stayed with her in the hospital, but there was absolutely

nothing we could do. Once the brain dies, that's it. Her body was

being kept alive artificially with some machines, and we had to

make the decision to disconnect her from life support.

I went into shock and cried for hours. I just couldn't believe

that my mom was dead. Out of nowhere, overnight, she was

suddenly taken away from me, and I would never be able to talk

to her again. She had protected me and my brother all those

years, and gave us so much love and support and encourage-

ment—but she would never see me play professional baseball. I

was a wreck. I was just devastated, and all my family members

knew it.

We went through the whole process of burying my mom, re-

membering her, honoring her, and mourning her loss together

as a family. I needed a few weeks afterward before I could even

think about playing baseball again. By the time I got back on a

plane to fly west and rejoin the Modesto club, I had gone

through a complete transformation.

I'd had some time alone with my mother, there in the hospi-

tal, and even though I knew she was already gone, that was my

mother lying there, and I sat close to her and looked at her and

had one last heart-to-heart talk with her.

41

J U I C E D

"I'm going to be the best athlete in the world, no matter what

it takes," I told her, and I choked up and had to fight back tears.

"I promise you, Mom, that I will be the best."

The doctors can say what they want about her brain being

dead, but still, I know she heard me make that promise, wher-

ever she was, and I have always taken that promise every bit as

seriously as if she had responded, "Yes, Jose, I know you will."

So from that moment on, I dedicated my life to living up to

that vow, and I didn't care what it took. No matter what the

price, it didn't matter, I was going to turn myself into the best

athlete in the world.

Up until that time, I'll be the first to admit I didn't always

work very hard. People thought it was because I was lazy, but ac-

tually, it was really just a question of me not seeing a future in

baseball. I like to think things through, and baseball looked like

it would lead to nothing but disappointment, like almost any

Latino could expect to experience. But after that promise, I

stopped thinking like that. I just willed myself to put everything

I had into improving.

I finished out that season with Modesto, playing decent but

not great ball, with fifteen homers and an improved batting av-

erage. Then I was invited to instructional league. That was when

I really got down to business. I started an extensive weight-lift-

ing program, and that was the beginning of a whole new ap-

proach for me. I just ate, drank, and slept baseball.

That was it for me, nothing else. There were no girls. There

was no going out. There was nothing. The only thing that went

through my mind every single day was constantly thinking:

How can I become better? How can I become faster and

stronger? How can I gain more knowledge of the game? How

can I learn more about my body and its potential and what I can

do to unlock that potential?

4?

A Vow to My Dying Mother

I was hitting the weights hard at the 24-Hour Nautilus Gym,

which was five miles away from where I was living. Every day

after practice I would walk the five miles, lift weights until I

couldn't lift my arms in the air, and then I would walk another

five miles back home, every day. That was hard, but soon it

didn't feel like enough of a challenge, and then I actually started

jogging it, both ways, to get faster and stronger.

At that time, I hardly had any money and couldn't even afford

to buy myself a car. Maybe that was good in a way, because all that

jogging back and forth helped me get into great shape, but I re-

member how every time I would jog one way or the other, I would

pass this particular Chevrolet dealership. I'd look at all those

shiny new cars, lined up in rows, and that gave me one more rea-

son to work hard and get bigger and stronger. As I went by, I

would say to myself: One day I'm going to buy myself a Corvette.

And later I did—I actually got two Corvettes at once, and all just

for doing a TV commercial for a dealership in California.

To give you an idea of how insignificant I was to the organiza-

tion back then, one time during instructional league that year I

had a first-hand look at the way racism and the double standard

worked in baseball, at least at that time. I was a nobody to the

As, a fifteenth-round pick and a Latino. There was a huge con-

trast between how they saw me and how they saw their golden

boys, like Rob Nelson, a big, left-handed power-hitter who was a

dumpy-looking six-four, with 220 pounds of soft muscle. You

could tell he had never worked out, never lifted weights, but the

As picked him in the first round of the 1983 draft.

I remember one day we were working on a drill where the

pitchers would make a move over to first base and throw the

ball, trying to pick you off, and we were supposed to get our

leads and then dive back to the base ahead of the throw. I took

my lead, and when it came time to dive, I did, but this guy Rob

43

J U I C E D

Nelson caught the ball and slammed his mitt down, hitting

my elbow. I couldn't believe that he would make a big, awkward

tag like that, even if it meant hurting a teammate. He struck me

so hard on the elbow that it started swelling up right there.

"What was that?" I asked him. "Look what you did to my

elbow. It's swelling up."

Nelson didn't like me calling him on it like that, and he and I

got into it, talking back and forth. But that didn't last long.

"What the hell are you doing?" one of the coaches yelled at

me, and gave me a real strange look.

"That's our No. 1 draft choice," he told me. "Who are you to talk to him that way?"

He seriously said that to me. I wasn't allowed to tell someone he

shouldn't act like a thug, that's how little the organization cared

about me. They decided to show me how ticked off they were with

me, too. They weren't content just to yell at me a little. They

wanted to make sure I got the message that I wasn't good enough

to speak to this big, dumpy- looking, inconsiderate guy. So they

got together, talked it over, and cooked up what they thought was

a really clever scheme.

Then came the humiliation. They decided that for a couple of

days, I would have to be a bat boy. For a couple of days, I didn't

play at all, just fetched bats. I was the first one they had ever

tried to ridicule like that, making me run around to pick up

after them. They all taunted me the whole time, like I was some

kind of animal.

"Wow, you really make a good bat boy, Jose," someone would say.

"You missed one, Jose," another would add. "Come on, right

here, come on, right here, boy, hurry up."

Nothing could explain treating a person that way. I remember

even some of the head guys laughing at me, telling me I should

consider making a career out of being a bat boy.

44

A Vow to My Dying Mother

If my father had taught me anything, it was pride, and they

were trampling on that. I did my best to ignore what they were

saying, trying not to let it bother me. Somehow I got through the

first day as a bat boy, hoping they would relent and one day

would be enough. But I came back the next day and found out

they were serious about making me be a bat boy again for an-

other day.

"Hurry up and pick up that bat," one of them said.

And finally, it was too much. I didn't say anything to any-

body. I just walked off the field, went straight into the

clubhouse, sat there by myself, and started to cry. I decided

then and there that I was going to quit baseball. I couldn't

believe they were doing this to me. It felt as if I had no choice

but to quit. It seems short-sighted now, but at the time, it

felt like they wanted me gone and I didn't want to be there.

I'd just have to find some other way to live up to the promise I

had made to my mother.

Then I heard something that made me stop crying. I was in

the clubhouse all alone and I heard someone coming. I had

wanted some time to myself, and I didn't want to talk to anyone.

But it turned out to be Howard Ashlock, a minor-league pitch-

ing coach in the As organization at that time and one of the few

people who really took an interest in me.

"Listen, Jose, they're just testing you," he told me.

Ashlock had been paying close attention. He'd been watching

them pushing me, trying to see how much I could take.

"It's ridiculous," he said. "They know you're an emotional, volatile kid, and they want to make an example of you."

I was packing my stuff as he talked to me. I was going to leave

and never look back. I'd made a vow to my mother to be the best

athlete on the planet, but it was my mother who taught me that

if someone is treating you like dirt, you have to stick up for

45

J U I C E D

yourself and protect your dignity. I was sure she would have

wanted me to walk away rather than take any more of that. But

Ashlock helped me think it through; he helped me realize that if

I walked away, those jerks came out the winners.

"Don't quit the game," he told me. "You have a lot of talent and ability. Go back out there and don't let them get to you."

I went back out and finished the day as a bat boy. Then I went

home and tried to put it behind me. The next day, I was playing

again. We had a game at HoHoKam Park against the Cubs and

my first at-bat I hit a shot to dead center, 500 feet over the cen-

ter-field wall. My next at-bat, I hit another home run over the

center-field wall. That was a real turning point for me and my

future in baseball. From that day on, the Oakland A's treated me

as a serious talent. They had seen what I could do. They even

named me the No. 1 prospect in the A's farm system. I was also

rated as one of the top two or three prospects in all of baseball at

that time. I had come a long way in instructional league.

"By 1984 Jose's name was already buzzing throughout the or-

ganization," says Pedro Gomez of ESPN. "The only prospect ev-

eryone was talking about was this Cuban kid from Miami."

But what happened that day at HoHoKam was no accident. It

was the result of a lot of hard work and dedication. I was really

focused, and I was determined to show everyone in the A's orga-

nization what I could do. I wanted to make it clear to them what

kind of ability I had. That was my way of living up to the

promise I had made in that hospital in Miami.

I wasn't going to stop there. I wanted to become faster,

stronger, better, more powerful than any other athlete. I did it all

for my mother, and the promise I made her, but hitting home

runs never made me feel any better about losing my mom. I'd

trade it all away in a second if it could bring my mother back.

Even now, not a day goes by when I don't think about her.

-16

Jose was the buzz of all of baseball that year. Everyone

in the game was aware of him and what he was doing

at Double-A Huntsville and then later that year at

Triple-A Tacoma, and finally his September call-up.

It was truly one of the most amazing single seasons in

the history of the game, especially considering

he did it at three levels.

P E D R O G O M E Z ,

ESPN

I t ' s just human nature to feel awkward and afraid when you

first experience something, and when I had my first couple

shots of steroids, I was so nervous it was just ridiculous. I was so

scared of putting this external liquid in my body. I didn't know

what it was going to do to me. But after a while it becomes so

easy, it's incredible. Steroids become like a friend. You come to

understand them and how to benefit from them and how to use

them properly and mix them with other chemicals, whether oil-

based or water-based. You start seeing the effect that using

steroids has on your body with the proper exercise and proper

nutrition.

I guess you could say it was kind of ironic. I was doing

steroids to live up to the vow I had made to my mother, but my

mother would never have understood if she had found out that

I was using steroids. She was an old-fashioned mom; I'm sure

she never heard of steroids. If I had told her about it, she would

have no idea what I was talking about. She would have assumed

they were just some sort of supplement.

I gained weight little by little. But I was always sure to be care-

ful. Some people go crazy with steroids, and just bulk up ab-

surdly. But from the beginning, I was trying to use steroids more

for strength and stamina than for size. I didn't want to go over-

board. I was also careful not to talk about steroids with people,

except for a very small circle, mostly Al and my brother. The

49

three of us talked about it a lot. Ozzie was curious, too, but he

didn't start using steroids until later. As I mentioned, Al injected

me the first few times, and my brother injected me sometimes,

too, and later on other baseball players injected me sometimes. I

was dating this girl Linda during my rookie year, and sometimes

she would inject me.

People always talk about how steroids can't give you hand-

eye coordination, and in a sense that's true. If you've got no

natural ability, steroids aren't going to give it to you. But if you

are naturally athletic, steroids can enhance whatever you have,

both in terms of strength and stamina, and also in terms of

hand-eye coordination and performance. For example, I no-

ticed that during the season, most athletes get tired. You start

out great, but you lose 20 or 30 percent of your strength and

bat speed. A player who started out hitting a lot of home runs

would taper off toward the end, because he was just physically

tired. Since I was new to it all, I didn't know that steroids could

help you with that.

One by one, I gained an education into what various steroids

could do. I did a lot of experimenting, since that's how I learned

things. I started with the light stuff that off-season before the 1985

season, your basic testosterone, liquid form, combined with some

Deca Derbol. I lifted weights seriously all the way through to

spring training the next February. Coming back from Modesto the

previous year, I'd weighed only 180 pounds. A few months of

work at the gym—and my new steroid regimen—made all the dif-

ference: I arrived at spring training in 1985 twenty-five pounds

heavier than the year before, and it was all solid muscle.

"Wow, you've been really working hard in the off-season," the

general manager, Walt Jocketty, told me. "You've really been

working the weights."

"Thank you," I said.

50

"The Natural"

What else was I going to say? I had started transforming my

body, and already looked more like a bodybuilder than your

typical baseball player. The strength gains were just incredible,

and I was really creaming the ball. I had a great spring training,

and thought I was going to make the A's Major League roster

right then, even though I had only played as high as Modesto in

the Class-A California League. I almost did, too. But they de-

cided that I wasn't quite ready, so I was sent to Huntsville, Ala-

bama, which is Double-A.

To be blunt, I disagreed with them about my not being ready. I

knew I was, and I didn't feel like wasting any more time in Dou-

ble-A before I got to the only place where I could prove they had

been wrong. That was the Oakland A's. If you look at my stats in

Huntsville, they were incredible. I hit .318 with twenty-five

homers and eighty RBIs, all in only fifty-eight games. I set so

many minor-league records, it was a joke. I bounced up to

Triple-A Tacoma, Washington, and just kept hitting. I hit the ball

clear out of the stadium in Washington, something no one had

ever done before, and nothing gets people talking like long

home runs.

The organization pretty much had to call me up to the A's,

and I made it there in time for the last twenty-nine games of the

season. Between Double-A, Triple-A, and the major leagues that

season, I hit forty-odd homers with 140 RBIs, and batted over

.300—and that was even though I broke my finger and missed

four weeks.

And I can tell you now: Steroids were the key to it all. I was

such an improved player, and I think it was because steroids not

only give you a lot of physical strength and stamina, they also

give you a mental edge. Think of it this way: whenever you drink

one of those energy drinks or eat one of those health bars, even

before you finish the thing you're feeling better. It could just be

51

J U I C E D

sugar water and a candy bar, but mentally, you're feeling like you

could run up a wall. It pumps up your confidence like you

wouldn't believe, and for any athlete, that's a very potent combi-

nation. When your physical ability is there, your strength and

stamina are there, and when your confidence level is up as well,

the combination can carry you a long way. Wow, I realized, these

chemicals work.

Soon I was injecting myself, and getting good at it. You learn

to turn your leg at an angle, to give yourself a better target, and

you become an ambidextrous injector, because you definitely

are going to want to hit both sides of your glute. One week you

would hit your right side, the next week you would inject the left

side. If you keep hitting the same spot, you're going to regret it,

and I mean in a big way. It can get nasty.

There are others muscles that can be used, like the quad or

shoulder muscle, but if you're a baseball player you don't want to

use the shoulder muscle, because you're constantly catching and

throwing. You don't want to use your quad muscle, because

you're running around too much. Some athletes have injected

themselves in the shoulders, the quads, and the calves, but I don't

do that and I don't recommend it. One time, I tried injecting my-

self in the shoulder, and it was very painful. It gives you a bruise

and you end up with lasting pain. You only shoot yourself in the

shoulder with water-based steroids, which allow you to use a

smaller-gauge needle, as opposed to oil-based steroids with their

larger-gauge needles.

As I experimented more, I started trying different categories

of steroids. Different types do certain things to the muscles,

the skin, the hair, the eyes, and your quick-muscle-twitch

fibers. Every steroid played a different part. And when you

combined them with growth hormones, the effect was just

incredible.

52

"The Natural"

It was actually pretty funny that year, 1985, when I was hav-

ing such a great run at three different levels. Back when I was at

Double-A Huntsville, the fans were so excited about what I was

doing, the home runs I was hitting, and my whole style of play

that they started flashing THE NATURAL—you know, like the

Robert Redford movie—up on the scoreboard whenever I

would come up to bat. It was ironic, but the name stuck: Later,

when the A's put me on the cover of their media guide for 1986,

the headline was THE NATURAL.

I was the first to use steroids in baseball in a serious way, and

no one in the organization had any idea what was going on at

that point.

"I know I never thought: 'Oh, he must be using steroids,'"

says Howard Ashlock, the A's minor-league coach who con-

vinced me not to quit when they made me work as a bat boy.

"It never entered my mind. That was 1985. I don't think

people started talking about steroids until much later—proba-

bly not until 1991, when Lyle Alzado, the former Oakland

Raider, died of a brain tumor after speaking out in public

about the risks of steroid use. That was when steroids became

more of a social issue."

So off to the big leagues I went. Lucky bat, lucky syringe—

luck had nothing to do with it. My first big-league homer was

off Jeff Russell of the Texas Rangers, who was only twenty-

three at the time, just starting out like I was. Back then, before

they rebuilt the Oakland Coliseum to make room for the

Raiders, it was probably the most difficult ballpark to hit a

homer out of. Russell threw me a fastball, and when I con-

nected with that, it nearly landed in the ice plants out in dead-

center field, one of the few balls that ever made it that far back.

I hit .302 for the A's during my September call-up, and had

thirteen RBIs to go with five homers, all in only ninety-six

53

J U I C E D

at-bats. I was just a twenty-year-old kid, tall and lean, but what

I noticed was, I was far stronger than someone my size should

have been. My strength and my stamina were just incredible.

I really had the feeling that I could hit a baseball six hun-

dred feet.

Back in Miami, the Cuban-American community got really

excited about everything I was doing, and about what I might

accomplish in the future. There are a lot of very passionate, very

smart baseball fans among the Cubans in Miami. But even in

the 1980s, we Cubans felt almost as if we weren't even part of the

game, once Tiant and Tony Perez got older. As a young minor-

league player, I had been convinced I had no chance of making a

mark in baseball as a Latino, let alone making it all the way to

the major leagues. But here I was, a big Cuban, and I was doing

these things that had people talking.

"If you went into any of the little Cuban coffee shops in Little

Havana, that's all anyone was talking about. It was 'Jose this' and

'Jose that,'" Pedro Gomez remembers. "Nobody was talking

about Palmeiro or Tartabull."

You can imagine what it was like after the season when I went

back to Miami. People would stop me everywhere I went. The

way they saw it, everything I was doing was for them. Gloria Es-

tefan was huge at that time as an entertainer, but in the world of

sports, I was the biggest thing to come out of Miami. They were

so proud, they even invited me to take part in the annual Eighth

Street Parade (Calle Ocho), and I stood up there on one of the

floats, waving to people.

"You're the best athlete I've ever seen," people would tell me

all the time.

One funny thing about that year: I got back to Miami and my

father lived up to the promise he had made years before to pay

me five dollars for every homer I hit. So that year, I hit forty-one

04

"The Natural"

home runs. When I saw my dad after the season, he handed over

$205 in cash. He kept doing that for years after that, too.

I worked really hard that off-season, lifting weights at least

once a day and learning more and more about steroids. I was

doing more experimenting with different types of steroids:

Winstrol, Equipoise, Anadrone, Anavar, and more. I started re-

alizing that, using the proper combinations of steroids, there

was almost no limit to how much I could continue to improve

as a baseball player.

I was educating myself on all aspects of steroids—from why

they were invented, to their chemical makeup, how to use them

properly, what dosages, how to cycle off, how to cycle on, which

steroids did what for the body, which one was good for strength,

or for quick-muscle-twitch fiber, or for foot speed. I wanted to

keep getting better and better every year, and I was seeing that

the steroids could help me do that.

It was almost like I was becoming a machine, built for baseball

and nothing else. I could never slack off. There was too much to

absorb, too much to learn, and too much to do. I learned all

about the proper technique to become a better runner. As I got

bigger and heavier I actually got faster, because I knew how to

run the right way. The weight I put on was pure dense muscle

with hardly any fat, and every exercise I did was fast and explo-

sive. I was working out like a sprinter, not a baseball player. I was

built like a football player and had incredible strength. I concen-

trated on putting on weight by doing only exercises that incor-

porated quick muscle-twitch fibers. I was training the way no

other baseball player had ever trained. And the results were

starting to show.

55

The A's unquestionably have power. In Canseco, they

feel they have a new Mantle.

RON FIMRITE,

Sports Illustrated, April 14, 1986

XL

J

One of the most important things that happened to me dur-

ing my rookie year had nothing to do with baseball. That

February, just before I flew out to Arizona to start spring train-

ing with the Oakland A's, I was at my favorite spot in Miami,

the Scandinavian Health Club, doing one of my last workouts

of the off-season. I was feeling pretty good, knowing I was in

the best shape of my life, and I was looking around the gym

during my workout, the way I always do. Steroids aren't the

only thing that can boost your testosterone levels, let me tell

you. So can seeing a beautiful woman—and believe me, in

Miami there were as many stunning women as you will find in

any city in the world.

I've always had a thing for women who are fit and strong, and

the Scandinavian Health Club offered a smorgasbord of possi-

bilities. Tall women. Short women. Blondes, brunettes, red-

heads. Latinas, white girls, black girls, Asians. You would see

every kind of beautiful woman in there, but I had never seen a

woman quite like the one I spotted that February just before

spring training. Damn, I get weak in the knees just thinking

about it now.

She had green eyes and dirty blonde hair and an incredible

body, and she stood out so much from all the others, it was like

she was traveling at Mach 4 and they were all at a standstill. She

was spectacularly beautiful and had an exotic quality, especially

59

J U I C E D

in her eyes. It was only later that I found out that Esther (that

was her name) was Lebanese on her father's side and Cuban on

her mother's. As shy as I was, I still knew I had to meet her. I

kept waiting for an opportunity to walk over and talk to her in

between her sets, but the right moment never presented itself.

All of a sudden she was gone. When I realized she had walked

out into the parking lot, I went after her. She probably thought I

was crazy, but mostly she was just doing her best to ignore me. I

asked her out, and she didn't say yes, but she didn't say no,

either. I had to wait to follow up, though, since I had a long base-

ball season ahead of me and wouldn't be back in Miami for any

length of time until the next October. By then she had been

voted Miss Miami, 1986, and I had been voted American League

Rookie of the Year.

I remember sitting on the plane taking me out to Arizona,

and having a lot of questions about the year ahead. I figured I

had a good chance to make the team. I'd shown some talent in

my performance the previous September, when I hit over .300

with five home runs, including some of the longest home runs

ever hit at the Oakland Coliseum.

The whole Oakland As organization had embraced me, but I

wasn't taking anything for granted. That was never the way I

thought. To be honest, I was really nervous going into spring

training that year. I had these huge doubts about whether I be-

longed. I also wondered if I was going to be accepted by the

other players, especially the veterans.

I find it funny how people think they know just what you're

thinking and feeling, even when they are way off. It became a

cliche in the media to say that I was conceited and arrogant, but

in fact, I was never that type of individual. My whole time in the

major leagues, I was never completely convinced that I be-

longed there. I was never sure that I was good enough to be on

60

Rookie of the Year

the same level as all these amazing athletes I was competing

against every day.

I was probably more insecure than every other athlete there,

and that was especially true my rookie year. I felt like a kid who

had been let out on the field by mistake. I would see these great

athletes walking by, as if it was no big deal, and I would just be

gawking at them.

"Wow, there's Dave Kingman," I'd say to myself.

Then a minute later I'd be staring again.

"Wow—that's Reggie Jackson."

Sometimes, it was all too much. Look at these guys! I'd be say-

ing to myself. What am I doing here?

I was just a young kid, twenty-one years old that spring,

and in a lot of ways, a young twenty-one. I'd been such a late

bloomer, it was still a huge shock to me just to be taken seriously

as an athlete. I'd watched all these guys on TV. I'd seen all these

famous ballparks on TV. I just couldn't help myself; no matter

how much I tried to be calm, I was in awe of the stadiums and

star struck with the players.

People would laugh if they could hear the kind of pep talk I

was always giving myself back then.

"Slow down, Jose!" I'd say.

"Try to control your emotions."

"Your adrenaline is flowing too fast."

"Easy!"

If you let your adrenaline take over, everything seems too fast

and too out of control. You have to slow everything down to

your pace. When you're hitting and everything seems slow and

easy, you're locked in. When you're hitting and everything seems

like it's accelerating superfast, beyond your control, then you're

in trouble. It took me a long time to understand that, and in my

rookie year, I was all over the place. I would hit a huge home run

a

J U I C E D

that had everyone talking, and then I would swing so hard at a

bad pitch that I would almost injure myself. When you're work-

ing with steroids and your muscles are so dense, you're strong

enough to swing your shoulders right out of the sockets.

No one really showed me the ropes, either. A lot of times a

veteran will kind of take you under his wing and tell you what's

what. I never had that kind of relationship with a veteran when

I was an A's rookie. I didn't have the nerve to bother any of the

veterans with questions, for starters. I was just a quiet kid and

kept to myself whenever I could. Nobody really knew anything

about me. They might have been surprised to know that I was

too scared to ask these players for advice, but that's how I was.

I'd see someone like Dave Kingman, who had been hitting

mammoth homers for years, and I'd think about getting his au-

tograph more than asking him about his stance.

Later in my years with the A's, we had a group of guys who

had been together for a while and knew each other really well.

You might not like everyone. Someone like Carney Lansford and

I were never going to click, for example. But you knew where

you stood with everybody, and they knew the same about you.

But in 1986 we were in a rebuilding mode, trying to accumulate

new players, so it was like musical chairs. The team looked dif-

ferent all the time.

It wasn't like we were all the same age, either. We had a lot of

younger guys and a lot of older veterans at the same time. Every-

body was just getting to know each other, so you really didn't

have that much fun together, or play practical jokes on each

other, or anything like that. Usually, you don't play practical

jokes on someone you barely know. That stuff comes later.

We were just trying to crawl out of the cellar in our division,

and even though I was a very quiet kid, very shy, I was sup-

posed to be like the savior of the organization. They had

62

Rookie of the Year

already built me up so much when I was in the minor leagues,

before I ever put on an A's uniform, because they wanted to

generate some excitement and bring some fans out to the ball-

park. In some ways, I was never fully accepted, but because of

the buildup, it was kind of understood that I was a part of the

mix. Everyone was like, "Okay, now Canseco is here. Get on

with the show."

Fortunately, I got off to a good start that year, and the veter-

ans seemed to be impressed.

"Damn, this guy knows what he's doing," I'd hear them say to

each other.

But I was just getting by on my raw ability. It was going to

take me a long time to learn how to hit consistently at the

major-league level. Much later in my career, I became much

more knowledgeable about the game and became a guess hitter

who studied pitchers on videotape carefully. I thought long and

hard about what a given pitcher was likely to do in a given situ-

ation. But that only happened after years of soaking up as much

information as I could as a hitter, watching and learning and

picking up any extra advantage I could.

Back in my rookie year, it was see ball, hit ball. I was a pure reaction hitter. You hear that term all the time, reaction hitter, but

what does it mean? Just that you react to the pitch in flight. You

never pick up any signs beforehand. You never really see the ro-

tation of the ball. You never say, "In this situation he's going to

throw a breaking ball down and away, so look for it down and

away." I was on the edge, winging it, but because I had so much

physical ability, and so much strength, I was able to get away

with it. Swinging the bat and hitting home runs was fun, but it

was also nerve-wracking, trying to prove myself, and then

watching how the media tried to figure me out. At that point, I

was just trying to figure myself out.

63

J U I C E D

That first year in the major leagues went by fast. Maybe it was

because everything was so exciting and new to me. I got off to a

great start; I was selected for the All-Star Game, even though I

was a rookie. The game was at the Astrodome in Houston,

Texas, that year. I walked around trying to take it all in. There I

was, an All-Star, and I just couldn't believe it.

Roger Clemens pitched three perfect innings for the Ameri-

can League and ended up as the most valuable player of the

game. The manager that year was Dick Howser of the Kansas

City Royals. The American League hung on for a 3-2 win, but it

was so close, Howser never even put me into the game. It felt

weird to make the trip to Houston and never even do anything

but sit around and watch. But later it turned out that Howser

was really sick, which put it all into perspective.

"I remember the indignation all of Miami had after the 1986

All-Star Game," says Pedro Gomez, my classmate back at Coral

Park High in Miami. "A few months later, it was revealed that

Dick Howser had a brain tumor and died, and all the old

Cubans in Miami pointed to that as the reason Jose did not

play—because the guy had no brain."

I was glad to get back to Oakland after the All-Star break and

rejoin the As, but I got off to a terrible start. I had one bad game

and then another and another and another. The whole thing just

snowballed on me. I started the second half going 0-for-40,

which if you think about it is pretty hard to do. It was the worst

slump of my life, hands down, one of those times when every-

thing went bad all at once.

Every time I hit the ball hard, it went right to someone. It felt

automatic, like the whole thing was out of my hands. Let's say

there was a guy on first base, and he'd take off to steal, and the

second baseman would break to go cover second base, and then

I'd hit a line shot that would be a base hit up the middle nine

64

Rookie of the Year

times out of ten, or ninety-nine times out of a hundred, only

this time the second baseman would be right in the path of the

ball, so he'd catch it and instead of a base hit, it would be a

double play.

I was striking out plenty, too, believe me, and finished that

season with 175 strikeouts, which ranked third in the league and

was far and away the most strikeouts I've had for one season in

my whole career. I didn't know how to handle it.

"What's going on here?" I would say to myself. "This is crazy.

Does this happen to other players?"

It was also a great learning experience. My stock had gone up

so high so fast, and then just like that, it came down again. You

can never get too comfortable in baseball or the game will find a

way to shrink you back down to size. Slumps are just part of

baseball, and all you can do is find a way to work through them.

Fortunately for me, the A's organization believed in me and gave

me the chance to stay in the lineup to work my way out of it—

which I did.

We went to Detroit for a series against the Tigers. Walt Terrell

gave me a good pitch to hit. I took a big swing and hit a home

run to center field that ended up in the Tiger Stadium upper

deck. They told me afterward that I had already hit a home run

in every American League ballpark as a rookie. After that, the

slump was behind me.

That September we played the New York Yankees in Oakland,

and I had four hits in what ended up being a 9-8 win for us. One

of those hits was a home run, which gave me 100 RBIs, making

me the first player in baseball with 100 RBIs at that point. I fin-

ished with thirty-three home runs, which was fourth best in the

league, and 117 RBIs, which was second best.

Back then, hitting thirty homers in a season was like hitting

fifty nowadays. But at the time, I didn't think of it as a lot. I

65

J U I C E D

knew I still had a lot of work to do. There were so many aspects

of my game I had to improve. I couldn't really enjoy my suc-

cesses as a rookie when I knew I had so many weaknesses that I

would have to work on before I could live up to my ability.

Everything about me needed improvement. I needed to get

bigger, stronger, smarter, and more patient at the plate. But the

thing I was most focused on was speed. Even though I stole fif-

teen bases as a rookie, and only got thrown out seven times, I

knew I had the potential to steal a lot more bases. But I could

only do that if I learned how to harness my speed and develop a

more explosive first step, which makes all the difference when

you're trying to get a good jump down to second base. I was so

rough back then, I was focused on everything from cutting

down on my strikeouts to psychological strengthening.

People forget, but even for a home-run hitter like me, the

mental part of baseball was always important. I was still nervous

at times, or overexcited. What you find out as you play more

games is that the more knowledgeable you become, the more in-

sight you have into playing in a certain ballpark or facing a cer-

tain pitcher, the more it helps you focus and become that much

more intensely involved with the game.

That came with time, but it was a hard lesson, believe me.

As I said, I never had anyone to train me or show me the way.

That might have helped me a lot, especially since I was so

much younger than most of the other players, even though I

was expected to help carry the team from my rookie year on-

ward.

I always had the feeling that I was doing everything my own

way. I was basically creating my own road as I went. There was

no paved road for me to follow—it was like I was down in the

Amazon, using a machete to cut my own way through to where

I wanted to go. It was a slow process doing it that way.

G6

Rookie of the Year

The more years I had under my belt, the more I learned how

to be myself without trying to break rules all the time. My strike

zone refined and got smaller. Early on, I would swing at just

about anything—high, low, inside, outside, you name it. I re-

member one time swinging at a pitch way up over my head. I

had to reach so far for it that when it ricocheted off my bat, the

ball slammed into my helmet. I swung at balls in the dirt all the

time, and the funny thing was, I couldn't figure out why. I was

so reactive at that time, and often so nervous, I was just a wild

swinger. I wasn't concentrating on the right area.

But that was part of what got people excited about watching

me. People used to say that watching me swing and miss was

more entertaining than watching other hitters swing and hit a

home run. I was swinging so hard, like there was no tomorrow,

and they knew that if I got all of a ball, it would do things they

had never seen a baseball do before.

Probably the funniest example of that was a game in Ana

heim early in my career. I still have this play on tape. Mike Wi11

threw me a slider down and away, and I took a big swing and

made good contact, but off the bat it looked like a low liner i«>

the shortstop, Dick Schofield. He actually jumped up in the air,

thinking he was going to catch it, that's how low to the ground it

was. But it sailed over his head, and as it headed toward the out

field, it just kept rising. I hit it with such good backspin thai it

hydroplaned like a golf ball, and just rode the wind all the way

out of the ballpark.

"There's a line drive over short," A's announcer Bill King said

over the radio. "It's in the gap! It's gone!"

It was freakish. I ran hard down to first base, thinking it was

a line drive just over the shortstop's head, but all of a sudden I

saw it go out.

"Did that ball really go out?" I asked someone.

67

J U I C E D

I couldn't believe it. That was probably one of the best techni-

cal swings I've ever had in my life, and I guess it proved that you

can hit a home run that never gets higher than twenty feet off

the ground. As I ran the bases, the other players were all giving

me shit about it, saying they couldn't believe it went out. We

were all laughing. It just goes to show, you never know what

you're going to see any one day at the ballpark. I like to think I

made people feel that way a lot of times in my career.

As soon as I got back to Miami that off-season, I started

thinking about Esther, that half-Cuban, half-Lebanese exotic

beauty I had met in February just before I flew out to Arizona

for spring training. I was hoping I'd run into her at the Scandi-

navian Health Club, but no such luck. I was not someone to go

out of my way to run after a woman, but this was different.

"You remember that girl Esther I met?" I asked a Miami friend.

"You kidding me?" he said. "She's Miss Miami. How could I

forget her?"

"Where does she live?"

Lucky for me, he knew Esther's address. I went by her house

and introduced myself again and started talking to her. As soon

as we started dating, it was all over with. I was crazy in love with

her. But the thing was, she was worried about what her father

would think of me.

"I can't tell my dad I'm in love with a drug dealer," she told me.

She was serious—she thought I was pushing drugs. After all, I

wore expensive clothes; I drove an expensive car; I was big

enough that no one would want to mess with me. I had never

talked to her about being a professional baseball player. I wasn't

big on conversation when there were so many other ways to

spend our time together. Esther's father, who had been one of

my baseball coaches in junior high school, was not about to let

her move in with me unless we were married. Two years later, we

mi

Rookie of the Year

had a big ceremony with three or four hundred people. That was

the year I hit forty home runs and stole forty bases and was the

most valuable player in the American League. The media

wanted to get involved. They had helicopters in the air, trying to

find us, as if we were a Hollywood couple. It was crazy, which

was how things were through most of my marriage to Esther.

Dave Stewart, my teammate with the A's, had bet me that I

wouldn't really marry Esther; if he lost, he had to pay for the

wedding. So once we announced the date, he started getting ner-

vous—especially as we kept inviting more and more people.

Eventually, I let him off the hook: I only made him pay ten thou-

sand dollars.

69

If Mark McGwire belongs in the Hall of Fame, so does

]ose Canseco.

JOHN WILLIAMS,

Slate magazine

Mark McGwire showed up as an Oakland A's rookie in

1987, my second full year in the major leagues, and I'll

never forget what he looked like back then. I remember going

down to Arizona for spring training that year and seeing this

tall, skinny kid with basically no muscle on him whatsoever. He

was six-five and weighed only 220 pounds.

But McGwire had one of the best—if not the best—right-

handed power swings I'd ever seen in my life. I thought: Wow,

this guy has technique. He proved it was a great swing when he

went out that season and hit forty-nine homers. He was named

American League Rookie of the Year, so he and I were back-to-

back Rookies of the Year.

Mark and I were a lot different, but from his first season with

the A's, we became friendly. We were never really buddies,

though. One of the main things we talked about was steroids—

about how to tailor your doses and cycles to achieve the best re-

sults. We had access to the best steroids; it was like shopping

from a high-end catalog.

Like me, Mark was curious about what different types of

steroids could do for him, and how they could make him bigger

and stronger. But he needed a little time to get used to the idea of

actually using them, and so far as I know, he didn't actually start

using steroids until after his rookie season. So the forty-nine

73

home runs he hit that year probably came without any chemical

enhancement.

The next year, 1988, Mark and I started talking about steroids

again, and soon we started using them together. I injected Mark

in the bathrooms at the Coliseum more times than I can re-

member. Sometimes we did it before batting practice, some-

times afterward. It was really no big deal. We would just slip

away, get our syringes and vials, and head into the bathroom

area of the clubhouse to inject each other.

Nobody knew that much about steroids back then and no-

body really knew what we were doing. As the years went on,

more and more players started talking to me about how they

could get bigger, faster, stronger, but at that time, as far as I

know, Mark and I were the only ones doing steroids.

The media dubbed us the Bash Brothers, but we were really

the 'Roids Boys. Eventually, based on all that hype, I realized

that people actually believed that we were living together, that

we always hung out together, that we ate together, that we slept

together. "Where's your other half?" people would ask. "Where's your brother?" It was laughable the way people built up these

ideas in their minds based on a gimmicky slogan.

We hung out here and there, but Mark didn't like to go out with

me because the girls wouldn't pay any attention to him. They

would all pay attention to me. That was mostly because of Mark.

He was never the best-looking guy in the world. He felt awkward

and out of place at clubs, plus he would never talk. I was quiet,

too, but compared to Mark, I was a social dynamo. Mac just didn't

like to go out because it felt like he was being overshadowed.

I always had a presence, and at the time, I was the most fa-

mous athlete in the world because of the way I looked, what I

did to a baseball, and what I accomplished in the game. Also, I

was a rebel and a rogue, and some people liked that edge. Mark

The Bash Brothers

was kind of a second-level star in those years, not nearly as fa-

mous as he would become later in the summer of 1998, but even

so, he had things I did not. For starters, as a white all-American

boy, he was accepted in a way I never could be as a Cuban. I

guess at that time in the United States of America, it was taboo

to have someone like me as an all-American hero.

There was this contrast between us, and from the very begin-

ning, they pitted us against each other as competitors. Who's

better? Who's stronger? Who hits the ball farther? Who is more

dangerous? Mark always hated those comparisons, even more

than I did.

I think it was only through using steroids and giving himself

a new body that Mark really became more comfortable with

himself, and stopped being quite so awkward around other peo-

ple. I was the godfather of the steroid revolution in baseball, but

McGwire was right there with me as a living, thriving example

of what steroids could do to make you a better ball player.

Early in Mark's career, he went through the same transforma-

tion that I did. Suddenly, he was enormous. He developed these

huge, muscular arms; his whole body was just massive. He kept

with it and added more and more muscle mass. Later on, the

year he and Sammy Sosa were both going after Roger Maris's

single-season home-run record, McGwire would set the record,

weighing in at 270 pounds.

In recent years, as the public has come to understand how

widespread steroid use has become in baseball, there's been a

lot of speculation about where Mark's natural talent left off and

the steroids kicked in. The answer is that steroids gave Mark

strength and stamina—but they also gave him a more positive

attitude.

The psychological effect of steroids is very dramatic. Using

steroids properly can do wonders for your confidence. You look

good. You're big and strong. McGwire was a twitching mass of

muscle, and he had great technique. If that combination doesn't

help you feel confident, I don't know what will.

The mind is a very powerful thing; if you convince yourself

that you're a great player, and you have the basic ability, you're

going to be a great player. You can have the perfect body for

baseball and perfect ability, but if your brain is telling you "You

have no chance!" you're not going to be successful. For Mark,

steroids helped send his confidence level sky-high.

McGwire was a good twenty pounds heavier than I was, but

guess what? For some reason, where McGwire was concerned,

nobody ever mentioned steroids. What was going on? McGwire

was already being groomed for superstardom. Baseball has al-

ways been on the lookout for players who could be packaged and

marketed as all-American heroes, and McGwire was perfect for

that: a big, awkward redhead with a natural home-run stroke. As

all of us in baseball knew, McGwire was an untouchable. He was

so protected by the powers that be in the game, it was incredible.

No media outlet would even think of calling him into question,

because there's no way they'd ever get an inside source.

To McGwire's credit, he was a little slow to understand what it

was all about. I remember one time in the late 1980s, we were all

sitting down together in the A's clubhouse talking about some-

thing that had appeared in one of the papers, declaring that

Mark McGwire was the all-American boy and the all-American

athlete. We mentioned it to McGwire, and I looked at him to see

what he would say.

"Jose, I didn't want to be labeled like that," Mark told me.

I think he meant it, too.

"Mac, you know what?" I told him. "Now you're protected.

You're protected by America. Nobody is going to touch you no

matter what you do wrong."

The Bash Brothers

It started to sink in with him that I was right.

"It's great to have that kind of backing by America," I told

him. "You are set. You can never do anything wrong. You could

rob a bank while raping a cheerleader and nothing would hap-

pen to you."

That's how the system works. There are some players who are

protected by the system, and other players who the system

abuses and takes advantage of, hanging them out to dry and

turning them into scapegoats. It's disgusting the way baseball re-

ally works sometimes.

Walter Weiss, the shortstop who became the A's third straight

Rookie of the Year in 1988, after me (1986) and McGwire (1987),

once told me a story about the day when Mark and Walt were

•racing their cars after a game at the Coliseum, and this old lady

was driving along really slow, and they forced her off the road.

But what happened? Where was the media frenzy after that?

Nowhere. After all, this was Mark McGwire, the golden boy, so

everybody covered it up—the organization, the police, the

media, everyone.

Just imagine how an incident like that would have been han-

dled if I had been involved. That was the pattern throughout our

entire careers. Whether it was on a personal or professional level,

you never heard the media breathe a bad word where it came to

Mark McGuire. Everything was whitewashed. Meanwhile, my di-

vorce was on national TV. That was how the deck was stacked,

and Mark knew it and we all knew it: He could do no wrong, and

I was always going to be the subject of controversy.

Think about if for a minute. How much of what people think

they know about me goes back to the image of me portrayed in

the media? How much of that feeds on itself, with people as-

suming they know what I'm like, and turning that into new con-

troversies that convince more people that I'm all these bad

77

things people say I am? Where does perception start and reality

end? When does perception create reality?

The truth is, no one wants to face the fact that there was a

huge double standard in baseball, and white athletes like Mark

McGwire, Cal Ripken Jr., and Brady Anderson were protected

and coddled in a way that an outspoken Latino like me never

would be. The light-eyed and white-skinned were declared

household names. Canseco the Cuban was left out in the cold,

where racism and double standards rule.

Let's be honest: Back in 1988, no one wanted a Cuban to be

the best baseball player in the world. Maybe it's different today,

because there are so many great Latino superstars out there. But

in 1987 and 1988, who were the great Latino ball players? There

was only one; it was just me.

And when I became the first player ever to hit forty homers

and forty stolen bases in one season, I was hands down the best

player in the world. No one even came close. But who wanted a

Cuban to be the best player in the world? Imagine doing some-

thing that had never been done in a major sport like baseball. I

remember at the beginning of the 1988 season, the media guys

asked me if I had any goals for the upcoming year.

"Well, I plan on doing the forty-forty—stealing forty bases

and hitting forty home runs," I told them.

They laughed at me. I couldn't understand why.

"What's so hard about it?" I asked them.

"You know, no one's ever done it before," one of the reporters

told me.

So what? I thought it was no big deal. "Well, I have the ability

to do it," I said. "So why not do it?"

People always cite that example to prove I was ignorant. But

who had the last laugh? I knew something the reporters didn't. I

knew that all my hard work, and the right combination of

The Bash Brothers

steroids, had already made me a much better athlete than I had

been before. I knew I was far beyond what any of them could

conceive of in terms of my body and its capabilities.

Already by that point, I had become much faster, and even

though I was up to 235 or 240 pounds, I had learned how to

move that weight quickly. I incorporated technique with explo-

sive speed, and I had enhanced my muscle-twitch fiber to be

able to move much more quickly. Also, I knew that steroids

would improve my stamina and keep me strong and explosive

throughout the long baseball season. I incorporated all of that

and did the forty-forty.

"That was great," my father finally said, but mostly he told

other people that, not saying it to me directly.

The double standard began to kick in that year, at least when

it came to media coverage. We won our division and went to

Boston to play the Red Sox in the American League Champi-

onship Series, which we ended up sweeping. But suddenly you

heard a lot of talk in the media: Oh, Canseco had this forty-forty

year because he's doing steroids— Oh, he's an obvious steroid

user.

I remember one time Harmon Killebrew was doing commen-

tary for a game between the A's and the Twins. When I came up

to bat, he said: "I saw Canseco in the minor leagues and I've

never seen a player change so much so drastically."

What a joke. How about McGwire? He went through an even

more dramatic change than I did—you could see that just by

comparing him in his rookie year with the As, when everyone

saw him, to how he looked a few years later. But nobody even

cared what McGwire was doing.

He used to hide behind big, oversized shirts, but McGwire had

the largest arms in baseball—twenty-one inches, and forearms

like you wouldn't believe. But no one ever made an issue of it.

78

That was the pattern, from that year on. It started circulating

a little bit that I might be doing steroids, and more and more

reporters were criticizing me for gaining all this weight and

stacking up the home runs. McGwire just kept getting bigger

and bigger, but he was always protected by the media and by the

organization.

And me? I was left out to dry.

Dangerous car. What if you're doing a mere 50, do you

have the illusion of being parked and try to step out of

the car?

SPORTSWRITER SCOTT OSTLER,

After I was pulled over for doing 125 in my Jaguar and said

the car was so smooth, I thought I was only doing 50 mph

As long as I can remember, I've always loved cars—espe-

A cially fast cars. So many baseball players drive sports util-

ity vehicles now, rather than sports cars, but I don't really

understand it. If I had two weaknesses in my life, they would

have to be fast cars and women. I never spent that much money

on other stuff. Some baseball players were into piling up a lot of

diamonds and jewelry and expensive clothing and shot's. Other

guys had a passion for houses and wanted to have them all over

the place. But cars and women were really enough for me, When

I drove fast, it would be at nighttime on a deserted road. I never

put anyone in danger. Nowadays, you see guys driving fast in

heavy traffic and swerving in and out. I never toyed with

death—not that way.

Most of all, I loved the power and the look of a really fast car,

It was such an adrenaline rush, knowing you had six or seven

hundred horsepower under your hood, and at any time you

wanted, you could just step on it and shoot past any other car on

the road. That was a great feeling. I was never into long car trips.

That didn't make much sense with those high-horsepower cars,

I don't know how they could take traveling over a hundred

miles. I'd mostly just use my sports cars to go back and forth to

the ballpark, or out to dinner, or to a club.

Nothing can quite match the first time you buy yourself .1

brand-new sports car. Esther and I drove down to Santa Cruz,

83

about an hour south of Oakland, to Bruce Canepa Motors. I was

really excited driving through the Santa Cruz Mountains.

The car was a custom-built Porsche 911 Turbo Slant Nose,

and I'd heard a lot about what a great car it was. We pulled up

and I got my first look at the 911, a white-and-black convert-

ible, and it was so beautiful, I just stared at it endlessly. Bruce

told us all about the car and how it handled. He used to race

cars on the circuit, and he was very knowledgeable about high-

performance cars.

We got in to take a spin through the Santa Cruz Mountains,

and Esther decided she'd stay put rather than squeezing into the

small back seat. It was a good thing she did, too. We were driving

through hills and mountains and Bruce was taking these turns

so fast, the back end would spin out. This man made me shit my

pants; I thought I was going to die. But he was in complete con-

trol of that machine.

I had to buy it, no two ways about it. It cost me ninety grand,

but driving the 911 back home that day was such a great feeling.

I loved that car. It had the perfect engine and the perfect combi-

nation of speed and handling, and I liked that it was a convert-

ible so I could just let the wind blow. That was the first sports

car I ever owned, and I really should have kept it; today the

Porsche 911 Turbo Slant Nose is considered a classic. But later

on, I ended up selling that car to Ivan Rodriguez. I wonder if he

still has it today.

My second sports car was a Ferrari; then I picked up a

Corvette, the car I'd been thinking about for so long, jogging

past the dealership on my way to the gym. (Actually, I got two

of them.)

A white Lamborghini came soon, and later I bought another.

There was also at least one Jaguar in there, metallic red with

twelve cylinders, and a BMW.

My First Lamborghini

I think at one point I had twelve cars. Soon after I met Jessica,

who became my second wife, she came to see me in Texas, and

in the garage I had a '93 Testarossa, a Lamborghini, a white Fer-

rari, and my 930 Porsche—not to mention the Chevy Suburban

parked out on the street. When Jessica needed to drive to Arling-

ton Stadium, my housekeeper, Vera, told her to take her pick.

"Just go in the garage and take one of the cars and meet him

at the game," she told Jessica.

So Jessica went out into the garage and just stood there, look-

ing at all these sports cars. Then she turned back to Vera.

"I can't drive any of those cars," she said.

But Vera insisted, and Jessica ended up driving my Porsche to

the ballpark that night. (She did fine.)

At that time, I had built up a pretty nice collection of modi-

fied Porsches. I had one of them custom-made with 820 horse-

power; that car was probably the fastest street-legal Porsche in

the state of Florida, if not the whole United States. I used to race

motorcycles on the highway with that thing. I'd be out on I-75,

and motorcycles would want to race me. They thought they

could beat me easy, but that Porsche could do about 240 miles

an hour. I'd be racing those motorcycles going almost 200 miles

an hour in third gear, and they'd freak out. They couldn't be-

lieve how fast the car was. I took it up to 200 miles an hour one

time, just to see what it could do, but never faster than that.

The fastest I've ever gone in a car was 202 miles per hour. That

was in my Lamborghini Diablo, which cost me about $225,000

and had license plates saying "40-40." Once, when I first moved

to Weston, Jessica and I took the car down I-75 in Florida—

which was a new road back then. There were no cars out there at

all, and we were all alone with all that newly paved highway.

" Wow, how fast is a Diablo?" I started thinking. "I wonder if it can really do 205 the way they said it can."

85

So I decided to find out. I took that Lamborghini up to 202

miles an hour—I remember watching the needle creep just past

200. The Diablo is wide and low, fiat to the ground; the faster

you go, the more you hug the road. It's basically a detailed race

car and handles the speed like a dream.

Once I hit 202, we passed a cop, and he flashed his lights at me.

I didn't want to take any chances and was going to slow down.

"Listen, the exit is only about three or four miles up," Jessica said. "Why don't you just keep going?"

Like an idiot, I listened to her. We kept going, blowing right

out of the cop's reach, but then only a mile farther down the

road, there was a bunch of cops waiting for me. I had slowed

down, but I was still going about 120 when I reached them.

They pulled me over, and I sat there waiting for these cops to

walk up to the car. I was so worried, I started sweating and shak-

ing. "My God, these guys are going to put me in jail," I told Jessica. "My career is over. I'm going to be arrested. I'm done,

completely done."

These two young officers walked to the side of the car. I

reached over to roll down the window to talk to them; I was so

jumpy, my hand was shaking. They saw that, and they knew I

was nervous.

"Don't worry, Mr. Canseco, we're not going to arrest you,"

they told me. "We just wanted to see the inside of your car." The Lamborghini Diablo had just come out then, and these young

cops had never seen one before.

I sat there staring at them for a minute.

"Here, take my car," I said after a minute. "You can have it."

Then I started joking with them.

"Go ahead, take it for a ride," I told them. "You can do

whatever you want." Apparently, I could, too; those cops let me

off the hook.

My First Lamborghini

Another time, I had that Diablo with me at spring training

in Arizona. I parked it at the team hotel and was off with the

team when someone staying at the hotel backed his Ford Es-

cort into the Lamborghini, causing twenty thousand dollars in

damages. But what can you do? I came back later and talked to

the driver of the car and even autographed a baseball for his

son. As I've said, despite my reputation, I'm basically a calm

person.

I think with age certain things change in your life. I'm forty

years old now, and my main priority is my daughter, so I don't

need fast cars. I still have my Bentley and my Escalade, my Mer-

cedes, and so forth, but I really don't need ten or twelve cars

anymore. I think my favorite car right now would be my Bent-

ley, for its combination of luxury, looks, and sports-car power.

It's a 450-horsepower turbo, it's all handmade, and it weighs two

and a half tons. Not bad for a practical family car.

I loved the feeling of going fast, but some other players would

get scared if you took them out on the open road and let it fly—

which made for some pretty hairy episodes. One night back in

1990, I was back in Florida for the off-season, and Frank

Thomas was one of several players who had come down there

for a card show. We did what we had to do at the card show,

pocketed the cash, and decided to go out afterward.

Frank rode with me in my Ferrari. We were leaving the

restaurant, and two Porsches pulled up and wanted to race me.

That happened a lot in Florida. If you had a car like that, people

always wanted to see what it could do. So the next thing you

knew, Frank and I were racing these two Porsches—or I guess I

was doing the racing and Frank was just holding on for dear life.

He was already really nervous at that point.

We had the Ferrari out on the highway doing about 130 miles

an hour, and I didn't realize that up ahead, the highway was

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turning right on the short side. Frank, sitting in the passenger's

seat, had a better view. I could feel him tensing up.

"Jose!" he said.

"Frank, I got it," I told him.

"Oh shit!" he said.

I downshifted and braked hard and the Ferrari went into a

spin. We almost hit the railing, but I pulled out of it easily

enough, and once I did, I glanced over at Frank. I've never in my

whole life seen such a big guy look so scared. Frank thought for

sure I'd killed us both. He was white, just stone-cold white—

which is kind of unusual for a black man.

If you're really interested in finding out

about a city's pro athletes, go straight to

where they hang out... strip clubs.

ZEV BOROW,

ESPN The Magazine

Here's something you probably don't know about Roger

Clemens: He's one of the very few baseball players I know

who never cheated on his wife. I was amazed by him, to be hon-

est. His wife should be very proud of him. You see all these other

guys—oh, my God, every chance they got, they would be hitting

the strip clubs. They would have extra girls staying in the team

hotel, one room over from their wives, so they could go back

and forth from room to room if they wanted. They would have

their choice of women in damn near every city imaginable.

Roger was the exception to that. I went out with him a bunch

of times when there were beautiful women around, and he had

a lot of opportunities and never took them. I was with him

enough times to realize: This man never cheated on his wife. He

was one of the rarities, the anomalies, in baseball. I can hardly

think of anyone else who never cheated on his wife. I wish I

could count myself as an exception, but I can't.

Sex is a big part of the game. The main reason is that it's just

so easy to find. Wherever baseball players go, women want

them. The women let the players know they want them and they

make themselves available. I truly believe that if it weren't made

so easy for them, 60 percent of baseball players wouldn't cheat at

all. But it's just made too easy for us. We're men; we have egos

and libidos, and that's a tough set of forces to combat.

The women I was involved with were always drop-dead gor-

geous; you just couldn't turn them down. You never lost any

love for your wife at home. But men are men, and many of us

want something different than our wives back home. That's just

human nature, even if your wife is spectacularly beautiful and

you're truly in love with her. Men can cheat at times without

having it mean anything at all. The only problem is that you

might find a girl, realize that you really like her, and start to have

a real relationship with her—that kind of thing tends to damage

your marriage.

When I was out on the road, men I'd never met before were

trying to hook me up. On two different occasions, I went to do a

card show and, at the end, when they were supposed to be paying

me, one of the organizers pulled me aside and made me an offer.

"Jose, for your payment, you can have sex with my wife—and

I'll watch," each of these guys said.

"I'll take the money," I said.

But I was no prince. Sometimes, when I was down in Anaheim

hanging out in my hotel suite with a few friends and business as-

sociates, and we would organize beauty contests with twenty or

thirty girls. We would have these great-looking women all gath-

ered in the suite, and they would parade around in bathing suits

as we played the part of the judges, with an elaborate rating sys-

tem and everything. Based on those ratings, we would choose the

top fifteen girls—and then later, after the game, we'd take all fif-

teen out with us in a limousine to hit some clubs.

I always saw myself as more of an entertainer than a baseball

player, and I was always very up front about it. Some people

didn't like to hear that back then, but now I think most people

have accepted that baseball is as much an entertainment busi-

ness as a game. I never had a problem with thinking of baseball

as entertainment. Actually, I always enjoyed that part of it.

People used to like to come out to the ballpark just to watch

me during batting practice. When People magazine named me

one of their fifty most beautiful people, I just laughed—but 1

think it was because they saw me as an entertainer, too.

I was a novelty. I was six four, 240 pounds, and I could run the

forty-yard dash in 4.3 seconds. I was unusual looking for a base-

ball player, and I think that kind of fed the public's curiosity

about me. That was definitely true of women. They wanted to

meet me, and talk to m e . . . and see where things led from there.

Did I sleep with a lot of those women? Sure I did. But I'm not

talking about outrageous numbers of women. That was never

my style, trying to work on my personal statistics. I know Wilt

Chamberlain says he slept with thousands of women, but that

sounds crazy to me. I don't keep count, but if I had to guess, I'd

say maybe a couple hundred. I know a lot of ballplayers who have

slept with far more women than I did in my years on the road.

It's an ego booster to have women wanting to be with you, and

there's always a natural need for companionship on the road.

Strip clubs were always very popular with baseball players.

You had plenty of money for tips and drinks, and didn't have to

think twice about it. And people usually don't bother you in a

strip club the way they would in a regular bar. Every city had a

quality strip club where all the ballplayers would congregate.

There were always sex acts going on in the strip clubs. Any

players could get a blow job, and plenty of them had sex with

strippers. I never had sex in a strip club myself—not in any way,

shape, or form. I may have fondled a girl in there, but I was al-

ways too scared that there would be cameras around to try any-

thing more serious. It was much better to hook up with a

beautiful stripper and then go back to your place. As I men-

tioned, I happen to have a specific taste for women who are very

fit. I'm in great shape, and I've maintained my body, so I respect

people who stay in shape, too. I like fitness models—not to the

point where they are bodybuilders, but lean and ripped. It's just

what I enjoy. I don't like women who are too tall, or too fat. I'm

very picky when it comes to women. They can be blonde or

brunette or redheads; that part doesn't matter to me. But they

have to be a certain type—around five foot three to five seven,

and with a good lean physique and a real appetite for exercise.

I've never really deviated from that.

There was kind of a code among baseball players about how

you got away with things on the road. We always looked out for

each other. Let's say I went out and ended up bringing three or

four women back to the hotel. I'd call up my friends on the team.

"Meet me in the room," I'd tell them. "I've got three or four girls here. I can't handle all these girls, so come and hang out with us."

Usually these girls travel in packs, so you'd make sure that her

girlfriends would hook up with your baseball buddies. Most of

the time, I'd have a big suite; we'd have some fun there, and then

guys would disperse, going back to their own hotel rooms with

one or two women.

Sex is such a big part of life on the road, baseball players have

some techniques and habits that most people don't know about.

Here are a few.

S P E C I A L T R E A T M E N T

If a girl is gorgeous and I want to impress her and make sure she

comes back, I call it special treatment. That involves catering to her—you know, completely tending to her needs, not your own.

That can mean anything, from a little massage or a foot rub to

licking the toes you're massaging—really taking care of her, and

for a long period of time. The idea is to do everything per-

fectly—which helps to make sure you'll get a second date.

Imports, Road Beef, and Extra Cell Phones

O T H E R P L A Y E R S ' W I V E S

I can't mention any names, but it wasn't at all unusual for play-

ers to sleep with other players' wives. I can remember several oc-

casions where a player would bring his wife or fiancee out with

the rest of us to a nightclub when the team was on the road. If

the player knew he had a big day ahead of him—say, a pitcher

who knew he'd be on the mound—he would go back to the

hotel early, and his wife or fiancee would stay out with the other

girls. Then, if she was feeling a little lonely and had a few drinks,

she would come on to you.

Some players in that situation were only too happy to take the

wife or fiancee up on such an offer. That kind of thing happens

a lot in baseball, especially when the woman wants to get back at

her husband or fiance for sleeping with another woman. Some

players even exchanged wives. I was never into that kind of

thing, but there were plenty of other guys who were willing to

pick up the slack.

SLUMP BUSTERS

As everyone knows, baseball players are very superstitious. Play-

ers who are struggling start talking about how they need to go

out and find something to break their slump. And often enough

it comes out something like this: "Oh my God, I'm 0-for-20. I'm

going to get the ugliest girl I can find and have sex with her."

That was never for me. I'd rather go 0-for-40. I never be-

lieved in the superstitions of baseball, like the idea that if one

day you go four-for-four, you have to do all the same exact

things the next day. I never bought into any of that—and I sure

never went out and looked for a slump-buster. But it was a

term you heard a lot. It could mean different things to different

95

players, I guess. It could mean the woman was big, or ugly, or a

combination of both. One manager I used to play for described

a slump-buster this way: "She's so big, you don't even know if

you're in there or not."

Mark Grace defined a slump-buster as the "fattest, gnarliest

chick you can uncover, and you lay the wood to her."

However you slice it, it was bound to be unpleasant.

Sometimes players used the slump-buster line as an excuse: If

their teammates started razzing them—"We saw you with that

girl last night and she was ugly as hell"—the player would say,

"Hey, she was just a slump-buster." But as often as not I think

the players just couldn't do any better.

But there were always some players who believed in the power

of a slump-buster. They were ready to try everything they could

to get out of a slump, and if that's what it took, they would go

out and find it.

ROAD BEEF

This one is pretty simple: Any girl you met on the road and had

sex with was referred to as "road beef." I wouldn't say the term had any special meaning or special connotation. It just meant a piece

of meat, a piece of ass for the player to enjoy while he was away

from home. Just about every player I ever knew used that term.

I M P O R T

What's an import? Let's say you got a hankering for your fa-

vorite road beef, one of your quality girls. If you decide you

want to see her before you're scheduled to be in her town, you

just pay for a plane ticket and fly her in. That way, you spend

time with her, get to know her better, not just in her city but

Imports, Road Beef, and Extra Cell Phones

anywhere you want. That's an import. I know one player who

went on a family trip with his fiancee, broke up with her, and

returned from the family trip with a different girl. That's why

most organizations have forbidden girlfriends, even fiancees,

from flying on family charters any more—they don't want to be

in the adultery shuttle-bus business.

SECOND CELL P H O N E S

Most baseball players keep a Little Black Book, like guys have

been doing for years and years. But technology has changed this,

too: Nowadays more and more players keep a separate cell

phone in their locker, registered to a John Doe alias, which they

use to call all their girls.

This kind of thing can get a little tricky. Some players have

tried keeping two numbers registered on the same phone; just

punch in a special numerical code, and the second number

would pop out. I did that myself for a while, but I got caught

with it. One day I called my second wife from the wrong num-

ber by mistake, she looked at the caller ID, saw it was a slightly

different number, and realized what was going on. That was

pretty stupid of me, and she wasn't happy about it.

Before I wrap up this chapter on men, women, and baseball,

there's one other, er, little matter I want to set straight.

In general, I would say I've noticed very few side effects from

my steroid use. I've had my system completely checked. I'm per-

fectly normal. But that's because I know exactly how to use

steroids—what combinations to use and for how long. But peo-

ple still hear all kinds of strange things about the side effects of

steroids. For instance, I've always had a little nervous twitch—

even when I was younger—but people are constantly jumping

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J U I C E D

to conclusions and saying, "Look—he's so juiced up he's twitch-

ing." I just tell them, "I've been married twice and divorced

twice. That's enough to give anybody a nervous twitch."

But one definite side effect of steroid use is the atrophying of

your testicles. I can confirm that. Whatever size they start out,

they will definitely shrink if you are taking steroids over a pe-

riod of time. But here's the point I want to emphasize: what

happens to your testes has nothing to do with any shrinking of

the penis. That's a misconception. As a matter of fact, the re-

verse can be true. Using growth hormone can make your penis

bigger, and make you more easily aroused. So to the guys out

there who are worried about their manhood, all I can say is:

Growth hormone worked for me.

98

He was Michael Jordan, Steve Young and Dennis

Rodman all rolled into one. He was a Hollywood star,

and the playing field simply was his stage.

BOB NIGHTENGALE,

The Sporting News

I always thought Madonna was very sexy, and I always wanted

to meet her. I'd listened to all her records and saw her in Desperately Seeking Susan when it hit the theaters in 1985. By that time, she had pretty much become the Marilyn Monroe of our

time, not just a sex symbol but a larger-than-life personality.

The whole world was infatuated with her.

Later on, once I had established myself with the MVP Award

in 1988, I found out that Madonna was as interested in meet-

ing me as I was in meeting her. Of course, I found that intrigu-

ing. Madonna heard about me through her publicist, who

checked me out one day when I was playing against the Giants

during spring training in 1991. She couldn't wait to call

Madonna after that.

"There's this guy you gotta meet," her publicist told her.

By then Madonna had decided that she wanted to have a

baby; specifically, she wanted to have a baby with a Latino man.

She had developed a real infatuation for Cubans—all Cubans—

and she put out the word that she was on the lookout for inter-

esting Cuban men to meet. Somehow our representatives

contacted each other, and right away all these rumors started

flying that Madonna wanted to meet me, even though at the

time I was still married to my first wife, Esther. To me, it was all

hard to believe.

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J U I C E D

"Who am I?" I kept asking myself. "This athlete is going to meet Madonna?"

But I did want to meet her. I was sure it would be interesting.

So when the A's headed off to Anaheim on a road trip, I decided

to go see Madonna. I brought along my agent at the time, Jeff

Borris, and we drove up into the Hollywood Hills the day of a

game to meet her and get acquainted. I remember parking in

front of her house and honking the horn, then watching as the

door opened up for a minute. This head popped out to take a

look at us, and then disappeared again.

"Was that Madonna?" I asked my agent. "It didn't even

look like her."

We both kind of stared at each other, not sure what to think.

Madonna at that time had black hair in an unusual style, parted

down the middle; she didn't look anything like what we were ex-

pecting. We sat there in the car, waiting for something to happen,

until finally she came out and brought us back into her house.

She looked at me, then over at Jeff, and then back at me.

"Does your agent follow you around everywhere?"

"No," I said.

So Jeff just sat there on the couch, and Madonna gave me a

tour of her house. We walked around for a few minutes and

wound up in her bedroom. Right away, she walked over and

closed the drapes. I knew she had something in mind, but I

didn't know what.

"Sit down," she told me.

So I sat down. Who wouldn't? She hit the remote control on

her VCR and started showing me parts of Truth or Dare, her

documentary, which hadn't yet hit the theaters. I think you can

guess which scene she showed me. It was the famous masturba-

tion scene on that big bed.

"This is crazy!" I was thinking to myself.

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Madonna's "Bat Boy"

There I was, sitting about a foot away from Madonna as she

played that part of the movie for me. A million guys would give

anything to be in a situation like that, but the truth is actually

kind of funny: Mostly I was just scared. I had a kind of blank

feeling; as sexy as it all was, it was hard to be turned on when I

was busy wondering what Madonna was going to say or do next.

She can be a very intimidating presence—and we were in her

territory, so she was very much in control. I wasn't used to that.

My eyes were glued to the TV, but eventually I realized that she

was watching me even more closely. There was a long, awkward

silence, but I could tell she was getting ready to say something.

"So what do you think?" she asked after the scene ended.

I looked back at her for a minute.

"It's very interesting," I told her.

She smiled, but didn't say anything. It was like I could hear

the gears working, she was thinking so hard. She seemed to be

checking me out, studying my body like I was a champion race-

horse, inspecting me to see what sort of potential I had for stud

service, and what sort of genes I'd be passing on.

We walked around the house some more after that, then went

back to see how Jeff was doing. Madonna kept asking me ques-

tions, one very specific question after another, as if she had

drawn up a list beforehand. She wanted to know about my back-

ground, and my family, my personal philosophy, what I thought

about every subject you could think of.

"Why do you wear that big diamond ring?" she asked, looking

down at this six-carat diamond ring I had then. "Do you feel like

you need more attention?"

"No," I told her. "I just like jewelry."

There were so many questions, Jeff and I stayed at her house

longer than we should have, and when we got back into the car

to drive to Anaheim Stadium for the game, we realized there was

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J U I C E D

no way we were going to make it in time. I was going to be late,

and that meant I would have to confront Tony LaRussa, my

manager, who was going to be mad. I decided that I'd better tell

him the truth.

"Tony, I was at Madonna's house, talking to her, and I'm late,"

I told him. "So I missed batting practice." Tony was pretty pissed off, but he let me play, so that was the end of that.

With Madonna, though, that was just the beginning. Before

long, she was calling me every day, wherever I was. She was

amazing. She knew exactly what my schedule was and exactly

where I was.

A lot of the times, she would call the clubhouse, using the

code name Melissa. But all of my teammates and other people

around the team figured out who it was, and they were always

talking about it. You can just imagine what it was like. I didn't

tell them much. I wasn't the type of guy to brag about anything.

But they'd always be bringing it up and giving me shit.

"Jose, Melissa is on the phone," they'd say all the time, whether she was really calling or not.

For a while, Madonna and I would talk just about every day,

although I have to say it was always kind of strange. I wouldn't

say we ever really got to know each other. Usually she just called

to ask about my schedule, and when we could see each other.

She never asked about baseball or anything related to that. She

never talked about her own work or career. She would just ask

me questions about my marriage to Esther and the details of

our separation, and would try to figure out a time when we

would be in the same city so we could meet again.

Madonna doesn't fool around. She's a woman who knows what

she wants, and goes after what she wants, and for a few weeks that

year she had decided I was what she wanted: I was Cuban, I was a

superstar baseball player, and she liked the way I looked.

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Madonna's "Bat Boy"

She never really got a good look at my body when I visited

her house in California, and on the phone she kept asking me

a lot of questions about how different parts of my body

looked. So I had the A's team photographer take a shot of me

wearing nothing but some tight riding shorts, and sent that

to her.

"It looks nice," she said. I didn't ask what she meant by "it."

The rumors got heavier and heavier. For some reason, there

was an awful lot of curiosity about what happened between

Madonna and me. I guess it's no surprise: I was the bad boy of

baseball at that time and she was the bad girl of music, so we

made kind of an interesting combination. There was all this talk

about how she was in love with me, and how she wanted to be

with me. I tried to tune it all out, but at the same time, it was a

big compliment.

That May, the A's went on the road for a series against the

New York Yankees, and when I arrived at our hotel in Manhat-

tan I gave Madonna a call over at her penthouse apartment

overlooking Central Park.

"Why don't you come up to my apartment?" she asked me.

"I've got to see you."

I took a taxi over to her apartment on the West Side, and as

soon as I got out of the cab, I realized there were paparazzi out

in front of her apartment building. She also had her own per-

sonal security guard down at the front gate. He was huge, almost

seven feet tall and easily 350 pounds.

"Hi, I'm Jose," I told him.

"Yeah, I know who you are."

So as I'm walking past him toward the elevator, I can hear

people talking in the background.

"Who was that?" one voice asked.

"Wasn't that Canseco?" someone else said.

105

J U I C E D

I forgot all about the photographers and went up to see

Madonna in her penthouse apartment. In some ways seeing her

this time was a lot like the first time I'd met her, back in Califor-

nia. She showed me around her place, the way she had in the

Hollywood Hills. But this time she didn't play any videos.

Mostly, we talked. She's a very smart woman, and when she

talks, you want to listen closely. I felt like I could learn from her.

We talked for more than an hour and a half, and then she came

over and sat on my lap. Like I said, she was a woman who knew

what she wanted and went after it.

"You want to kiss me, don't you?" she asked.

"No," I told her.

Yeah, that's what I told her. Sure, I wanted to kiss her. But I was

trying to play it cool, since she'd caught me off-guard. Madonna's

a very intelligent woman, someone who knows a lot about busi-

ness. She's also very intuitive and very knowledgeable about life. I

was impressed by the business side of her personality, but on that

trip I also got to know another side of her, the little-girl side. She

was very relaxed that night, and showed more of a sense of

humor. Everything changed, even the tone of her voice; she

wasn't Madonna-the-businesswoman or Madonna-the-pop-

culture-icon. When Madonna lowers the wall around her, she's a

very nice lady. So after a while, I kissed her, and we made out for a

while. As curious as I was, though, I just wasn't that into her. She

was pretty, but not really my type; to be honest, I didn't find her

attractive enough. I was a big fan of hers, but as I sat there with

her, I realized I was infatuated with the idea of it more than any-

thing. There was no real chemistry there.

As I left her apartment that night and went downstairs, it was

late, maybe two in the morning, but the paparazzi were every-

where out in front of the apartment building. None of them

got past the huge security guard, but there were more than a

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Madonna's "Bat Boy"

hundred of them standing there behind him. And as I walked

out, all their cameras were flashing. It was insane—like a light

show at a dance club.

I woke up the next day, and there it was, the headline on the

back cover of the New York Post: MADONNA'S BAT BOY.

They had a picture of me walking out of her apartment

building—and before I knew it everyone was talking about it.

Up at Yankee Stadium, I was playing the outfield and the fans

were just going nuts. They were throwing coins and batteries at

me; someone even threw a bullet. You have to watch out when

stuff like that comes flying out of the upper deck. At various

times that season, they also threw an inflatable doll, a transistor

radio, and a head of cabbage. And they spent most of the game

chanting at me: "Esther and Madonna and Jose, do-dah, do-

dah!" (The papers had been quick to note that Esther and I were

still officially married at that time.)

The next day Madonna and I talked again, and this time she

got down to business: Basically, she was tired of waiting for me.

"I want you to leave your wife," she told me. "I want you to be with me. We can get married."

To be honest, I didn't know what to think. She heard me hes-

itate, and couldn't believe it.

"What's the problem?" she asked. "Why don't you leave your

wife? Are you worried about the money you're going to have to

give her if you get divorced? Don't worry about that: I've got

money enough for both of us."

I'll never forget that. I was thinking to myself: Damn, that's

pretty impressive.

But the news of my visit with Madonna in New York was

causing me all kinds of trouble. When Esther heard about it,

she went berserk on me. Even if you're separated, no girl wants

you to be dating someone else—or at least they don't want

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J U I C E D

their faces rubbed in it on the covers of newspapers around the

country.

"I can't believe what you did!" Esther screamed at me over the

telephone. I wished I could make her believe the truth: The

whole thing with Madonna was just a friendly deal. I never had

sex with her. Never. I was quiet and shy at that time in my life; I didn't really know how to handle her. Maybe if we'd spent more

time together, I might have had sex with her—eventually. But it

just didn't happen.

Ultimately, I just kind of left the whole Madonna thing alone,

because I was still in love with Esther. Sure, I'd been curious

about meeting Madonna, but it never really developed into any-

thing. Every time she pushed to have me come see her, I kept

pushing it back; it was like I was playing hard to g e t . . . except

that I really didn't want to be gotten.

There was one last time when Madonna and I did try to see

each other. After the end of that season, I was back in Miami at

my home on Cocoa Plum Beach. I had two boats on my dock,

one a speedboat that could do about 115 miles per hour.

Madonna and I were talking on the phone, and she said I should

come get her; at the time, she was living nearby at Star Island,

maybe fifteen minutes away on the water.

So I got in my boat to go pick her up at her dock and headed

off toward Star Island, until saw a helicopter above me. It

started following me, and I could see a camera pointed down at

me. I had this boat going 100 miles an hour, easy—probably

110—and I just couldn't shake this helicopter. So I had to call

Madonna up and tell her what was happening.

"Listen, they're following me with this helicopter," I said. "I don't think I'm going to be able to pick you up. If I did, it would

be all over the news."

I was more worried about Madonna's privacy than about my

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Madonna's "Bat Boy"

own. After that day, she and I completely shut down communi-

cation. We talked briefly when she was shooting A League of

Their Own, and she wanted me to fly in and give them some in-

structions on how to make a baseball movie. I would have, if my

schedule was clear, but I couldn't make it at that time, and that

was the last time I spoke to Madonna.

It's amazing, though. Ever since then, my whole life, people I

meet are always asking me about Madonna. "Jose, how was she?"

they'll ask me. Or they ask me about all the crazy rumors

they've heard—like the idea that she used to have a trapeze in

the bedroom of her Manhattan penthouse apartment. They al-

ways ask about having sex with her. And all I can tell them is: I

don't know. Ask someone who has.

I had a lot of respect for Madonna, and I didn't want to mess

it up at the time by trying to have sex with her, like any ordinary

guy would do. I didn't want to do anything stupid. As I got to

know her, I really became more interested in her for the person

she was and the things that she had accomplished.

Even now, I think about her sometimes. I guess that's only

natural. Eventually, she married another Cuban, Carlos Leon,

and had a baby with him, but that didn't last. I've heard she goes

through phases that way, and I guess that's what her infatuation

with me was. But still, when Madonna had her first baby, Lour-

des Maria, it did cross my mind to wonder what it would have

been like. I thought to myself, Can you imagine being married to

Madonna right now? Or having kids with her? What would your

life really be like?

Obviously, I'll never know.

109

When Canseco wore the uniform of the A's

or the Rangers, he was just the colorful

black-hat wrestling villain, the way Charles

Barkley has always been a black-hat villain

at Madison Square Garden.

M I K E L U P I C A

If I had five minutes to talk to a twenty-year-old version of

myself, I wouldn't warn him off taking steroids or dating pop

stars. The one piece of advice I would give him is that as much as

players like to laugh at sportswriters—accusing them of being

jock-sniffers or wannabes, for wearing ridiculous clothes, for

not taking care of their bodies at all—the simple fact is that the

media can make or break you. And let me tell you, there are

some guys out there who really know how to work the angles. I

can just throw up watching the total phonies go to work, guys

like Cal Ripken or Alex Rodriguez; everything out of their

mouths sounds like it was tested by some kind of focus group

beforehand.

Alex, in particular, leaves most corporate spokesmen looking

unpolished and overly sincere. He's better at politics than any

politician I've ever seen. After all, he's been groomed that way.

He's been taught just to make money, money, money. As a

player, he has no entertainment value; he fades into the back-

ground, and he bats second in the lineup. But he has mathemat-

ical value, and for that they pay him ridiculous money. And

when it comes to dealing with the press, Alex and the other

politicians in baseball just know how to say the correct thing,

right on cue. They have the media eating out of their hands. So

what if it's all totally false? Who cares about that? The point is,

he'll always give you a sentence or two to put on TV or in your

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J U I C E D

newspaper. Sure, it'll be pure drivel. There won't be a sponta-

neous word there. But it sounds like ballplayer talk, and that's

what matters.

The media reward players who talk a lot of B.S. It used to be

Cal Ripken Jr. who was most obvious about play acting for the

media and projecting a bogus image; today, it's Alex who's play-

ing that role. That's not surprising, I guess, since Alex has said

that he's looked up to Cal from boyhood as some kind of hero.

The perception of Alex is that he's the clean boy—that he

doesn't do anything wrong. He's always careful and does every-

thing right. I know some reporters don't like him because he's

such a boring interview, the one guy who always gives a politi-

cally correct answer. So why do they keep coming back? Because

they're waiting for him to make a mistake and slip up. And

someday he could: He's not the saint he's perceived to be. Even-

tually the media will find something nasty to write about Alex

Rodriguez, because trust me, they're looking for it.

Throughout his career, Cal Ripken Jr. was completely pro-

tected by the media. With his family history in baseball, he was

one of those untouchable players, the guy who could do no

wrong. He even got a pass on the way he dealt with the other

players. He used to stay at a separate hotel from the rest of the

team, and take a separate car from the team bus. The official ex-

planation was that it was for security reasons, but we minority

players couldn't help feeling otherwise. Now, if some minority

player ever tried taking a separate car, you know what the media

would say: "They're not team players. They don't care about the

team." But a guy like Ripken can do whatever he wants, no ques-

tions asked. The double standard strikes again.

As a player, it's hard not to get frustrated with reporters who

aren't smart enough to trust their own eyes. I don't know how

many times I watched a pitcher who was just firing on all his

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Thank You, Tom Boswell

cylinders—his fastball crisp, his slider nasty, everything right

over the plate—only to watch a reporter come in after he shuts

out the other team and ask what he had going for him that

night. Well, EVERYTHING! Sure, it may be a little easier for

those of us inside the game to know what's going on. Still, you'd

think that after so many years on the job these guys would pick

up on what it takes.

What really gives me a laugh, though, are the numbers geeks.

There are a lot of guys who have never played the game—never

even been around the game—and still try to use mathematics

to figure it out. That's a joke. It's impossible. Mathematical

equations can't tell you if a player has an injury—not to men-

tion if he's having troubles at home. Stats can't account for the

human factor. And yet these guys all act like they're the

smartest guys around; some of them act so superior it's almost

embarrassing. (We'd have some fun with them if they ever

showed up in a clubhouse, but usually they're too scared to talk

to a player face to face.)

An awful lot has changed in the sports business in the past

twenty years. Back then, media competition was nothing com-

pared to what it is now—and believe me, as a player, you notice

the difference. The competition among the media now is just

savage—so what happens? Reporters make stuff up. I'm not say-

ing they do it all the time, but I know from painful experience

that sometimes they do. I've sold millions and millions of news-

papers and made some media people's careers, but a lot of what

they wrote was a pack of absolute lies.

I was created by the media. Back in the 1980s, I was like a rock

star. Everywhere I went, I had to have bodyguards. I had it all:

the body, the personality, everything. I was Hollywood. When

most fans thought of me, they didn't think of me playing base-

ball; they thought, "He's dating Madonna," or "He's got a great

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ass." Forget about how I played on any given night; I knew

my role was to give the media and the fans what they really

wanted—which was to be colorful and larger than life. And the

media could always be counted on to magnify everything I did.

I always answered questions honestly and spoke from the heart,

but I never got the feeling the reporters understood me (most of

them probably weren't trying that hard); most of them were

happy to present me as a caricature and a clown, partly because

it was what their editors wanted. And it sold papers.

Part of it was that most of these guys just didn't understand

where I came from. Miami Cubans have come a long way in the

past twenty years, but when I was first making my mark in base-

ball, there was still a lot of quiet racism. I'm talking about peo-

ple who don't even know they're racist, but who make easy

assumptions based on little or no knowledge of a person's back-

ground. Sure, I'll say it: Latinos aren't dead fish. We like to talk,

and sometimes we like to yell. That's just how we communicate.

Believe me, to us, long silences seem a lot more awkward than a

few flat-out shouts now and then. But whenever my first wife,

Esther, and I were overheard yelling at each other, you can bet

your life some reporter would write it up as if we'd been swing-

ing at each other with machetes.

The most glaring example of the double standard that I faced

as a Latino, compared to the treatment the Ripkens and McGwires

of the world received, was a column Thomas Boswell of the

Washington Post published on me in 1988. Boswell apparently

decided that I was the player he wanted to make an example of

as a steroid user, but he offered no evidence—and he never ex-

plained why he was singling me out and saying nothing about

Mark McGwire, even though Mac was bigger than I was.

Why? No one cared about what good-boy McGwire was

doing—or they didn't want to know. But I was always made out

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Thank You, Tom Boswell

to be the bad boy, so I was treated differently. The rest of the

media jumped on me; hey, it was fun. But it was twelve years

after Boswell called me a steroid user before anyone made any

serious claims in print about McGwire and steroids.

So why did I care about being exposed that way? Well, for one

thing, Boswell cost me a million-dollar endorsement with Pepsi.

The deal was all lined up: There I was, Jose Canseco, a big Cuban

kid all set to be pitching Pepsi on TV. But when Boswell's article

came out, Pepsi took a walk. Snap your fingers: that's how fast

Boswell pulled that million bucks out of my hands.

After the Pepsi deal fell through, so many endorsement op-

portunities went with it. Once the rumor went around that I was

on steroids—though nobody presented any smoking guns—I

was persona non grata. I wanted to sue Boswell, but in the end, it

just didn't seem worth my time.

Soon after that, we were in Boston for the playoffs, and some-

thing funny happened: All around me, I heard the fans start

chanting: "Steroids! Steroids!"

When I heard that, I paused a moment to think about how to

respond. Then I just turned sideways, flexed for them, turned

the other way, and flexed again.

The crowd went nuts.

Looking back now, I realize that it all came naturally to me,

being an entertainer. But in a lot of ways, I was pretty stupid

about the media. To put it simply, I didn't understand how pow-

erful the media were, and how important they were to a player's

career. Maybe that's not so surprising, since I think a lot of indi-

vidual sportswriters I've dealt with over the years have also

tended to lose sight of how powerful the media are, how much

influence they have over shaping a player's public image.

I was never close to Albert Belle, but there's another guy who

got a raw deal. No doubt he did some stupid things, like back in

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J U I C E D

1996 when he got mad at a Sports Illustrated photographer and

threw a baseball at him. Not a good move. I never did anything

like that. But here's the thing: Just ask yourself how the media

would have reacted if Ripken or McGwire had done such a

thing. They would have called it a joke: Ha-ha, funny-funny, that

ol' boy sure does like to clown around.

A lot of great baseball players, from Ty Cobb on down, have

been jerks. I can understand that. Sometimes, players need to

maintain their intensity on the field by being intense off the

field. But white guys who are that way get called gritty and tough and a real competitor. If it's a black guy or a Latino, then the

white media reports on the player's difficult side as if it's proof

positive that he's a bad person.

I learned too late in my career about the importance of the

media, not only when it comes to endorsements (thank you,

Tom Boswell) but also when it came to negotiating a long-term

contract. When you're working on building a serious long-

term commitment with a team, you've got to be extremely

careful about how you treat the media—instead of bitching

and complaining and trying to belittle reporters. McGwire

used to call reporters "faggots." I think he thought that was

clever. And, like me, he never grasped why they didn't under-

stand him better.

It sounds obvious enough, but it has to be said: More re-

porters need to stop for a minute and keep in mind that base-

ball players, even the richest superstars, are just human beings

with families and emotions, just like anybody else. Some days

you feel like laughing. Some days you feel like crying. Different

individuals are always going to have different opinions; some

people might have different opinions from day to day, or even

hour to hour. You can't be a happy-go-lucky guy all the time—

not if someone in your family is sick, or you're having family or

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Thank You, Tom Boswell

financial problems. At some point, you're going to say some-

thing you shouldn't have said, and then you get jumped on. I

don't think you can really judge an individual on one instance.

You have to know them over the course of years—just like you

would a family friend or coworker—and watch how they act

under different circumstances.

Reporters are always talking about objectivity and fairness,

but who are they kidding, anyway? Everyone knows the media

can portray an event however they want to, positively or nega-

tively. They have that power, that degree of control. They can

make your career, if they like you, or they can destroy you.

I'm not saying that the reporters who covered me wrote only

bad things about me. In August 1990, Rick Reilly did a big piece

on me for Sports Illustrated that tried to knock down a few of the false assumptions people were making about me.

"Jose Canseco is the subject," Reilly wrote, "and San Francisco Examiner columnist Bill Mandel, a man who has never met him,

offers this: 'I'm from New York and in New York there is a word

for guys like Canseco, and that word is schmuck.'

"Okay, so if Canseco is such a schmuck, why does he spend so

much time at the Miami Youth Club, playing basket ball with the

kids, staying for their spaghetti dinners, donating hundreds of

pairs of sneakers at a time?

"If Canseco is such a schmuck, why is he so deeply involved

in the Make-a-Wish Foundation, which fulfills the fantasies of

dying children?

"If Canseco is such a schmuck, how come he paid for a kid

with leukemia to be flown from Sacramento to Scottsdale, Ari

zona, for the A's spring training?

"If Canseco is such a schmuck, how come he drove to

Pleasanton, California, to raise money for a paralyzed kid called

J.O. by signing autographs for four and a half hours?

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J U I C E D

"And if Canseco is such a schmuck, why did he give his

brother a house and a brand new Porsche 911 and his father a

new Cadillac?

"Jose Canseco is a baseball virtuoso, an athletic flower that

blooms once a century. We know this because he mentioned it

the other day."

That article was published back in the day when people still

read Sports Illustrated the way they watch ESPN now—as the

be-all and end-all of sports reporting. I wish some of Rick

Reilly's good vibes toward me had caught on. But Reilly was the

exception to the rule. The truth is, too many reporters and ana-

lysts really don't know what they're talking about. The public

may assume everything they read or hear in the media is the

truth. But half the time, these reporters or journalists don't do

their homework. Way too often, they're basically misquoting an

athlete, or relying too much on opinion and emotion.

Having had a good close look at the media during the seven-

teen years of my major-league career, I've come to the conclusion

that when a reporter or journalist uses his own opinion, he's slip-

ping into the danger zone. It's too easy to go overboard, instead

of just telling the truth about an actual incident the way it really

happened. To me, the mark of a good reporter is not confusing

one's own emotional feelings toward an athlete—or toward a

race or a color or a creed—with the facts. It's a shame, because

some of the reporters out there are racists, and if you give these

people free rein, they can destroy an athlete. Does that sound

paranoid to you? Time to grow up. Anyone who tries to claim

that not one out of a thousand media personnel is racist, is

speaking out of pure ignorance. There's racism everywhere in

this world, in any profession. Why should the media be different?

What reporters need to understand is that the public has only

one vehicle for learning about these players, and that's through

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Thank You, Tom Boswell

the media. The media is notorious for misquoting individuals,

and for writing whatever they want, especially if they can't get

interviews. But it's the public that suffers, by getting confused

between opinion and fact.

I'll give you an example. Everyone remembers the Loma Pri-

eta earthquake of 1989, which struck the Bay Area the day we

were supposed to play game three of that year's World Series

against the Giants. We were down on the field when it hit,

around five in the afternoon, and I remember leaving the ball-

park with my wife Esther. We were in my Porsche, driving back

to the Blackhawk area in the East Bay; I was still wearing my

baseball uniform, because the clubhouse was blacked out, so we

couldn't change back into street clothes.

I was low on gas, so I stopped at a gas station, but it was the

only one open at that time and there was a long line of people

waiting for gas. We waited there about half an hour, and when it

was our turn, Esther told me she wanted to pump the gas.

"Listen, you'd better stay in the car," she told me. "You're dressed in full uniform, and there are people all over the place. If

you get out, who knows what's going to happen? People are

going to get out of their cars. They're going to want autographs.

It's just going to make matters worse."

So she got out and pumped the gas herself. Makes sense, right?

Not so fast. Esther pumped the gas, and we left, but what we

didn't notice is that there there were a few media people there.

So the next day, in the paper, all you heard was: "Jose Canseco,

the male chauvinist pig, makes his wife Esther put gas in

the car."

You hear about Girls Gone Wild. They ought to call it Media

Gone Wild.

Here's another example of how the media can twist things

and turn everything around. I'll call it the Case of Jose Canseco,

J U I C E D

Famous Gun-Toting Maniac. It all started with another episode

that happened in 1989, the year after I made MVP. During

spring training, I cracked the hamate bone in the heel of my left

hand. It's a small bone in the hand; you really don't need it, but

it's very painful if it breaks. So I had surgery to repair it, and for

a while I had to wear a cast.

Late that April, Esther and I drove over from the East Bay, in

the modified candy-apple red Jaguar I had at the time, to have

the bone checked and make sure it was healing properly. We

pulled into the parking lot at the University of California at San

Francisco Medical Center, way up California Street in Laurel

Heights, and the whole thing was empty. It was a Friday; there

wasn't a single car in sight.

Esther and I went into the medical center; I had a magnetic-

resonance imaging test, and they told me everything was heal-

ing fine. But as we were heading back out to the parking lot,

four or five police cars pulled up, two of them unmarked, the

others squad cars.

"Is this your car?" one of the policeman asked me.

"Yeah," I said.

"Well, you're under arrest," the policeman said.

"Under arrest for what?" I asked.

"For carrying a gun on campus property."

It was true that I had a gun, a 9 mm automatic pistol—but it

was registered. It was something I felt I needed for my own pro-

tection, and for the protection of my loved ones, because by that

point I was very much a public figure. There were all kinds of

wackos out there ready to take a run at me and steal some gold

or do something worse.

To me, the real question wasn't what I was doing with a gun.

It was, how did the cops know about it? And what was wrong

with it, anyway?

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Thank You, Tom Boswell

Well, the answer was pretty revealing. I kept the gun in a

pouch underneath the front seat of my car, and when I stopped

to park the car, the pouch slid forward a little. After we left the

car, apparently, someone was walking by and checking out my

Jaguar—with its "40-40" license plates—and as they were

snooping around, they caught a glimpse of the pouch. So they

called the police, and before you knew it I was being interrogated

by the FBI. All for a completely legal gun that no one would have

known was there if it weren't for somebody snooping by.

But that didn't stop the media from blowing the whole thing

out of proportion. When the San Francisco Chronicle wrote

the story up, they didn't just lead the sports section with it;

they stuck it right out there on the front page of the whole

newspaper:

CANSECO ARRESTED LOADED PISTOL IN HIS JAGUAR

And as bad as the Chronicles story seemed, there were others

that were a whole lot worse. By the time you were done reading

them, you'd think I'd been waving the gun around, shooting at

kids or something. (When reporters talked to Esther when she

came to the sixth floor of the county jail, she just told them the

truth: "This is all bullshit.")

One bad story like that, and you're set for life. The whole rest

of my career, people always mentioned that gun arrest, as if I

was running around campus waving a gun in the air. Now I hate

to think what would have happened if Cal Ripken Jr. had landed

in the same position; "Excuse me, Mr. Ripken, sir. We're so sorry,

but we got a call about a gun in your car, and we just have to

check it out. Strictly a formality, we're sure. Oh, what's that? You

say you've got it taken care of and there's no problem? Okay,

fine. Go get 'em, slugger."

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Even the simplest stereotypes can be revealing. I remember

when I was playing for Double-A Huntsville and I heard a re-

porter in the background asking one of the coaches, "Can he

speak English?"

I almost broke down laughing, it was so ridiculous. Just be-

cause my name is Canseco and I'm Latino, it automatically

means I can't speak English? Yeah, right. Try that on Arnold

Schwarzenegger.

But I shouldn't give the minor-league reporters too much

trouble. In general, I found that they were a lot different from

major league reporters; they're more interested in what hap-

pened during the game itself—in keeping it on the field. Major

league reporters are far more interested in your private life, in

trying to dig up what you do off the field—at least if you're not

on the off-limits list.

I was always, from day one, the evil guy of baseball. Reporters

were always trying to pit Mark and me against each other, to

contrast us—Jose Canseco the aggressive, Latin lover with his

fast cars, and Mark McGwire, the all-American boy.

In general, I was able to handle the media pretty well early

in my career. I was still shy, but interviews were no big deal.

The real problems started when I came up in 1985 from

Triple-A Tacoma to Oakland. The team was struggling. No

fans were coming out. The organization wasn't even on the

map. So at that point the organization decided to try to sell me

as the future of the A's. I was the new power hitter, the new

young stud who was going to save the team. That's how they

portrayed me, and the media picked up on it, too. Once I came

up, the organization started restructuring, adding other play-

ers like McGwire and Walt Weiss. Little by little, the team

started winning. But I'd been the one who was supposed to be

the team savior—to carry the whole burden on my back—and

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Thank You, Tom Boswell

when it didn't quite work out that way, the media never let me

forget it.

I'm not saying reporters always have it easy. Once baseball

started becoming more popular again, not just in Oakland but

everywhere, the competition among them media became just

overwhelming. There were so many media personnel covering

the teams that each of them had to struggle to scrape up a dif-

ferent story to stand out from the crowd and draw attention

(and readers) to themselves.

So what happened? I became the guy who was always the butt

of the joke, the easy target for controversy. Each new reporter

tried to dissect my personal life and my marriages, everything

they could find about my background. From 1987 on, I was at-

tacked all the time by the media. Every little thing that would

happen to me—right down to getting tinted windows in my

car—was national media. It was just crazy.

It was only during the last two or three years of my career that

I felt the press beginning to treat me differently, after I'd learned

to socialize with them a little more and I was less shy. Until then,

I spent years being made fun of, lied about, exaggerated about—

you name it. And I couldn't help but notice that every negative

story that came out about me was by a white reporter. Never

once in my entire career do I remember seeing a negative article

from a minority paper or minority writer or minority producer.

Of course, I didn't take all this mistreatment quietly. I spoke

out against the double standards I saw, and sometimes made an

issue of it when I saw that black athletes weren't being treated

fairly and getting the right contracts. For example, when con-

tract renewal time came around, Will Clark had the same ser-

vice time as Kevin Mitchell, and Kevin Mitchell had performed

better. All of a sudden, Will Clark was getting a four-year con-

tract for a good amount of money—and Kevin Mitchell wasn't.

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I spoke out about that. And the media hammered me for it—

the white media, that is. But I had no qualms about speaking out

against the injustice. Why? Because a lot of us minority players

felt like we got the cold shoulder from Will Clark. Clark was a

country boy, and from the way he acted and the comments he

would make, we had reason to believe he had no respect for us.

But who was going to complain? He was white, he was Will

Clark, and he was protected by the system.

After I made some comments to the press about Mitchell and

Clark, in every ballpark I'd go to, the minority athletes would

greet me with a thumbs-up and a high five. They knew I had the

power to challenge the double standard, and they loved watch-

ing me use it.

In the end, of course—though I didn't realize it until after I

retired from baseball—all those controversies worked against

me. If I hadn't been political, and spoken out and fought for

what was right, maybe the owners would have wanted me

around in baseball a little longer.

The public has to realize that the good guys in baseball aren't

as perfect as the media says they are—and the bad guys aren't as

bad, either. The truth is always somewhere in between. Yes, the

media can portray you as an angel even though you're a devil,

and vice versa. They can completely control what is brought to

the public. It's just like political propaganda, only on a smaller

scale. No one knows what goes on in the political world unless

the media covers it and carries it accurately back to the public.

But what if the media is really deceiving the public? That kind of

thing has happened before, it's happening now in certain areas,

and it will continue to happen. It's left to the public to make a

choice about what to believe.

As I've asked myself for years: If you can't trust a sports re-

porter to tell the truth, who can you trust?

126

There are trades in sports, and there are TRADES in

sports, and this was definitely the latter. Out of the

blue, the biggest celebrity in baseball had been sent

flying from the Oakland A's. This was the kind of

deal— the bolt-of-lightning trade— that just wasn't

supposed to happen anymore.

LEIGH MONTVILLE,

Sports Illustrated, September 14, 1992

T he biggest surprise I ever had in my seventeen seasons

playing in the big leagues came on August 31, 1992. We

were playing a home game at the Oakland Coliseum against the

Baltimore Orioles, and at the time we had a good lead in the

American League West, seven and a half games. I played right

field in the top of the first inning, and then came in ready to bat

in the bottom of the inning. But just as I was stepping into the

on-deck circle, one of the coaches told me that the manager,

Tony LaRussa, wanted to talk to me.

I figured Tony wanted to tell me something he'd noticed

about the pitcher. You're always trying to identify clues about

what the pitcher is going to do—a glove movement, a hand

movement, anything that can help you pick up what type of

pitch he's going to throw. But Tony didn't want to talk about the

pitcher. When I reached him, he just stood there for a moment

while I waited for him to speak.

"Jose, you've been traded," he finally told me.

It didn't register. I thought it must be some kind of bad joke,

like on April Fool's Day.

So Tony repeated himself. "You've been traded."

I was in shock.

"Go upstairs and see Sandy Alderson. He'll give you the de-

tails," Tony told me.

So I put my bat and helmet down and started walking up

J U I C E D

through the tunnel. Just imagine what it was like: We were right

in the middle of the game, only an hour or two before the dead-

line. I was in complete shock. None of the players said anything

to me; they were too busy with the game.

Upstairs, the A's general manager, Sandy Alderson, explained

that I had been traded to the Texas Rangers, in exchange for

three players: Ruben Sierra, Jeff Russell, and Bobby Witt. He

said I should go take a shower; there'd be a press conference af-

terward. That was basically it. The days and weeks that followed

remain a real blur for me. It didn't really sink in, for a while, just

what had happened or why. I'd been with the A's my whole ca-

reer; I'd come up through the minors, and played in Oakland for

eight seasons. And now this.

"I haven't even looked at myself in the mirror," I told the re-

porters who showed up for a press conference I gave at Yankee

Stadium before my first game, for the Rangers. "I feel like

I'm playing in an All-Star Game, where you wear the uniform

for a day and go home. Only this time you don't go home. I

still can't believe all of this happened. I can't believe it hap-

pened this way. Maybe I'll never know the reason why I was

traded."

I even tried to find some humor in the situation. When one

reporter asked me where I had been traded, I said: "To Ethiopia.

For a box of Froot Loops and a camel to be named later."

But inside I was just dumbstruck—and it seems like the

whole Bay Area was as well. "Sandy Alderson never has been

afraid to pull the trigger on a big trade that would help his

team," Frank Blackman wrote in the San Francisco Examiner the next day. "But Monday night, when the A's general manager announced he had traded Jose Canseco to Texas for three players

and cash, he dropped a nuclear device."

It was a weird feeling, getting on the plane to New York to

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Texas-Sized Sluggers

leave the West Coast and join the Rangers. Pedro Gomez sat

next to me on that flight, and I told him how confusing it was to

hear so many people complaining now about the trade. All I

could think was, Where were all these supporters when I came to

bat at the Coliseum? This outpouring of support was nice, but I

could have used it to drown out all those boos in Oakland.

I couldn't help grousing to Pedro about it all. "I've always

heard, 'Why can't he reach his potential?'" I told him as we sat

up in first class, heading east. "Maybe thirty-five home runs

and 100 RBIs is my potential. It's not a bad potential to reach.

I don't think I've ever gotten credit for the things I've done. It's

always been what I haven't done or what I should have done. It's not fair to me. But I guess that's one of the prices you pay for

superstardom. I wouldn't change a thing if I could. I'd still go

into baseball."

It wasn't only in the Bay Area that people were amazed by that

trade. People all over the country were having a hard time sud-

denly imagining me taking the field in something other than my

familiar Oakland A's uniform.

"The uniform looked so strange on him, the word TEXAS

spelled across the gray shirt in blue letters," Leigh Montville

wrote that week in Sports Illustrated. "Jose Canseco was a Texas Ranger? This could not be. Up was down, down was up and the

tidy baseball universe had been altered. McDonald's sells ham-

burgers near Lenin's Tomb, fine. A member of the British royal

family rubs suntan lotion on the bald head of an American

businessman, O.K. But Jose a Ranger?"

It was true I wasn't having my best season for the A's that year.

Injuries had been nagging at me for months. I had twenty-two

home runs at the time of the trade, and 72 RBIs, but I was only

batting .246, which was a big drop from the .307 I hit in 1988,

my forty-forty year.

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J U I C E D

Still, I was only twenty-eight years old, and it was clear that I

had many, many more good seasons ahead of me. When the A's

traded me, that represented a huge change of course for them. I

knew they needed pitching, especially after Bob Welch went

down with an injury in the weeks before the trade, but they were

basically pulling the plug on the powerhouse team they had

built. The A's were looking for ways to cut salary and go into a

kind of rebuilding mode. No one would have predicted they

would do that at that time, and basically give up on being a con-

tender, even though they still had so much talent.

As shocked as everyone was, including me, the transition

turned out to be pretty easy. After a week or so with the Rangers,

I felt pretty well settled in. I had known Rafael Palmeiro since we

were kids growing up in Miami, and of course I was glad to be

playing with another Cuban. And there were other Latino stars

on the team, like Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez and Juan Gonzalez.

They made a real effort to make me feel welcome after that

trade, and Raffy and I even started bashing our forearms, the

way we all did out in Oakland. Eventually, I realized that this

change of scenery was probably good for me.

And the whole episode did give me a little perspective on

what was really going on during the time I'd spent in Oakland.

Maybe I'd worn out my welcome there. Maybe I'd fallen into a

trap. The shoes people put out there for me would have been

very difficult for anyone to fill. And when I did manage to fill

them, the shoes just kept getting bigger. It was sad, but I don't

think I ever could have fulfilled the expectations people had for

me out there.

I also wondered about what role the steroid issue might have

played in the trade. No one in the A's organization ever came

right out and said it, but by then there were a lot of rumors

about me using steroids, and to this day 1 believe that might

132

Texas-Sized Sluggers

have been a factor in the A's decision to trade me. But that

would have been just pure ignorance on their part. Using

steroids made me a better ball player—and, as everyone soon

found out, my expertise on steroids could make other players

around me a lot better, too.

But the Texas Rangers apparently weren't worried about that.

The managing general partner at that time was George W. Bush,

before he was elected governor of Texas. At that time, he was

very visible in the role of team owner; he used to sit right behind

home plate for a lot of the games. Sometimes he'd come down to

talk to the great pitcher Nolan Ryan, who had the next locker

over from mine when I first joined the Rangers.

It was understood by then that teams knew all about steroids

in the game. There was no question that George W. Bush knew

my name was connected with steroids—the story Tom Boswell

had written in 1988 wasn't the last word on the subject—but he

decided to make the deal to trade for me anyway.

And then, not long after I got there, I sat down with Rafael

Palmeiro, Juan Gonzalez, and Ivan Rodriguez, and educated

them about steroids.

Soon I was injecting all three of them. I personally injected

each of those three guys many times, until they became more fa-

miliar with how to use a needle and were able to do it them-

selves. Bush and Tom Grieve, the general manager, would have

seen all three of those guys getting bigger before their eyes, start-

ing within weeks after I joined the team. But they never made an

issue of it, or said anything to me or to any of us about steroids.

Was I surprised that no one ever brought it up? Come on. You

never really get to speak to the owners or the GM on a daily

basis. They spend their days off by themselves, attending to

business behind closed doors; they don't spend a lot of time

mingling with the players. I never had any sort of conversation

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J U I C E D

with Bush. I shook his hand and met him once, but that was

about it. He was around a lot; you saw him on his way in or out,

but always just briefly. We were busy practicing or playing base-

ball. Bush did gravitate toward Nolan Ryan a bit, probably be-

cause he was a legend, and also closer to him in age. He didn't

talk to us Latinos much.

And, given how quiet he was about the subject at the time, I was

pretty surprised years later when Bush actually raised the issue of

steroids in his January 2004 State of the Union address. By then, it

seemed to me that a lot of people, Bush included, were trying to

turn this into a witch hunt—even though they themselves had

played a role in helping move the steroid revolution forward, by

giving a berth to me and other steroid-using players during my

heyday, and benefiting from our enhanced performance.

I'm not a big fan of CNN, but that guy Paul Begala—you

know, bald, with beady eyes—was actually on the money when

he talked about the issue shortly after Bush gave that speech.

"In an otherwise lackluster State of the Union address, Presi-

dent Bush had one genuine moment of passion," Begala said on

Crossfire on January 22, 2004. "But when he was the owner of a baseball team, Mr. Bush did nothing about steroids. Although

other sports were cracking down on steroids, Mr. Bush and his

fellow baseball owners refused to do a thing.

"In fact, Mr. Bush even traded for Jose Canseco, bringing him

to the Texas Rangers—a man who one sports agent told the UPI

was 'The Typhoid Mary of steroids.' Perhaps Mr. Bush can get

some advice on the steroid crisis he's just discovered from the

man he has repeatedly praised, California Governor and former

steroid abuser Arnold Schwarzenegger."

I don't know about Typhoid Mary, but I don't think there's

any question that when I arrived in Texas the other Rangers saw

me as a useful resource. Everyone in baseball knew by then that

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Texas-Sized Sluggers

I was the godfather of steroids. I was the first to educate other

players about how to use them, the first to experiment and pass

on what I'd learned, and the first to get contacts on where to get

them. I taught the other players which steroid has which effect

on the body, and how to mix or "stack" certain steroids to get a desired effect.

Palmeiro, Gonzalez, and Ivan Rodriguez all started asking me

a lot of questions about steroids soon after I joined the Rangers.

And after I'd given them a little schooling, they told me they all

wanted to get some and give them a try. So I got them each a

supply through my contacts, and helped them get used to the

injection process. None of them at that point wanted their wives

to know about it. They would bring their steroids to the ballpark

and I would inject them there, the same way I used to inject

McGwire back at the Oakland Coliseum.

That was pretty typical of most players, not wanting people to

know—their wives especially. So we would go into the bath-

room stalls or the video room or a back room, wherever you

could find a closed area, to do the injecting, and I would show

them where to make the injection on the glute muscle.

Raffy, Juan, and Ivan were definitely scared the first time I in-

jected them, but after a while it became no big deal to them,

either. And throughout my time on the team, they were on a

combination of growth hormone and steroids—mostly Deca

and Winstrol, but with a small dose of testosterone. Combining

water-based and oil-based steroids that way, they needed two

separate needles, too. (They didn't take any pills. Those are

probably the worst to take.)

All three of them saw some gains in size, too. Raffy, who's nat-

urally stocky, made a reasonable gain in size and weight. Juan,

on the other hand, got bigger and bigger, and didn't know when

to stop. Eventually, he would grow all the way up to 255 pounds.

135

J U I C E D

He was very lean when he first started playing baseball in the

major leagues, so when he started getting up to that size, it was

too much, especially since he was playing the outfield every day.

I myself never got over 250 pounds, and I'm taller than Juan at

six foot four.

Before long, other players from all around the baseball world

saw what was going on with me and my buddies in Texas, how

strong we all were and how our strength was helping us per-

form. And soon those players were coming up to me and asking

me for advice about using steroids. It wasn't something you

spoke about with just anybody. It wasn't like I gave daily or

weekly seminars in front of the whole ball team, standing in

front of them all in a white lab coat and holding up a laser

pointer and telling them, "Today, we're going to learn about

Deca and what it can do for you." But by then it was an open se-

cret among players: If they wanted to know about steroids, they

knew who to ask.

Of course, not everyone hunted me down for advice. Some

wanted to know more, some didn't. But one thing I should make

clear: No one ever gave me any grief for what we were doing

with our bodies. I never saw or experienced any tension among

players about steroid use. To put it another way: Even the guys

who weren't doing steroids knew full well that it was something

they'd consider doing, even if they might say otherwise to their

wives or parents or high school gym teachers.

I can say with confidence that every single major-league player

has at least given steroid use some thought, weighed the positives

and negatives. How could you not? Ball players earn their living

with their bodies, after all. They all want to become bigger,

stronger, and faster. Of course, they'd be tempted to do anything

they could to improve those bodies. If you're an editor at a news-

paper, and you can get a souped-up computer that's faster, more

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Texas-Sized Sluggers

reliable, and can do things the old one couldn't, of course, you're

going to want that upgrade. It's the same thing for an athlete: Up-

grading your physical capability is central to success in your cho-

sen field. If you get bigger, stronger, and can hit more home runs,

you can make a lot more money. If you saw some little middle in-

fielder all of a sudden hitting forty homers in a season, your

choice would be clear—if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Once I educated another player, he would usually end up

learning more and more on his own, and then using his own con-

tacts to get what he needed. That was how it went with Palmeiro,

Gonzalez, and Rodriguez in Texas. After a while I assumed that

they found their own sources. Steroids are everywhere. A lot of

bodybuilders supplement their income by selling them. So do

trainers in gyms, and sometimes the owners of the gyms them-

selves. I know people who have made millions and millions of

dollars selling steroids. The profits can be incredible if you can

get your supplies at a low rate. Pharmacists sell steroids on the

side, too. Growth hormone is everywhere you look; you can see

the results in every gym, in every sport, and more and more often

on beaches and sidewalks wherever you live.

It's one thing to complain about steroid abuse. I agree that im-

proper steroid use can have its dangers. But the performance en-

hancement that can come with responsible steroid use is nothing

to be dismissed. It's an opportunity, not a danger. And those who

are trying to make an issue of it are speaking from ignorance.

137

I look at my daughter every day

and just think, "Wow."

JOSE CANSECO

In May 1993, when I was playing for the Rangers, we went

to Cleveland for a series against the Indians, and some

friends on the team and I decided to go get something to eat.

There was a Hooters restaurant near the ballpark, so we de-

cided to go there. (The food isn't bad, actually, and if you don't

like those tight orange shorts the waitresses wear, then some-

thing's wrong with you.)

When we sat down to order that day, there was one waitress I

couldn't take my eyes off. The second I saw her, I knew I was

going to ask her out. She was tall, blonde, beautiful, and confi-

dent, with beautiful blue eyes and a body that wouldn't quit.

That was Jessica. She became my second wife.

"I remember him coming in and trying to pick me up," she

says now. "He does this thing with his eyebrows where one goes

up and the other doesn't. It was very cute. I didn't know who he

was at all. I wasn't a sports fan. But he kept asking me to lunch,

and I agreed. So the next day he took me shopping and spent,

like, seven thousand dollars on me at Calvin Klein."

The next day, I was playing in the outfield when a funny thing

happened. I ran back toward the wall, chasing after a ball hit by

Carlos Martinez. As I went back, I lost track of the ball for just

an instant, and it hit me right on the head and bounced over for

a home run. That had to be the most embarrassing moment of

my career, but even so, it was a fluke—the kind of thing that

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J U I C E D

could happen to anyone. But because I was Jose Canseco, they

turned it into a huge sensation; they'll probably be replaying

that sequence long after I'm dead. It became like Madonna—

one of those subjects that people always ask me about when they

meet me for the first time.

Three days later, I finally got to do something I'd always

wanted to do. My whole time with the A's, I was always telling

them I could pitch; I'd thrown 90-mile-an-hour fastballs, too.

But there was never an opportunity to give me a shot—until

that May, when we were getting blown away by the Red Sox, and

the Rangers' manager, Kevin Kennedy, decided to let me pitch.

It was harder than it looks, I'll tell you. I retired the side the

one inning I pitched, but I also gave up three walks, two singles,

and three runs. Even now, if you look up my statistics, before it

says anything about my home runs, it lists my pitching stats: I

have a major-league career earned-run average of 27.00, based

on that one inning.

Later in the season, my right elbow started giving me trou-

ble, ending that season early and forcing me to have ligament-

replacement surgery in my elbow. The know-it-alls in the press

always said I'd messed up my elbow while pitching that one in-

ning, and for all I know they're right. The point is: They really

don't know. They're just guessing. And for the rest of my life I

get to say that I pitched in a major-league game, something

none of them can say. And Jessica was there to see it, too.

"He flew me to Boston that weekend," Jessica said. "Within six or seven days, I was head over heels in love with him. My friends

warned me about him, saying they'd heard stories about him

and he was a bad seed, but I didn't care.

"T'm going to marry this man!'—That's what I told my

friends within a week. He liked animals, and I grew up on a farm

and I'm an animal lover. I always liked his sense of humor, and

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Fatherhood Changes Everything

he liked mine, so we always laughed a lot together. Plus, I liked

his exciting lifestyle."

Jessica and I had a stormy relationship, breaking up and get-

ting back together more times than I'd like to remember. Two

years after that amazing first meeting, we were thinking about

separating when Jessica said she had something to tell me. I

didn't know what to expect. Had she met someone else?

That wasn't it.

"I'm pregnant," she told me.

I was so happy, I couldn't believe it. Here I thought we were

just heading for another of our disagreements; instead, here was

this great news she had for me. Suddenly everything made per-

fect sense. I'd never really wanted to break up with her, and this

seemed to give us the fresh start we needed—even though nei-

ther of us had been thinking much about becoming parents.

"I was shocked to find out I was pregnant," Jessica says now.

"I really hadn't planned on that."

Our wedding wasn't what you would call storybook. My

back had gone out on me again so we had to hold the ceremony

flat on our backs in bed. That was fine with me; I like to hang

out in bed. I actually conduct a lot of my business from the

phone by my bed. But to Jessica, that ceremony in Florida in

August 1996 left a little something to be desired. "It wasn't

much of a wedding," she says. I tried to make it up to her in

other ways.

Just a few months later, that November, our baby girl Josie

was born. I'll never forget that night. Jessica is so strong that

once she went into her contractions, that was pretty much that.

She's one of those genetic freaks: Once the doctor said "Push!" it was all over but the shouting.

When Josie's head popped out, she was so dark I couldn't be-

lieve it. You know how, when babies don't have any oxygen in

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J U I C E D

their bloodstream yet, their heads are a kind of purple color?

Josie was a very dark purple.

"Hmmm," I was thinking. "Why is this baby so dark?"

They held up the umbilical cord, and I cut it. As soon as the

nurse slapped her on the butt and she started crying, you could

see the oxygen turn her from a dark purple to pink, pink, pink,

and right away you could see her blue eyes. It was amazing. That

moment blew away everything I had experienced in my life. You

never know what it's all about, being a father, until you experi-

ence it for yourself.

"My life changed from then on," Jessica says. "I had her to think about, as well as myself, and it was challenging. I think

both Jose and I had to do a lot of growing up after Josie was

born. She brought us closer together and made us a family."

Nothing compares to the feeling of being a father. Very often,

I'd be looking at Josie and I'd turn to look at Jessica. "We created

her!" I'd say, "Look at her, a beautiful little girl, blonde hair, green eyes, tons of personality. We created this."

The first couple of months, it seemed like we spent every

waking moment just looking at her. All a baby does is sleep,

poop, and eat; that's basically it for a few months. As a father,

you've got to be very careful. You don't want to bounce her too

hard, or hold her too tight, out of a fear that she's going to

break. Those first months, she spent so much time with her

mother, breast-feeding and what not; then, even when I'd try to

hold her, I heard, "Be careful?' or "Watch out for her head!" or

"You have to keep her neck straight!" so often that more than

once I felt like giving up and letting the professional—her

mom—do the holding.

Josie was a quiet baby. She didn't cry much. After a little time

passed, though, her personality started showing itself, and her

features started coming out. The life of a baseball player can take

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Fatherhood Changes Everything

a lot out of you, with all the travel and 162 games per season in

the regular season alone. But in the off-season you get to do

whatever you want—and what I wanted to do was stay home

and sit there watching Josie. I didn't even care what she was

doing, I just loved keeping an eye on my little girl.

It took me a while to admit it, but you start to look at your life

differently when you have someone dependent on you. I always

had this bad-boy public image, but most of the trouble I got into

was just because I was goofing off. Back when I was a kid, my

dad was so serious all the time, and put so much pressure on

Ozzie and me, that we never had much of a chance to feel like

carefree kids. Looking back, I guess once I got into baseball I was

just making up for a lot of lost time.

But after Josie was born, I developed a new sense of responsi-

bility. I thought more about the consequences of my actions. I

started thinking things through carefully and calmly before I

acted. My earlier reckless days started to feel like a very distant

chapter of my life. So did my free-spending ways of years before.

I definitely started being more careful with my money. I put to-

gether a complete portfolio of stocks and bonds, and educated

myself about how to make the most of my investments. I knew I

wouldn't be earning a big-league salary forever. I had to plan for

the future, not only for myself, but also for Josie.

That was another kind of education for me—an education in

assuming responsibility. That was a set of lessons I was overdue

in learning. And I'm grateful to my family for teaching me.

145

This year the players and owners have managed to do

what an earthquake, two world wars, a missile crisis

and a depression could not do, and that was cancel the

World Series.

LIANE HANSEN,

Weekend Edition, National Public Radio

One thing the 1994 baseball season convinced me was that

the Major League Baseball Players Association, led by Don-

ald Fehr, always had one goal and one goal only: Becoming the

mightiest union in the world. The union wanted power, and ap-

parently the one way they felt they could amass that power was

to make as much money for the players as possible—no matter

what the long-term ramifications were for the players or the

game itself.

That was the way the union handled the steroid issue, too.

The Players Association was as complicit as the owners in the

explosion of steroids in the game. They knew as much about it

as anyone, because they dealt with the players all the time. To

those of us on the inside, there was no mystery over why the

union took such a hard line against steroid testing, for example.

Their concern was always making money for the players, and if

the players were remaking their bodies using steroids to do so,

the MBPA never lifted a finger to stop it.

I believe that plenty of people within the Players Association

must have known exactly which players were on steroids. And

they did not care. If all you care about is jacking up players'

salaries, why would you try to stop the steroid groundswell?

Don't rock the boat.

Think about it this way: If Don Fehr really believed that his

players weren't doing steroids, wouldn't he have said: Okay, let a

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J U I C E D

true drug-testing program begin? Nothing like the joke we had

during the 2004 season, for example.

But Fehr had to know the truth. He must have foreseen—Oh

my god!—that if he let a real drug-testing program be imple-

mented, too many of his top players would get c a u g h t . . . and

everything Fehr had built would be at risk. So instead he just

stalled, and it worked.

I'll say one thing for Donald Fehr, though. It took a strong

leader to pull off what he did. You've got to give him that. He's

quite a character; he's highly intelligent, has a real presence,

and knows how to work the system to get the players behind

him 100 percent. I think he actually attained his goal of becom-

ing one of the most powerful union leaders ever, by developing

this extremely powerful players' organization.

But the result was the strike of 1994, which was just crazy, if

you ask me. You've got to be kidding: Grown men involved in a

billion-dollar industry couldn't solve their own issues inter-

nally? Both sides should be ashamed of themselves for pushing

things as far as they did that year. Not only was there a strike—

the whole World Series was cancelled. Some of the owners may

be perfectly smart people, but nobody involved in that could

have had a whit of practical intelligence. They don't under-

stand anything beyond what their lawyers told them. In the

end, it came down to the nerds against the athletes, just like it

was back in high school—and just like in high school, everyone

lost.

That strike never should have happened, and it never would

have happened if the owners had approached things intelli-

gently. All they needed to do was find half a dozen influential

players without guaranteed contracts who were willing to dis-

tance themselves from the stance of the Players Association.

Those players each could have brought other players along to

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The Strike

their way of thinking. These players would have collectively re

cruited more players, and more players, and so on, until the

union was really in trouble. If the owners had approached me in

the right way, I could have done it for them myself.

The owners could have broken the union that way, but they

were never smart enough to think it through. They were always

inclined to think in terms of brute force, to force our will. But

negotiation doesn't work that way. You have to be shrewd and

look for weaknesses in your opponent—and, in the case of the

Players Association, there was plenty of that to go around. The

Association had pissed off a lot of players, especially minority

players; they were always thinking more about the whole than

the individual, always thinking about profits, not the well-being

of the players.

So why didn't they try something like that? For one thing,

they didn't know who to go to. They had no player on the inside.

When it comes right down to it, baseball owners aren't the

smartest people in the world, either. People think that rich guys

are always smart, or they wouldn't be able to make so much

money, but often intelligence has nothing to do with it. The

owners never approached it the right way, so we struck and they

cancelled the World Series.

That was a dark period for baseball. Suddenly America had a

new national pastime—asking: Can baseball survive this? Will it

ever be the same again? Are football and basketball going to take

over now that baseball has ruined everything?

One of the amazing things about the strike was how much

you heard about it hurting the economy. The entire network of

concessionaires, parking facilities, and other businesses lo-

cated around stadiums, which relied on the income they

generated during the baseball season, was affected. It was a real

demonstration of how economically strong baseball was, that

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J U I C E D

it affected so many people and so many smaller institutions.

On a personal level, it was incredible for me to realize that

what I did for a living touched so many people, directly or in-

directly.

The timing of the strike was bad for me personally, too. I'd re-

ally been enjoying playing that season, and I was putting up

good numbers. Back in Oakland, I hadn't always seen eye to eye

with Tony LaRussa, who tried to play too many mind games for

my taste. But in Texas I was playing for Kevin Kennedy, who was

easily my favorite manager.

What made him stand out so much? Simple: He always

showed me trust and respect. Kevin approached me first of all as

a person, instead of treating me as just a ballplayer or a cog in

the wheel. It may not sound like much, but to me it was impor-

tant that Kevin treated me like a human being, with a family

and emotions, ups and downs. Because of that, I trusted him

completely.

And in return, I believe, he got the best out of me. I was at the

ballpark on time every day, busting my ass for him day in and

day out. If you look at the stats I put up for him when I was

healthy, they were incredible. Kevin just made it very easy to

play for him. All he asked was that you show up on time, play

hard, and hang in there for nine innings. He had the good sense

to keep it simple: He knew you were a grown man, and he

trusted you to be a professional.

Kevin was definitely a players' manager. He made the

Rangers a happy, cohesive atmosphere, and helped us to main-

tain good chemistry at the ballpark. If you had a problem,

he wanted you to go to him, and he believed that any problem

could be fixed in private. He didn't want to involve the media,

because he knew the media tended to blow things out of

proportion, which always had a way of turning into a huge

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The Strike

distraction for the organization. He took good care of his

team, and if you look back you'll see that he got the best years

out of a lot of his players.

So it turned out that the trade from Oakland to Texas was a

good thing for me. It gave me the motivation to work hard and

get back to where I'd been a few seasons earlier, before my in-

juries started to get in the way. In my first three seasons with

the A's, I'd had six hundred at-bats or more every year, and I

finished all three of those seasons with at least thirty home

runs and at least 110 RBIs. But after that, I had several seasons

where I missed a lot of games because of injuries. I had worked

really hard to get going again in 1994, and that work paid off

for me.

I finished that season with thirty-one homers and 90 RBIs;

that may not sound like much, but it was enough to lead the

team in both categories. Juan Gonzalez had 85 RBIs, making

him second on the team, but no one else on the team even hit

twenty homers that year, let alone thirty. If the season hadn't

been cut short, I might have had one of the best years of my ca-

reer.

As it turned out, though, the Rangers played only 114 games

that season, forty-eight short of the normal total of 162. If you

do the math, I was on pace to finish the year with forty-four

home runs—which would have tied my career high at that

point—and 127 RBIs, which would have been the best total of

my career. Also, even with a 52-62 record, the Rangers were in

first place in the American League West at the time of the

strike. We'd finished fourth during my first season in Texas,

and second in 1993, and I would have liked to see what that

1994 Rangers team could have done in the postseason.

We had a lot of fun together on that team. Less than two

weeks before the strike, for example, left-hander Kenny Rogers

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J U I C E D

was pitching a great game against the California Angels at

home. During the game, a couple of the other players, Chris

James and Gary Redus, decided they had to perform a special

ceremony to help bring Kenny good luck. Based on the way he

was throwing, we all knew he might be on his way to a memo-

rable performance.

All season long, I'd been getting flak about my shoes. They

were scuffed up pretty bad, and the guys kept complaining that

they smelled. So James and Redus got an idea, and they swiped

them from me. Then in the fifth inning, after I had hit home

runs my first two times up in the game, those two guys soaked

my shoes in alcohol and put a match to them, right there in the

dugout. It was meant as an offering to the baseball gods; and

some of the guys even danced around the little fire, as if it was a

bonfire or something.

They must have been on to something, too: Kenny Rogers

never made a mistake, that whole game, and he finished with

the first perfect game in baseball in four years, and only the

fourteenth perfect game ever thrown. Too bad they couldn't

have come up with some kind of crazy ceremony to try to save

baseball that year.

The fans had to wait for fourteen months to see another

World Series.

154

Umps have a tough job to do, and you don't mess with

them. In this league, you respect the umps or you don't

stay around.

F O R M E R O A K L A N D A ' S M A N A G E R TONY LARUSSA

John Hirschbeck was always one of my favorite umpires.

He and his brother Mark were approachable, open guys

who were popular with players. John and I had a good rela-

tionship. John had to face a personal tragedy in 1993 when his

eight-year-old son, John Drew, died from a rare degenerative

nerve disease known as adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD). After

that, both brothers put a lot of work into the John Drew

Hirschbeck Foundation, a charity that raised money to fight

the disease. John asked me to sign baseballs and make appear-

ances for that foundation, and I was glad to take part in his

fund-raisers, because I knew it was for a good cause and John

and I had a good rapport.

"John, if I can help out, just let me know," I told him.

After I left the Texas Rangers, he took me up on that in an un-

usual way. In 1995, I was at spring training in Fort Myers, Florida,

before a game against the Rangers. We were all just sitting around

when one of the clubhouse attendants brought me a note.

"Jose, we're picketing outside of the stadium today, and we'd

like you to come join us."

That was the first I'd heard about the umpires picketing, but

since I liked John and I was all for helping the umpires get a set-

tlement, I figured, "Why not?" So I walked out there and joined

the umpires picketing in front of the surprised Florida fans; I

even hung a sign around my neck.

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J U I C E D

Before I got out there, no one was paying much attention to

the picket line. But soon there were a lot of people—and some

reporters, too. The picketers had signs saying things like SCABS

GO HOME and MAJOR LEAGUE UMPIRES LOCKED OUT.

We handed out informational materials to anyone who

wanted them, explaining how much umpires love the game of

baseball.

"You saw what the game was like without the real players," I

told the reporters that day. "It's going to be the same thing with-

out the real umpires."

I think John appreciated what I did, backing him up that

day. He and I continued to have a good relationship until

the next year, when Hirschbeck became a lot more famous

than he ever wanted to be. He was having a tough time, losing

one son and finding out that another son was sick with the

same disease. He and Roberto Alomar had a notorious con-

frontation at home plate after John made a call that Robby

didn't like. They had words, and Robby spit in his face. That

generated a huge controversy; all around the country, people

were sounding off about it all. I'll just say this: There was a lot

more to that confrontation than people know.

But after that September, John was totally different. He must

have been so traumatized by the incident with Robby that I

think he started going a little berserk during games; from then

on, he took it out on all position players, myself included. He

was constantly irate with us all, and there was nothing you could

do to calm him down. It became a running joke among us play-

ers that if you were batting when John was behind the plate, you

were going to strike out. He was capable of calling strikes on

pitches a foot outside, or eight inches high, or eight inches low.

You just walked back to the dugout shaking your head. That

was all you could do. Up until that time, Hirschbeck was one of

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The Men in Black

the better-liked umpires around, but things happen and people

change. That's just the way it is.

There are all kinds of examples of umpires being on power

trips. One time, during my rookie year, Steve Palermo was the

home plate umpire and he missed a call. The pitch was down

and away, but he called it a strike, and I gave him an earful,

because it wasn't even close. Later in that same series, when

Palermo was at second base, he told our second baseman,

Mike Gallego, that I'd made a big mistake talking back to him

like that.

Gallego told me that Palermo was furious. "Who the hell

does this rookie think he is?" he asked Gallego. I knew from that

moment that he was going to have it in for me for the rest of my

career.

I still have a videotape of the time I was with the A's and Ted

Hendry called a strike on a ball that was a foot outside and level

to the ground. I just let him have it. You'd have to bleep out most

of what I said. The next time I was up, I stood there in the on-

deck circle and screamed at him some more.

"I can't believe you made that call!" I yelled. "It was terrible!"

I threw in a few cuss words, but he still wouldn't throw me

out, so I went up to the plate and just kept shouting till he finally

tossed me. He was one of the nicest umpires around. I always

got along with him great, but in this case, it seemed obvious he

was making that bad call because a week or two earlier I had

questioned a call of Richie Garcia's. That's how it works—even

though Garcia was in a completely separate crew, there's still a

code among umpires that they will back each other up and

make sure you pay.

Garcia was one weird dude. He was Latino, but it was well

known in baseball that he was especially hard on Latinos. How

messed up is that? I have no idea what was going on with Garcia.

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J U I C E D

Sometimes a guy just doesn't like the way you look, or the way

you come across in the media. I think a lot of these umpires take

it personally if you get to be a big star. Garcia had a serious atti-

tude problem, and we players felt the brunt of it.

One of the things fans always wonder about is what players

and umpires talk about during a game. I can see why; some-

times, when I catch a few minutes of a game on TV and I see a

player jawing with an umpire, I try to read their lips to see what

they're saying. Often it's easy to tell, but sometimes the players

get a little more creative. It's a kind of art form, knowing how

far to push an umpire without sending him over the edge. Some

managers are really good at saying just enough, and doing it ca-

sually. Sometimes they'll even come out to the mound to talk

with a pitcher, just so they can call something out to the umpire

on their way back to the dugout. My own approach was to keep

it simple, unless I was really losing my temper—because when

that happened, forget about it.

I remember one time in the late 1980s when I was with the

A's and we were facing the Detroit Tigers. Frank Tanana was

pitching. He'd already been in the league fifteen years or so; he

was on his way to two hundred career wins, and had

the respect of everyone. You knew he was going to get a lot of

calls, but he had that big old curve ball, and if they were giving

him a few extra inches, you were going to have a really tough

time.

So Drew Coble was behind the plate that day, and Tanana let

loose with one of those big sweeping breaking balls, and it went

completely around the plate. Never touched it. But Coble called

it a strike! I couldn't believe it.

"Drew, wasn't that pitch outside?" I asked him.

He paused a minute and looked at me like I should have

known better than to ask.

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The Men in Black

"Son," he said. "That's a Hall of Fame pitch. A Hall of Fame pitch."

In other words, he was telling me that Frank Tanana was

going to the Hall of Fame, and he was going to get calls like that

every time, no matter how obvious it was that I was right. When

Coble said that, I just laughed. He was a funny guy—maybe not

the best umpire in the league, but he tried his best, which was

all you could ask, and he was a great communicator. He was al-

ways making jokes, and some of them really busted you up.

That made it a lot easier to take when he made calls that drove

you crazy.

Every player has been on the wrong end of an umpire's re-

venge. They're a tight-knit group; they demand respect, and

they can make or break you on the field, the same way the media

can with the public. Generally I've gotten along with the um-

pires, but there were definitely times in my career when they

had it out for me.

Moises Alou got so frustrated during the 2004 season that he

broke one of the cardinal rules of baseball and complained in

public that the umpires were out to get him. Everyone ripped

him for that, and talked about how stupid it was for him to vent

his frustration. But it's not like he was just being paranoid. I'm

sure they were out to get him. I've seen it happen too many times.

Believe me, umpires are the most vengeful people you'll ever

meet, and if you ever make the mistake of getting on their bad

side, they will make your life miserable. I have no doubt that

Moises had a legitimate complaint, but I'm also sure that he'll

never live this down with the umpires. Whenever any umpire

anywhere gets a chance to make a call against him, he will. He

could be playing in the Northern League or Single-A and

they'll still stick it to him on general principle. That's how um-

pires think.

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J U I C E D

It's really the same in all sports, and people should expect no

less. The owners collude with each other in every sport, including

baseball, and the umpires or referees collude with each other in

their own way. This is nothing surprising. It's just basic human

nature that if you have power, the temptation will be strong to

abuse that power.

Fans would be amazed just how far some players—especially

pitchers, even the best of them—will go to try to stay on the

good side of umpires. Roger Clemens, who's a lock for the Hall

of Fame, was always very conscientious about taking care of

umpiring crews. One thing he would do was use his pull to get

them on the best golf courses. I know, because Roger and I used

to play golf together a lot of the time when we were teammates

with the Red Sox, so I was out there with him. He always made

sure the umps got a good starting time at courses like Blue Hill

Country Club in Canton, Massachusetts.

I'm sure that if you look at these pitchers who consistently get

wide strike zones, you'd see that they're generally the same guys

who take care of the umpires off the field. They're the ones who

do them little favors—get them into exclusive golf courses,

reservations at the best restaurants. Some players are constantly

signing bats and balls for them, taking pictures with their

kids—even sending them Christmas gifts, like sporting equip-

ment ordered directly from whichever company they have an

endorsement deal with.

None of that is supposed to be done, but to those of us on the

inside it's obvious when players are angling for favorable treat-

ment. I remember one umpire who used to have these charity

events where a lot of players would come and sign for free. Peo-

ple found he was pocketing a lot of the money, but what could

you do? Believe me, if as an athlete, you don't do charity events

for umpires, they start opening up the strike zone on you as a

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The Men in Black

hitter. So the more favors you can do for them, the more breaks

you'll get.

I remember one time in Texas I had a big run-in with Joe

Brinkman, who was one of the toughest, most unfair umpires

out there. He was always mad, just bristling with anger, and

you couldn't approach him at all. He had to be the biggest

hardass I've ever met in my life, and finally in this one game we

got into a huge fracas and he just ripped into me, attacking me

personally.

"Nobody out here likes you anyway," he screamed at me.

Then after the game—that very same game—he asked me to

sign some autographs for his family. Incredible. I signed a cou-

ple baseballs and a picture or two for him, and chalked it up to

experience.

The nicest, and most widely respected, umpire I ever met

was Dave Phillips. Dave was present at some of baseball's

biggest controversies over the years—he was there for Disco

Demolition Night at Comiskey Park, and Gaylord Perry's ejec-

tion for throwing a spitball, and the whole pine tar thing with

George Brett—but he was always level-headed and profes-

sional and called a very good game. Of all the umpires, he was

the one I thought most highly of, and I think most players felt

the same. He understood that baseball was a very emotional

game and players were going to make mistakes every once in a

while and question a call in the heat of passion. But he never let

emotion get in the way of his calls, and he never held it against

the players.

If I were going to offer umpires any advice, the first thing I'd

mention would be: The most important factor to understand is

the pressure players are under. Anything can happen in the heat

of a moment, and whatever you say, umpires need to know that

you probably don't mean it. Still, if you say something to the

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J U I C E D

media about an umpire, they're going to remember it for a

long, long time. I wish we could all try to leave grudges out of

it. You can't intentionally make a bad call against a player be-

cause you don't like his race or you don't like him, but believe

me, that happens every day during the baseball season.

On this front, I think the major leagues could take a lesson

from the minors. I never had one problem with an umpire in

the minor leagues. Those umps were very consistent. Why was

that? Simple: They were trying to do the best job they could,

because they all wanted to advance to the major leagues. If

you're inconsistent in the minor leagues, you won't move up,

so they try to do the best job possible. Once an ump's pro-

moted to the big leagues, on the other hand, there's nowhere

else to go; he loses the incentive to be the best he can, and starts

doing whatever he wants. Thanks to the umpires union, an

ump has a job until he dies, no matter how bad he might be.

No player gets that kind of security; why should an umpire?

So through the years, when it's been the right thing to do,

I've stood with the umpires. But now that there's an effort

emerging to reevaluate major-league umpires, I support that,

too. You can't just let them run amok. There's got to be a way to

keep things honest.

164

Steroid use is a topic of conversation daily among

players. A lot of guys who don't do it are frustrated.

CURT SCHILLING,

June 2002

If not for the strike, I'm sure that the 1994 Texas Rangers

X would have finished strong, and with me as their offensive

leader, they would have come back in 1995 ready to take one

more step toward trying to win a World Series. Instead, after

that chance was ripped out of our hands in 1994, the Rangers

decided to go in another direction and traded me to Boston,

where I had a couple of good seasons—which would have been

a lot better if not for a series of annoying injuries. Over those

two seasons, I played in fewer than 200 games; the fifty-two

homers and 163 RBIs I clocked were good for the number of at-

bats I had, but far from satisfying to me.

By that stage of my career, all the sportswriters thought they

had me figured as a classic example of a player who would have

been great if not for all the steroids I'd taken, and the injuries

that they believed the steroids caused. In fact, they had it ex-

actly backward. I would never have been a major-league caliber

player without the steroids. I wouldn't have been capable of

playing Softball in a beer league—not with my health being

what it was. Over the years I've been diagnosed by my doctors

with arthritis, scoliosis, degenerative disc disease, you name it. I

truly believe I would be in a wheelchair today if steroids hadn't

been available to me. I needed steroids and growth hormone

just to live. The only reason I was able to play baseball for so

many years was that the steroids and growth hormone allowed

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J U I C E D

me to build the right muscle structure to hold up my frame,

and to recuperate fast enough after my injuries. I knew all along

that it was about more than just gaining weight and being big-

ger, stronger, faster. It was about building a more potent body.

Before the 1997 season, the Oakland A's decided to take an-

other chance on me, and made a trade with Boston to bring me

back to the Bay Area and reunite me with Mark McGwire. The

A's were going through another down period in those years, and

they were hoping that news of the Bash Brothers playing to-

gether again might generate some fan interest. It did, too. As

soon as fans heard about my return to the Bay Area, off-season

ticket sales jumped to their highest level in three years. There

was some speculation that Mark would feel weird about having

me back, since I had a way of grabbing all the attention for my-

self, but actually he seemed glad to have me on the team again if

it meant he would get more decent pitches to hit.

"Life hasn't been easy for him," Mark said of me at the time.

"His child has made him a better person. I think it's going to be

great this time around."

But that year I witnessed what was almost the definitive case

study in the difference between the careful, controlled use of

steroids I've always advocated and sheer recklessness. I'm talk-

ing, of course, about Jason Giambi, who became my teammate

that year. As surely as he went overboard with partying and

chasing women, Giambi went overboard with steroids. He be-

came the single most vocal, outright juicer in the game, and no-

body cared. He was a fun-loving guy, a party animal, and

people loved him, especially since he was hitting and helping

the team. The man could party like you wouldn't believe, but he

got the job done at the ballpark.

Giambi had the most obvious steroid physique I've ever seen

in my life. He was so bloated, it was unbelievable. There was no

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Giambi, the Most Obvious Juicer in the Game

definition to his body at all. You could see the retention of liq-

uids, especially in his neck and face; to those in the know, that

was a sure sign of steroid overload, plus drinking a lot and hav-

ing a bad diet. Combine that, and you end up with that chubby,

thick, bloated look. You could literally put your finger on his

skin and see the water under there as it indented and then filled

in. That's not muscle! More dead giveaways: the color of his

skin, and the reddish pimples.

It was clear to me from watching him that Giambi got

turned on to steroids while he was under Mark McGwire's

wing. In 1996, the previous year and Giambi's rookie season,

those two had become inseparable, spending a lot of time to-

gether away from the ballpark. McGwire was like Giambi's big

brother; he took him under his wing and taught him every-

thing he knew about baseball, which was a lot. Giambi looked

up to Mark. He would do anything Mark would do. At times,

he would actually mimic him. Mark taught him the finer

points of the game, about how to conduct yourself on the field

and off. And given how much I'd been spreading the word

about steroids, it was no surprise when I saw Giambi start to

bulk up, too.

As soon as I rejoined the team for the 1997 season, I was

amazed to see how open and casual those two were about

steroids. Sometimes, the three of us would go into the bathrooms

stalls together to shoot up steroids or growth hormone. I would

inject myself, and Giambi and McGwire would be one stall over,

injecting each other. Other times, I preferred to inject myself at

home, but those two always did it at the ballpark, because it was

easier that way and they knew they had nothing to worry about.

Plus, they were having all kinds of fun injecting.

The three of us talked about steroids all the time that year,

right in front of everybody. "My God, your veins are incredible—

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J U I C E D

what are you using?" Giambi might ask me, right out on the

field during stretching or batting practice.

"Same stuff you're using," I'd say. "Deca and Winstrol."

"Wow, you've got the biggest arms," Giambi would say.

"Look at McGwire," I'd point out. "He's got the biggest arms here! Look at them! They're enormous!"

Or we might ask each other practical questions—especially

Giambi, who was getting an education in steroids from McGwire

and me that year.

"What dosage do you take?" he'd ask, just before taking his

swings in the batting cage. "Are you due for a shot?" he might ask.

A lot of times, he wasn't really curious about the answer, he

was just enjoying talking and thinking about steroids, about what

they could do for his physique and his numbers. This was light

conversation, and we never bothered to stop unless a reporter

was around. By 1997, in front of anyone but the media, it was

completely accepted that we would talk openly about steroids.

Before too long, it seemed like everybody was doing it. The

bathroom stalls were the laboratory, and players would inject

themselves right there. Everyone knew why you were going in

there; they'd see two guys going into a stall together, and make

cracks.

"What are you guys, fags?" they would joke.

But they knew we were going in to inject each other. It was

as commonly accepted as getting a cup of coffee or a drink of

water.

I remember instances where a guy had his syringe and a bot-

tle of steroids in his coat pocket because we were going to travel

that day. When the guy put on his coat, a needle and a vial would

all fall out, and it was no big deal.

"Who does this belong to?" someone would ask.

It wasn't as if the player had to hide what he was doing.

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Giambi, the Most Obvious Juicer in the Game

"Oh, yeah, it's mine," he would say, and get it back, and that

would be that.

The things guys would say during a game were another

telltale sign. A pitcher might put the ball right in on your

hands and break your bat, but you were so strong, you'd still

take a powerful enough swing to send the ball sailing into shal-

low center field for a single. "How can we compete against

this?" a pitcher would yell out from the mound, adding in a

few swear words, and everyone from the base coaches to the

other players to the umpires would know just what he meant

by "this."

A lot of guys would carry their steroids around with them in

a little black shaving bag. A complete kit would include clean sy-

ringes, vials of the different types of steroids and growth hor-

mone they were injecting, and cotton swabs and alcohol,

because we were always very careful about using proper tech-

nique. If you swabbed with alcohol every single time you in-

jected and never used the same needle twice, there was no

reason to expect any problem with infection.

Giambi was one guy who just tossed his little black shaving

bag into his suitcase and brought all his steroid paraphernalia

on the road with him.

Holy shit! I said when I saw how casual he and the other guys

were about traveling with their steroids. I never brought steroids

with me on the road, unless they were in pill form, which were

easy to hide anywhere. But Giambi and some of the other guys

would bring them in their suitcases—needles, vials, and all. I

was thinking, "What if they inspect our bags?" But we always

had charter flights, and we would go straight from the ballpark

to the charter, fly to the next city, and then from the charter

straight to the hotel. They loaded the bags right onto the team

bus, no questions asked.

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J U I C E D

The world of baseball is like a closed society, with its own

rules and structures and rituals, not really that different from

one of those strange secret fraternities like Skull and Bones at

Yale, the one that included both George W. Bush and John Kerry

as members. One of the fundamental rules of baseball is that

certain players were untouchables—and over time those players

learned to use that power to the advantage of other players, too.

Mark McGwire was still one of the chosen ones, so that

meant that Jason Giambi was protected, too. Everybody in the

game knew that Giambi had been molded by McGwire, and

whatever McGwire wants, he gets. With McGwire at his back,

Giambi was as good as gold—from the owners to the media.

Did you ever open the newspaper and see a headline like, GIAMBI

SEEN IN NIGHTCLUB WITH 3 OR 4 GIRLS? No, because the media

wouldn't touch him. (At least, not back then.)

It's impossible to measure how much steroids can help you,

since each individual is different and steroids can have varying

effects on different body types. But it's clear that steroids and

growth hormone turned Jason Giambi into a completely differ-

ent ballplayer. When he was starting out, it seemed to me that he

was an average player with average ability. Look at his brother,

Jeremy: He was a below-average player with below-average abil-

ity. Then all of a sudden Jason bolted out of the gate.

Giambi was a doubles hitter when he first came up. Then, as

he got so much bigger, he started hitting a lot more home runs.

But he paid for that transformation. Over the months and years,

you could see that he was overdoing testosterone, which is a re-

taining agent. He didn't seem to realize that a baseball player

should only be taking a low dosage of testosterone, and balance

it with a ripping agent, like Winstrol or Deca or Equipoise. So

instead of looking like a baseball player, he looked more like a

professional wrestler.

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Giambi, the Most Obvious Juicer in the Game

To players who watched Jason Giambi up close, he was always

an amazing character. Before he got engaged, he was an astonish-

ing ladies' man, in a whole different league from most ballplay-

ers. But he was always a real nice guy, happy-go-lucky, and as

long as he got to the ballpark on time and performed, nobody

seemed to care what he did with his night life.

Today, though, times have changed. I used to be the poster

boy for steroids in baseball, but today I'd have to say the new

poster boy is Jason Giambi. Before you know it, there may be a

new sacrificial lamb, a new flavor of the month.

Today, these players may seem like pariahs. But don't be too

surprised if some day we look back on some of them as pioneers.

173

It's no secret what's going on in baseball. At least half

the guys are [on steroids].

KEN C A M I N I T I

In that same 1997 season, Miguel Tejada made his major-

league debut with the A's. As I got to know him a little bit, I

started giving him advice about steroids, and he seemed inter-

ested in what I was saying. Tejada and I had a secret weapon: We

could speak in Spanish, which made it easier to talk about what-

ever he wanted, even if reporters were around. I met him in

spring training, but I injured myself in August right around the

time he was called up from Double-A to make his major-league

debut, so we never had a chance to talk as much as I would have

liked. But it was obvious to me why he was so interested in

steroids: Basic economics.

Back when I was starting out in baseball, I played with and

against some older players who used to spend their off-seasons

working in warehouses, as security guards, or in other odd jobs.

Baseball didn't pay them enough back then even to take the win-

ter off. That had changed by the time I came along, but not as

dramatically as you might think.

In my rookie year, 1986, I made $60,000. The next year I

made $180,000. My third year it was $325,000. I had hit thirty

home runs for three straight years; I'd even been a Rookie of the

Year. Nowadays, if they came across that kind of talent, they

would probably be happy to hand someone a ten-year, $100

million contract. But I didn't start earning really serious money

until after I was the unanimous choice for the American League

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most valuable player in 1988, my 40-40 breakthrough year. The

A's knew they would have to come through, and in June 1990 I

signed a five-year deal with Oakland for a total of $23.5 mil-

lion—at the time, the biggest contract ever for a baseball player.

(Up to that point, the largest such contract had been for four

years, $12 million.)

If you compare the baseball player of today with the players

of twenty years ago, you'll find that now they are bigger, faster,

and stronger. The reason for that is simple: Competition is

fierce, the money is unbelievable, and a majority of the players

have been using steroids. Today, you can get $5 million out of

college. Organizations are willing to lock you up for five years

after your first good year or two. Back then, you had to prove

yourself, go through arbitration and free agency, just to make it

at all.

Young players coming up today are looking at a completely

different economic picture. Let's say you're a talented young

player from an impoverished area of Puerto Rico or the Do-

minican Republic. And let's say you realize that, if you can put

together back-to-back good seasons with strong home-run to-

tals, you can realistically set up your family and yourself for the

rest of your life with a $40 or $50 million contract.

There's only one catch: To score that big paycheck, to set up

your family and become one of the richest people in your coun-

try or on your island, you're going to need to guarantee that per-

formance—and the only way to ensure that is to make the most

of the opportunity presented by steroids and growth hormone.

Put it that way, and I don't see any young kid turning it down.

Would you? Would you really?

We know so much more about steroids now than we did even

a decade ago. Today is nothing like the 1970s, when those scien-

tists in East Germany were experimenting on women swimmers

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and other athletes with huge doses of steroids, having no idea

what they were doing or what would happen to the women.

Many of those East German swimmers have been left with

major health problems, including giving birth to children with

club feet and other defects. Worse yet, those women were never

given a choice.

We've come a long way since then. We know enough now to

be experts on the many ways of doing steroids properly, and su-

pervising steroid use to make sure you're doing it safely. We have

removed most of the question marks, and substituted reliable

information about what to do and what not to do to achieve the

result you want. I can't emphasize this enough: If you are going

to use steroids, you have to use them properly. You can only use

them under close supervision. You need to make sure you know

what you're doing. This is nothing to mess around with: Steroids

can hurt you, and I am the first one to say so. If you abuse

steroids, they can be very harmful. That's why using them only

in a careful, controlled way is so important. It takes education,

personal discipline, and common sense. But if you've got all

those things going for you, you never have to turn out like a

Jason Giambi, or worse.

There are a lot of positive things about steroids and growth

hormones that most people don't know. They were invented to

help people with muscle growth and strength. There is obvi-

ously an advantage to athletes using steroids, especially in

football, because football is a sport that emphasizes weight,

mass, and speed, whereas in baseball, you need hand-eye coor-

dination and quick-muscle-twitch fiber, depth perception,

and so forth.

If you can incorporate all of that with mass and speed, then

you have a winning combination. Despite the lingering fear

of steroids, I believe that the era we are now entering, when

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developments like cloning and gene therapy are becoming a

reality, will also see steroids be declassified from the same cat-

egory as damaging drugs like cocaine.

If you do steroids properly for long enough and know what

you're doing, the powers you gain can feel almost superhuman.

Besides the boost to your strength and confidence level, you

start running faster. Your hand-eye coordination and muscle-

twitch fibers get faster. Your bat speed increases. You feel more

powerful, and you can use a heavier bat without sacrificing any

bat speed, which is the most important thing.

Bat speed is obviously the key to baseball. You never want to

lose bat speed, but you also want to use as big a bat as you can.

As you get stronger, you can use a bat with more ounces, and

that's devastating for pitchers, because when you have a larger

mass hitting a smaller mass, the larger mass always wins.

But the added strength isn't even the most important benefit

for a baseball player. No, what makes even more of a difference

in terms of performance is the added stamina it gives you all year

round. On the last day of the season, you have the same strength

and feel as strong as you did the first day of spring training.

That's all-important over the course of the six weeks of spring

training and then the long line of regular-season games that fol-

low. Players who aren't using steroids inevitably get tired and

lose strength from month to month. It gets harder and harder to

maintain your level of performance as the season goes on.

Baseball players have an advantage over a lot of other athletes

when it comes to steroids, because they're not trying to get to

300 or 350 pounds, the way some wrestlers or football players

do. Most baseball players use steroids the way they are supposed

to be used.

It's pretty simple, really. You need more steroids to gain more

weight, so you inject more. But before you know it, you need to

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Baseball Economics 101

inject even more steroids to gain more weight. That's how it

works. After a while, the effect is nullified. Your receptors can

handle only so much testosterone, for instance, over a given pe-

riod of time. Anything beyond that is wasted, and worse, it can

endanger your liver, which needs enough time to filter all these

chemicals out of your body.

Think of steroids like alcohol: One or two drinks a day is

fine, but if you sit there and knock down twenty drinks a day,

your liver's going to turn on you. Your filtration system can

only cleanse so many liters of blood within a given period of

time. So when you're constantly poisoning your body, your

liver loses its ability to function efficiently, and you end up with

liver failure.

But that only happens with steroids when you are dealing

with unsupervised amounts. Every body is different. If you're

going to use steroids, it's critical that you go to a doctor and get

a total physical, to find out exactly what physical shape you are

in and how your body functions. You must have them analyze

your enzymes and your blood to make sure you don't have dia-

betes, any heart blockage, heart palpitations, or heart murmurs.

If you're in great physical condition to begin with, steroids are

going to help you. But if you've got physical problems, you have

to be careful. Using steroids could help you, but then again, they

could activate some dormant problem in your system and hurt

you. I don't believe steroids, or growth hormones, are for every-

one. But they can benefit many people if used properly. And, for

baseball players, there are very strong economic incentives to

getting that kind of a boost for your strength, power, endurance,

and ability to come back from injuries.

If you can maintain your peak stamina and strength over the

course of an entire season, that can easily mean a gain of

twenty or thirty home runs—which in turn can mean a $40

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million difference in your contract. For that matter, it could

mean the difference between having a job and not having a job.

It does make a huge difference. How many young players

would pass up a chance to make that much more money?

Let's get back to the example of Tejada, my former teammate

in Oakland. I can't say for sure whether he went on to do

steroids after we talked about it. But in the years that followed

he obviously pushed himself to an amazing performance

record. And what did he get in return? He signed a huge con-

tract with the Baltimore Orioles before the 2004 season, for

something like $72 million over six years. It was the biggest con-

tract in the history of that franchise. Those same economic real-

ities that have changed Miguel Tejada's life are what drive so

many other players toward using steroids today. And—testing or

no testing—many will continue to use them so long as the fi-

nancial payoff is so dramatic.

Today, Tejada has turned into one of the best players in the

game. But when I played with him, he was as raw as they come.

Keep in mind, this was a kid who might as well have been born

on a different planet. His parents lived in a little shantytown

called Bani in the Dominican Republic, forty miles outside of

the capital of Santo Domingo. Tejada's mother couldn't afford

to see a doctor while she was pregnant with him; she couldn't

even afford to take a break from her job until just before he was

born. He was the eighth kid in his family, and soon enough, like

all the others, Tejada was working to help the family survive. He

would shine shoes or move concrete blocks or any other odd

jobs he could find.

Do you want to tell me that a kid like that, growing up in such

a poverty-stricken family, wouldn't jump at a chance to help

them all out? For all I know, Miguel Tejada did it in the old fash-

ioned way. But could you blame a guy for taking steroids instead?

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Baseball Economics 101

Steroids used to be mysterious to most people, but those days

have passed. The simple truth is, it's not that hard to tell when

someone is using steroids. You just have to trust your eyes. If

someone adds a huge amount of muscle and does it quickly, you

know he's using steroids. There's just no other way to do it.

This might shock some people, but I have been amazed by

some young players who chose not to use steroids. They are the

exceptions. Take another young player from that 1997 Oakland

A's team: Ben Grieve, son of former Texas Rangers executive Tom

Grieve. Let me tell you, Ben Grieve was a kid who needed to take

steroids. He had a slow bat, slow feet, and average ability. The A's

actually drafted him in the first round in 1994, but that was seen

by many of us as a matter of politics, a favor to his father.

Ben always seemed physically weak to me—and you know,

when you're a physically weak player competing against a lot of

big, strong guys, that has to play havoc with your mind, your

confidence, and your performance. Just look at Grieve's stats:

He hit .264 in 2001, playing for Tampa Bay. The next season he

finished with a batting average of .251. The next year it was .230.

And have you seen him play the outfield? He has a slow bat, no

hand speed, no power, nothing. He's taking up a roster spot

some kid could definitely use.

So I don't believe Ben Grieve had the ability to play at the major

league level. But after he was given that opportunity, I could have

taken Grieve and turned him into a stud. He would have been the

perfect kid to benefit from the combination of steroids and

growth hormone. If I'd had the chance to work with him for four

months, I could have turned him into a power hitting machine.

You work on the quick muscle-twitch fiber. You work on putting

on weight in the right areas. You work on his strength. If I'd gotten

to him early, worked on him physically, and put him on the right

diet, you would have seen a 50 percent improvement from him.

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Tejada always had talent, and he had a good throwing arm

from the first time I saw him at spring training in 1997. But his

numbers tell a story, too. That first year, when we were team-

mates, he was only with the A's long enough to play in twenty-

six games—which tells you something right there. He hit all of

.202 in those ninety-nine at-bats that year. The next year he

played in more than 100 games and hit .233. Now look ahead a

few years to 2002, the season he ended up as American League

MVP. That was the first season he hit better than .275. It took

him that long.

Tejada finished with good numbers, batting .308, good power

numbers, thirty-four homers, and 131 runs batted in. He wasn't

a unanimous pick for MVP, the way I'd been, but it was pretty

close. Tejada had to wait out one more year in Oakland where

the owner, Steve Schott, came right out and said he was too

cheap to pay him enough to keep him with the A's, and then he

got his big payday.

It's amazing to me to look at Tejada now, because I remember

seeing him when he was a skinny rookie. A few years later, he

pumped up like a balloon. I remember one year he came in re-

ally big after the off-season and I was almost laughing the first

time I got a look at him.

"What the hell is that?" I said.

It looked kind of funny, but when you're already talented,

the way he was, why not add to the package? He gained some

strength, some more power, and all of a sudden his numbers

were way up there. His new pumped-up body helped him

move up to become one of the top three shortstops in the

major leagues, along with Alex Rodriguez and Nomar Garcia-

parra, before Alex changed positions when he was traded to

the New York Yankees. I don't put Derek Jeter in that top

group, but I'm impressed by how he became such a first-rate

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Baseball Economics 101

player without using steroids. And if he'd used steroids he'd be

even better.

Tejada set himself up—himself and his family back home in

the Dominican Republic. All he had to do was make himself

bigger and stronger, and for Tejada that paid off. Some people,

like me, have done so by using steroids. That might sound like

some kind of pact with the devil. But I'd call that a good busi-

ness decision, and a good life decision.

185

If anything, I have more of a temper than Jose. He just

walks away from the situation if we're arguing. I think

his first wife knows that and I know that, but

everybody else believes what they want to believe.

JESSICA CANSECO,

Sports Illustrated, 1999

Jessica and I had our share of disagreements, as I've said.

Like me, she's a strong personality, and when you put two

strong personalities together, chances are good that some

sparks are going to fly. For that matter, I haven't always han-

dled myself well. Back in November 1997, after I spent that

one season back with the A's, Jessica and I started arguing

while we were in a friend's car. She was in the passenger seat, I

was in the back, and when I couldn't get her attention any

other way, I pulled her hair. The whole thing got out of hand

from there, and by the time we got back to her place we were

having a serious argument.

Just to scare me, Jessica locked the security gates at her house

so I couldn't get out, and then called the police. That started a

whole legal process. But that was an isolated incident, and I

don't think it was fair to label me a wife-beater, the way the

media did, because of one incident. I've actually heard people

chant that at games: Wife beater! Wife beater! Maybe those fans

assumed that because I was a big, muscular guy, I was some kind

of robot, but I'm not—and it hurt. The same thing goes for the

media, which wrote some pretty awful, and unfair, things about

me after that incident with Jessica.

Around that time, we decided to separate. Nothing was ever

very clear, but eventually, after talking about it a few times, we

said," Yeah, let's try to spend some time apart and see how it goes."

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I agreed to it, even though I think we still loved each other, and

I was sure we would end up back together.

Throughout that time, though, we still talked a lot. One day I

was trying to reach her on the phone, but I couldn't. That

seemed odd, so I had a friend of mine who works for one of the

airlines look into it for me. He gave me a call at my house in Wes-

ton, Florida, and he seemed worried about coming right out and

giving me the news.

"Where is she?" I asked him.

"Jose, you're not going to like this." he said.

"Where is she?" I asked again.

"Kansas City," he said.

"Kansas City?!" I said.

"Kansas City," he said.

I knew what that meant. She'd flown to Kansas City to be

with Tony Gonzalez, the Kansas City Chiefs' tight end. Tony was

a great athlete, and played both football and basketball back in

college. I had a lot of respect for him. But I couldn't believe this

was happening. This was the first time I'd ever gone through

something like this, and it had me in total shock. I couldn't

think of anything to do but keep trying to reach Jessica on her

cell phone.

Finally, she answered.

"Where are you?" I asked her.

She didn't say anything.

"Jessica, where are you?"

"Well..." she started to say, but then stopped.

"I know where you are," I told her. "I tracked you to Kansas City. I know you're with Tony."

For a while, she didn't seem to know what to say.

"That's right," she said finally. "I am with Tony."

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The Night My Daughter Saved My Life

I held the phone in my hand, but I couldn't have formed

words if I'd wanted to. Finally, I just put the phone down and

started walking toward my closet. I'll never forget that night. It

felt like someone had just ripped my heart out. It was such a

strange feeling.

You know, when you're in a period of separation, you suspect

things. But you can go a long time without ever getting confir-

mation. Sure, maybe a hint here or there—but not the kind

that's sitting there in front of you, staring at you: Yes, it is what it is. Now live with it. Then, when that confirmation finally comes, you feel the worst kind of sinking feeling: You're in love with a

woman, and all of a sudden she's with another man. Or, in my

case, another athlete.

There's no description for that kind of pain. It hits you all at

once and overwhelms you. It feels impossible that one man

could endure that much pain. It doesn't help to ask yourself

questions, but you do anyway: What happened here? What could

explain this? What should I have done differently?

To make matters worse, this came at a time when I was al-

ready depressed about baseball. No matter what I did in the

game, no matter what I accomplished or how I played, it seemed

I could never fill the shoes that had been laid out for me. I could

never live up to the expectations the fans had built up for me. I

would never get them to like me.

All I ever wanted to hear were those words:

Jose Canseco, the All-American hoy. Jose, the national icon.

Let's be honest: That's what everybody wants, isn't it? Doesn't

everybody dream of being a household name, known by every-

one, respected by all? Doesn't everyone think about being recog-

nized wherever you go, watching people tap each other on the

shoulder to say, "Look, isn't that him?!"

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I was famous enough to be all over the place in the media: on

magazine covers, in episodes of The Simpsons. But I don't feel I

was ever truly accepted. They always depicted me as the out-

sider, the outlaw, the villain. I was never ushered into that spe-

cial club of all-American sports stars, which is reserved for guys

like Mark McGwire or Jason Giambi or Cal Ripken Jr.

After all, I was dark. I was born in Cuba. I would never be al-

lowed to feel I really belonged. I saw this from the beginning

with the way they pitted McGwire and me against each other

during my first run with the A's, but after I returned to the team

in 1997 and saw the special treatment he was getting by then, it

really hit home for me. I realized for the first time that I would

never, ever become the all-American sports hero.

It was over before it even began: That was the thing I came to

realize. No matter what I did—the MVP, the 40-40—it didn't

matter. I could never make the fans happy enough for them to

view me the way I wanted to be viewed.

Who wouldn't be depressed, facing up to that?

And then, on top of it all, I found out about Jessica and Tony.

I didn't even want to think about it or analyze it. I just knew

what I had to do. I walked over to my closet in the bedroom of

that big house in Weston and pulled out a gun.

This wasn't just any gun, it was something called a Street

Sweeper, which is a type of a machine gun. I don't have it any

more, obviously. It's actually a barrel with twelve shotgun

shells in it; the back of it pulls out, like a machine gun. What-

ever it hits, it's going to destroy. All it takes is one shot. I used to

use that thing when we would go deep-sea fishing; if we caught

a shark, I'd shoot the hell out of it with the Street Sweeper.

But that night I wasn't thinking about shooting any sharks. I

pulled the gun out of the closet, and carried it with me in one

hand back toward the bed. The next step would be to lie down

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The Night My Daughter Saved My Life

there and shoot myself. It was all happening spontaneously. I

didn't give a second's thought to writing a note, or to the conse-

quences of such an act. I just felt I had only one choice left.

But before I could get that far, something very strange happened.

From somewhere indistinct nearby, I heard my daughter

make a kind of strange sound, a little squeal, a quiet cry. What-

ever I heard, or thought I heard, it snapped me out of a trance; it

distracted me from what I was doing. I put the gun down and

walked through the hall to go to my daughter's room to see if

she was all right.

What happened? I was wondering: Why would she make that

strange noise?

But here's the eerie thing: That house in Weston was enor-

mous, roughly 22,000 square feet. The main part of the house

alone was 13,000. You could shout, and it wouldn't even travel

halfway across the house. The master bedroom was at one cor-

ner; my daughter's room was way down at the far corner of the

house. And her door was shut. So there was no way on this earth

that I could have heard my daughter make that sound. It was

just not humanly possible.

Something had decided that it wasn't my time yet.

When I looked into her room, of course, she was fast asleep.

She was just a baby, still not a year old. I lifted her up on my

chest, and she stayed asleep the whole time. We walked down

that long, long hallway together; then I got into bed and put her

right on top of my chest. I could hear her heart beating, slow

and regular. I knew she was sleeping deeply and peacefully. And

it was as if I absorbed some of that sense of peace from her that

day. I knew I could never leave her. That was the night my

daughter saved my life.

Before the night ended, the phone rang a few times. It was

Jessica, trying to reach me. But eventually I just took the phone

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off the hook, and lay there with Josie on my chest, letting my

mind go. But my thoughts were about my daughter, not about

the situation. Finally, after a long time, I fell asleep.

The next day I spoke with Jessica, and she said she was coming

back. She wanted us to get back together. She kept telling me she

couldn't believe she had gone up to Kansas City to see Tony. It was

one of those things: They had met and talked a few times, and

she'd decided to fly up to see him. Jessica and I were separated,

but only recently, and I never thought she would all of a sudden

take up with an athlete. Today I'm no longer bothered by the

whole thing, but back then it was a new and fresh shock for me.

Tony and I talked that day, too—just a brief conversation, no

hostility, no anger. I never get like that. I have absolute respect

for all athletes. Hell, it wasn't Tony's fault. A beautiful girl like

Jessica? What guy wouldn't jump at a chance with her? Plus, I

had to admit, Jessica and I weren't really together. But in my

mind and my heart we still were.

Jessica and I tried to make it work again after that, but we've

never been able to. We've been back and forth so many times, I

can't even count. But the thing that never changes is we always

have Josie in common, and nothing is as important to me as my

daughter. That's a strong bond.

Playing baseball takes a lot of time, but especially in the off

season, you can spend a lot of time with your daughter, and I

was always around. Jessica and I experienced so many amazing

moments together with Josie—like when she first started talk-

ing. People always talk about a kid's first words, as if there were

one magical moment. But it's never a word, it's more like a series

of sounds that transcend into something else—a little bit of

baby music, and suddenly she's spitting out a word.

Unlike me, Josie has always had a ton of personality. You can

tell if kids are going to be dominating or bashful, and I was a

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The Night My Daughter Saved My Life

very shy kid. Not my daughter. She's a rascal now, boy. She loves

the camera, and people, and being out front and taking over. For

a grown-up shy kid like me, it's amazing to watch. The older she

gets, the more she develops her own personality, especially now,

at the age of eight. I like just sitting there watching her. I can

spend hours with her, watching her facial expressions; she's so

smart, always trying to trick Dad into giving her an extra candy,

or playing video games with her a little longer. Kids are so

smart; they learn so fast, it's just incredible. All you can do is

watch closely. If she does something wrong, you want to be firm

with her and teach her the right way, but at the same time, in the

back of your mind, you're thinking, "Wow, she's so smart. Man,

look how cute she is!"

But you can't just go gaga on them all the time—because

they'll spot your weakness every time. You can't let them see

you're really smiling, because then they know: Okay, I got Daddy

now. She definitely has me in the palm of her hand. I take her to the movies, to the arcade; she's very athletic, so I take her golfing

and bowling. We play softball together. She's old enough for ten-

nis now, so I want to start getting her into tennis.

A little while back, Jessica had a casting call for Target,

which was looking for a model for a national TV commercial.

But she didn't have a babysitter lined up for that day, so she

took Josie along with her. For a few years, people had been

telling Jessica and me that Josie should be a model; we'd even

been approached by talent scouts for modeling agencies.

"Wow, you have a beautiful daughter," they would say. "Is she interested in modeling?" We always said no, figuring that Josie

was too young for that.

But last summer, Jessica and I had begun talking more seri-

ously about letting Josie try a little modeling, since we knew she

would enjoy it. Then, a few weeks after that, the Target casting

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came up. Jessica brought Josie along with her, and guess who got

the national commercial for Target?

My daughter's got beautiful green eyes, curly blonde hair—

and the personality to go with it. And—no surprise—that day

she got her first modeling job as well.

196

Ownership is looking the other way, even though there

are obvious users people constantly point to. When

something happens, there are going to be huge

liability suits.

R E G G I E JACKSON

T hat next season, I signed with the Toronto Blue Jays as a

free agent, and for the first time since the 1991 season I

stayed healthy enough to play in 150 games. I finished with 107

RBIs and a career-high of forty-six home runs. But, believe me,

no one was paying any attention at all to what I was doing. That

was the summer when everyone was hitting home runs, and

forty-six only ranked me third in the American League. Over in

the National League, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were the

biggest thing to hit baseball in years. They traded home runs all

summer long, battling it out to see who would take Roger

Maris's single-season record.

McGwire and Sosa brought the game of baseball back to life

that summer, pure and simple. They generated so much excite-

ment, so much interest, that the cloud that had been hanging

over baseball since the 1994 strike was finally lifted. People were

as excited about baseball as they had ever been, even going back

to the heyday of Babe Ruth and those guys.

And why? Because the owners had been smart enough not to

chase steroid use out of the game, allowing guys like McGwire

to make the most of steroids and growth hormone, turning

themselves into larger than life heroes in more ways than one.

The owners' attitude? As far as I could tell, Go ahead and do it.

And why not? The steroid spectacle was making money for

them. It brought the game back to life. Eventually they were

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J U I C E D

going to have to find a way to deal with steroids, but back then

they weren't worried about it. They weren't even testing. In-

stead, they gave players every reason to get bigger and stronger.

If the athlete did his part, jabbed himself in the butt with the

steroid needle, and grew stronger and tougher and better, the

owners did their part and wrote out the checks—which just

kept getting bigger all the time. Everybody was profiting, and

they never even had to answer difficult questions, since no one

wanted to ask them. There's a name for that kind of thing:

Good business.

Baseball had been in really serious trouble since the 1994

strike, and absolutely everyone knew it, from fans to players to

sportswriters to owners. The sport was on a downhill slide, and

had no idea how to right itself. People thought it needed a shot

in the arm. In the end, though, what it took was a shot some-

where else.

That was the point in the history of the game when the

steroid revolution really exploded.

If the owners were asking themselves, How could we bring

baseball back?, it seemed as though they finally hit on the simple answer: home runs. So how could you pump up the sport and

get an exciting home run race going? The players knew the an-

swer to that: steroids. I believe that the leadership of baseball

made a tacit decision not only to tolerate steroid use, but actu-

ally to pretend it didn't exist among baseball players, even as it

was making the sport more popular with the public. They obvi-

ously knew what they were doing, too. Baseball has been on a

roll ever since.

If the owners want to evade responsibility for their part in the

steroid revolution now, let them try. I'm not going to name any ac-

tual owners; I don't want anyone picking up a phone and sending

a hit man after me. But let's put it this way: I know what they were

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Steroid Summer, the McGwire-Sosa Show, and the Fake Controversy over Andro?

thinking about players juicing up the game. They're good busi-

nessmen, and they made a business decision, pure and simple.

To see how successful their laissez-faire attitude toward

steroids was, just look at the summer of 1998 and how interest

in the game exploded. You heard it all the time that year: This

was just what baseball needed, the excitement of Mark McGwire

and Sammy Sosa both going after Maris's record in the same

year. The McGwire-Sosa contest was great for ratings, great for

attendance, and great for the viability of the game. That sum-

mer was everything the owners were hoping for.

McGwire had been a pretty big player back in Oakland, but

by the summer of 1998 he was huge—up around 280 pounds.

Balls that would have been fly-ball outs earlier in his career now

sailed over the fence for home runs. He hit forty-nine as a

rookie, so there was never any doubt that he was a natural slug-

ger—one of the greatest ever, if you ask me.

But it took a lot of injections to get him past Roger Maris

that summer.

I don't know Sammy Sosa personally, so I can't say for a fact

that he ever took steroids. But I remember thinking that his

transformation looked even more dramatic than Mark's. It

looked like he was trying to make up for lost time by bulking up

faster than McGwire ever had. He gained thirty pounds, just like

that, and got up to 260 so fast, you could see the bloating in his

face and neck. It seemed so obvious, it was a joke.

And the results ended up in the record books. Sammy had al-

ways been a big swinger, and when he connected, he could hit

the ball a long way. But through his first nine seasons in the

major leagues, only once did he hit forty homers in a season.

Then he started bulking up, and with his new body hit sixty-six

homers in 1998, sixty-three the next season, fifty the year after

that, and then sixty-four in 2001.

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J U I C E D

The summer of 1998, though, was the high-water mark for

steroids in baseball. At the time, I joked that so many guys went

rushing to hide their vials in the locker room when the media

showed up that it was like watching roaches scurrying for cover

after the lights go on.

By now, the players had grown bolder than ever talking about

their dosages among themselves. They would trade little details

constantly—from injection angles to how to dump your sy-

ringes after using them. This was no small thing: It's a felony to

carry a needle. Most players just slipped them back into their

bags until they'd saved up six or eight of them, and then got rid

of them all at once.

I think the players knew better than to dump syringes where

they lived. We'd find strategic ways to dispose of them some-

how—in Dumpsters or out-of-the-way trash bins. I'm not sure

about the other players, but I was always very careful to wipe my

fingerprints off the syringes, just in case there was a reporter

nosing around, pulling out syringes and wondering, "Hey, who

does this belong to?"

Sometimes, you just gave your used syringes to the club-

house attendants, who would put them all in a bag and toss

them out with the regular garbage. That's how easy it was—

like throwing away the big, greasy bag after a visit to Burger

King. You didn't want someone to spot you out near a Dump-

ster, even driving by in your car, because especially someone

like me, six foot four, 250, is going to tend to be recognized:

"Hey, there's Jose Canseco! What's he doing over there next to

that Dumpster?"

That constant awareness of reporters coming in to the club-

house, and the need to put away your stash, was what made it so

laughable in 1998, when this so called controversy erupted over

McGwire and androstenedione. A lot of people assumed that

202

Steroid Summer, the McGwire-Sosa Show, and the Fake Controversy over Andro?

because Mark McGwire was always shy and awkward talking to

people—especially to reporters and other media types—he was

kind of dumb. But just because Mark is quiet doesn't mean he's

not s m a r t . . . and to my mind the whole androstenedione con-

troversy showed just how clever he is.

Try to think about the question for a minute without jump-

ing to conclusions, the way everyone did back then. Mark

had been suspected of using steroids for a long, long time. No-

body ever came out and said it in the media, the way that they

had about me, because Mark was a white golden boy. Given

all that, Mark must have been worried about when his luck

would run out and his protected status would change. He

couldn't have helped wondering whether the roof would come

down on him, and everyone would know how much steroids

had to do with his success in baseball. He was a very private

person to start with; the idea of being unmasked must have

eaten away at him.

Think what it must have been like for him. The summer of

1998 was like a movie starring Mark and Sammy, and I'm sure

Mark wanted to protect himself in case anyone decided to try

to go public with what every player in baseball knew: that

McGwire was juiced. So here's what I think he did: He left a

bottle of andro in his locker, where he knew a reporter would

see it, and write about it. That's just what happened, and it was

a big distraction. You even had politicians in Washington, D.C.,

like Arizona Senator John McCain, calling for andro to be

controlled.

But this is where you need to stop and think. Androstene-

dione is a temporary testosterone booster. It boosts your own

testosterone level for about an hour, and then the effect goes

away. Use it right before a workout, and it may give you a little

pick-me-up. It may make your workout a little more intense.

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J U I C E D

But an hour later, the effect is gone. Steroids, on the other hand,

stay in your system for six to eight months at a time.

Mark was an experienced steroid user, as I know firsthand. His

physique speaks for itself. And he knows as well as I do that if

you're taking steroids, you don't need androstenedione. McGwire

using andro would have been like a hospital patient on morphine

asking for an aspirin. It just doesn't make any sense.

The andro story may have been a ploy, but if so it sure was

clever. There were two big advantages for Mark in having his

name associated with andro. One, it was a distraction from the

real issue, which was steroids: "Oh, he's taking this other thing,

and he got it over the counter. No wonder he's so strong." That

was enough to keep the media occupied that season, when he hit

seventy homers. Two, if he'd ever been required to take a steroid

test, and he failed, it would have been easy for him to say: That

was just the andro. I didn't do anything illegal.

Here's what I think: I don't believe Mark McGwire was even

taking andro. Why would he? That bottle of andro was just sit-

ting in his locker; that doesn't mean he actually used it. To me,

it seems more likely that the whole thing was an illusion. I'm

virtually certain that Mark created the andro controversy as a

distraction.

The one surprising thing was how well the setup worked.

204

Jose Canseco was the Typhoid Mary of steroids.

A N A N O N Y M O U S A G E N T

T he owners are going to be criticized for their complicity in

the steroid revolution, but should they be? It all depends

how you look at it. They knew they needed to take strong mea-

sures if they were going to re-ignite interest in their dying mul-

timillion-dollar industry. And they may not have been aware of

every last injection each of their players made.

But the owners knew something was afoot. They could see it

in the long list of shattered records, and in the long parade of

ripped-and-cut athletes they employed. Plenty of trainers knew

much, much more—I know that because I told them myself.

And the Major League Players Association knew what was going

on, there's no doubt in my mind. But up to that point steroid

use had been common without necessarily being widespread. It

was only after the strike that you saw everything starting to blow

way out of proportion.

And it didn't take an expert to recognize what was happening.

Here's one case everyone was puzzling over: Brady Anderson

hit thirteen home runs over the course of the whole 1993 sea-

son. The next year he finished with twelve; the year after that he

was up to sixteen. Over the course of three seasons, he squeaked

out a mere forty-one homers; it was clear to everyone what kind

of hitter he was—a leadoff guy with a little bit of pop, not much

more than that.

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J U I C E D

Then what happened? In 1996, he came back and hit an even

fifty home runs.

Was he using steroids? I never saw him inject himself, but

he and I discussed steroids many times. And consider this: How

else could someone go from hitting a total of forty-one home

runs over three seasons to cranking out fifty in one, without a

major boost from steroids? The following year, Brady was back

down to eighteen homers for the season; the year after that, he

finished with the same number. Was it a fluke? Or, as Jim Palmer

has suggested, was Anderson's '96 season influenced by steroid

use? You be the judge.

(And while we're at it, let me put to rest is this whole notion

that the huge increase in home runs we've seen in recent years

can be explained by higher compression baseballs. I think we all

know that it's the players who were juiced, not the balls. Sure,

there were other factors besides steroids—Major League Base-

ball now uses better bats, made of stronger wood, than it used

to, and I'm sure that has made a contribution to the home-run

totals. But mostly it had to do with having stronger, more con-

sistent hitters, with quicker reflexes, who were able to maintain

that strength throughout an entire season.)

You can ask Brady Anderson about the advice I gave him. For

that matter, you can ask plenty of players the same question—

and if you find one who's willing to be honest, they'll confirm

it for you. I was the player who made it acceptable for others to

do steroids—because after a while it was clear the owners were

leaving the door open for me to educate them, no questions

asked.

I never minded helping others get bigger and stronger, even

though I knew that someday I might be competing with some

of these same guys for a spot on a team. I enjoyed helping

them tap their own potential to try to become better players.

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The Godfather of Steroids

You may wonder why I would share my secret weapon so

openly.

Looking back, I don't think it was entirely selfless: The truth

is that I never really had the greatest self-confidence, and I

think I was always trying to help people, in a quest to win their

approval. Even after I reached the big leagues, after all, I was

still a pretty quiet and shy guy. Of course, that wasn't always the

picture you got from the media. When you come into some

money as a famous athlete, it's easy for people to develop an at-

titude about you, and there are an awful lot of reporters out

there who called me arrogant. And yet I think most people who

met me and talked to me came away saying, "Oh, he's just a big

teddy bear."

The steroid strategy worked great for baseball, at least for a

few years. But then what happened? The owners became victims

of their own success. They brought baseball back, but the new

excitement over the game had the inevitable effect. Salaries

climbed up and up and up, to monstrous new levels. With it

came the constant threat that the players' open secret about

steroids would be exposed. And that was when they decided to

change tactics.

That was when they told me, in effect: Go away and be quiet.

We don't want you.

The owners realized that they needed to put the kibosh on

steroid use, or at least pretend to. So they decided to send a

loud message to all players, by getting rid of the player most

closely identified with steroids: Jose Canseco. I was only

thirty-eight home runs short of five hundred for my career,

but at thirty-seven years old, I was out of the game. I could

have been the worst player in the world and still hit those last

thirty-eight home runs before my time was up. But they took

that chance away from me, because they wanted to send the

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J U I C E D

world a message that steroids had gotten out of control. They

made an example of me. The players all knew it. And when I

confronted Donald Fehr with my problem, he did nothing

about it.

The baseball industry needed to cover its tracks, and that

meant shutting me up. I knew way too much about the inner

workings of the steroid era. I knew it had gotten to the point

where a number of team trainers, weight-lifting coaches, and

other on-field medical personnel were able to recommend spe-

cific steroid programs to major-league players. I was friends

with some of these personnel, and we'd discussed a variety of is-

sues concerning steroids and what using steroids can do for an

athlete. I explained to them how their players could benefit, es-

pecially players who were on the disabled list.

The disabled list, or DL, was the key to the whole thing. Obvi-

ously it costs an organization money when a player is on the dis-

abled list, especially if he's a great athlete who earns what great

athletes earn. As salaries have exploded, many teams have had to

carry ever-higher costs to pay their star players to sit out with

injuries. So it has become a major concern for teams: How do

you get them off the DL more quickly?

It's the trainers' job to get these players healthy and back in

the lineup as fast as possible. I spoke about that challenge with

more than a few of them, in detail, and they agreed that what I

said made a lot of sense.

"Listen, what happens if all these players say they want to do

steroids?" I asked them. "What are you going to do about it?"

"We don't really know," they said.

Did any of these trainers ever discuss what they were doing

with the owners? I don't know. But as the years went on the

word spread, and the owners and the union both fought hard to

keep testing out of baseball. The message seemed clear: If the

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The Godfather of Steroids

players were finding ways to pump up their bodies, enhance

their performance—and inject life into the game while they

were at it—nobody was going to lift a finger to complain.

As soon as the trainers I talked to started getting involved, the

steroid floodgates burst. The players started doing them right

there in the locker room, so openly that absolutely everybody

knew what was happening. It was so open, the trainers would

jokingly call the steroid injections "B12 shots," and soon the players had picked up on that little code name, too. You'd hear them

saying it out loud in front of each other: "I need to go in and get

a B12 shot," a player would say, and everyone would laugh. (Of

course, that was the kind of joke you really only made around

other steroid users, because obviously they were in the same boat

as you. What were they going to do, tell on you? Not hardly.)

They weren't talking about vitamins or supplements, of

course, but about a combination of steroids—in most cases

Deca and some form of testosterone. I never used the term my-

self, because I was mixing up my own stuff and didn't need any

trainer's help. That would have been like a master chef walking

into McDonald's and ordering a Big Mac to taste the special

sauce. The funny part is, there might have been a few players

who didn't even know what was in the shots they were getting. I

never pulled any of them aside and asked, "Did you know he's

injecting you with steroids?" I just assumed they all knew, but

looking back, I'm not so sure. There may have been a few who

were so out of it that they weren't even aware of what was going

on. You'd have to ask them about that yourself.

It was the pitchers who really kept that "B12" joke going. For

example, I've never seen Roger Clemens do steroids, and he

never told me that he did. But we've talked about what steroids

could do for you, in which combinations, and I've heard him

use the phrase "B12 shot" with respect to others.

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A lot of pitchers did steroids to keep up with hitters. If every-

one else was getting stronger and faster, then you wanted to get

stronger and faster, too. If you were a pitcher, and the hitters

were all getting stronger, that made your job that much more

difficult. Roger used to talk about that a lot.

"You hitters are so darn strong from steroids," he'd say.

"Yeah, but you pitchers are taking it, too. You're just taking

different types," I'd respond.

And sometimes Roger would vent his frustration over the hits

even the lesser players were starting to get off of good pitchers.

"Damn, that little guy hit it off the end of the bat and almost

drove it to the wall," he would say. He would complain about

guys who were hitting fifty homers when they had no business

hitting thirty. It was becoming more difficult for pitchers all the

time, he would complain.

What could I tell him? All's fair in love and steroids.

I can't give chapter and verse on Roger's training regimen.

But I'll tell you what I was thinking at the time:

One of the classic signs of steroid use is when a player's basic

performance actually improves later in his career. One of the ben-

efits of steroids is that they're especially helpful in countering the

effects of aging. So in Roger's case, around the time he was leav-

ing the Boston Red Sox—and Dan Duquette, the general man-

ager there, was saying he was "past his prime"—Roger decided to

make some changes. He started working out harder. And what-

ever else he may have been doing to get stronger, he saw results.

His fastball improved by a few miles per hour. He was a great

pitcher long before then; it wasn't his late-career surge that made

him great. But he certainly stayed great far longer than most ath-

letes could expect. There's no question about that.

The media were clueless, for the most part, about steroids.

It was all happening behind closed doors, and they weren't

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The Godfather of Steroids

privy to what happened in the privacy of the clubhouse. They

didn't know that steroid use was so open that nobody really

cared—that it had become integrated into the physical therapy

regimen, so you didn't ever have to hide. It was as casual as

taking a greenie—that is, amphetamines. It was simple: "Oh, I

need to jack up my program. Who's got something in his

locker?"

"Here's a needle. Go and inject yourself."

Or you just asked a trainer: "Do you know anybody who can

get me a new supply?"

"Yeah, here, call this guy."

By the time the owners decided to crack down, it seemed like

every player was holding steroids in his locker. If the guys in the

media had ever gone into a locker and looked in a shoebox,

they'd have found a stash: a couple of vials containing a week's

supply of steroids, and a needle. If I had to guess, I'd say eight

out of every ten players had kits in their lockers filled with

growth hormones, steroids, supplements—you name it. A lot of

the guys even set up informal little cliques to inject each other,

the way you'd go out drinking with a bunch of guys after work.

For that matter, if someone had done a thorough search of the

clubhouses back then, oh my God, the shit they would have

found in there: greenies, steroids, little black books, vibrators,

sex toys, women's underwear, and more. There was no telling

what you might find.

None of us ever really never worried much about getting

caught, though, or about the media reporting on what was going

on. We didn't see it as a big deal. We didn't see using steroids as

being in the same category as cocaine, marijuana, crack, or

ecstasy. As a matter of fact, I still don't believe they should be cat-

egorized the same way as those drugs. According to the Con-

trolled Substances Act of 1970, anabolic steroids are a Schedule

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J U I C E D

III substance, characterized by a "moderately high" abuse liability, which is only one category removed from Schedule II sub-

stances like cocaine and amphetamine, which are characterized

by a "high" abuse liability.

People are always saying that steroids make you break down,

and shorten your career. But with my back problems, they only

lengthened mine. I've had back pain ever since I could remem-

ber; once, when I was in high school, I was at home when my

back just went out and left me paralyzed, flat on my back on the

floor, for twenty minutes. That experience was incredibly scary,

even after the effect wore off and I could stand up again. There's

always been a part of me that feared I'd one day be sidelined

permanently by back trouble.

In 1996, while Jessica and I were married, I developed a

disc problem that was so severe that I actually had to have

back surgery. Three years later, in July 1999, I had a second

back surgery to repair a herniated disc; that operation caused

me to miss the All-Star Game, even though I was leading the

American League with thirty-one homers going into the

break.

Those two back surgeries were well publicized. But I actually

had a third back surgery—and went to great lengths to keep it

secret, because I knew that if it became public the owners might

decide I was damaged goods and not give me another look.

Until the publication of this book, no one in Major League

Baseball has never known that I had that operation. I didn't

think I had any choice but to hush it up.

Back surgery is nothing to mess around with. It's serious

business. To some people, it might seem crazy even to try com-

ing back to baseball after three back operations. After all, I can

think of some guys who decided they were done with the game

after just one.

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The Godfather of Steroids

Even I was surprised at how quickly I was able to come back

after that third back surgery. I was on steroids and growth hor-

mone at the time, so I guess they accelerated the natural healing

process. Two weeks after the surgery, my back felt great. The key

was my workout regimen: I'd been working out for a long time

prior to the surgery, and I was in tremendous shape. Then, as

soon as I could after the operation, I started lifting right away. I

recovered so quickly, it was as if I'd never had the surgery—and

that made it a lot easier to keep my secret.

Not long after that, in February 2000, I went to Las Vegas for

the Big League Challenge home-run hitting contest at Cash-

man Field. I had figured there was no way I could make it to

Vegas for this contest that soon after back surgery, even though

they'd offered me $100,000 just to show up and $600,000 if I

won. But my quick recovery meant I could go. I showed up at

Cashman Field, went in to the locker room to change, and took

off my shirt.

Barry Bonds was nearby, and when he saw me, he just stood

there and stared. I weighed about 255 at that point, and I was just

shredded with veins. Barry couldn't believe what he was seeing.

"What the hell have you been doing?" he asked me, slowly

and dramatically, for everybody to hear.

Then we had the home-run hitting contest, and I showed ev-

eryone that I wasn't just big—I was more powerful than ever. I

went against Mike Piazza in the first round. He hit nine homers;

not bad, but I hit eleven. Barry went up against Shawn Green

and hit nine homers, just like Piazza, but Green hit twelve and

Barry was eliminated. Next I went up against Mark McGwire;

that was close, but I got the better of him. Then, against Chipper

Jones, it went down to the end.

"I'm too old for this," I joked to Chipper. "I'm about to have a heart attack."

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The last two left were me and my old friend from Miami,

Rafael Palmeiro. Raffy put on a real show, but I was fortunate

enough to get on a roll, and hit some real moon shots. One

of them flew completely out of the stadium and landed

on Washington Avenue, maybe 550 or 600 feet from home

plate. I wound up winning the whole contest—and, believe

me, that made an impression on the other players there. It just

went to show that I still had a lot to offer as a player.

So what did Barry Bonds do that next off-season? He showed

up in spring 2001 with forty pounds of added muscle. As soon

as he set foot on a field in Scottsdale that spring, he was all any-

one could talk about.

"My God, look at how big he is," everyone was saying. "He's monstrous. Look at him."

Barry added all that raw muscle, and then he went out that

season and hit seventy-three home runs and destroyed

the home-run record. But if you look at his numbers, he had

never hit more than forty-nine home runs over fifteen seasons

in the major leagues before that. Suddenly he's hitting sev-

enty-three?

In late 2004, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Bonds

had told a grand jury he used a cream form of steroid. So

everyone finally knew for sure what was obvious all along—

even if Bonds did the smart thing and insisted he never knew

the cream was steroids. Maybe he didn't know, or he wasn't sure.

But the simple fact is that Barry Bonds was definitely using

steroids.

And it's no scandal, or at least it shouldn't be. People take

medications for all sorts of things. The big drug companies

spend huge amounts of money on television commercials

telling you that your kid needs one drug because he can't

sit still in school, or you need another because you've been

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The Godfather of Steroids

feeling a little unhappy. But when it comes to accepting the

simple fact that steroids and growth hormone can reshape

the body in amazing ways, people seem to have this childlike

need to cling to ignorance and fear. The future is here, so why

fight it?

217

Heavily muscled bodies like Canseco's have now

become so common that they no longer invite scorn.

Players even find dark humor in steroid use. One

American League outfielder, for instance, was known

to be taking a steroid typically given by veterinarians

to injured, ill or overworked horses and readily

available in Latin America. An opposing player

pointed to him and remarked, "He takes so much of

that horse stuff that one day we're going to look out in

the outfield and he's going to be grazing."

TOM VERDUCCI,

Sports Illustrated, June 3, 2002

People insist on thinking of steroid use in negative terms, as

though it's a sickness, when in fact most people who use

steroids properly end up a lot more healthy than when they

started. Here is something to think about: When I first came

into the league, major league baseball players partied a whole lot

more than they do now. Back then, in the late 1980s, a lot of

guys were doing recreational drugs, and of course drinking a lot.

That has changed drastically.

As the years went by, and the players got more into steroids,

weight lifting, and good nutrition, for most players the other

drugs went by the wayside—liquor, cocaine, marijuana. When

the guys realized that steroids worked, that was all they cared

about. They looked better, they were stronger, they could per-

form at a higher level and land that big contract everyone

wanted. So if there were certain sacrifices to make—like cut-

ting back on drinking—that was no big deal. It was just one of

those things that happened naturally. There are still excep-

tions, like that amazing partier Jason Giambi, but for most

baseball players, the steroid era meant a new focus on clean

living.

There are health considerations, obviously. You don't want to

put too much stress on your liver with your steroid regimen.

You have to look out for dangerous combinations, because your

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liver can't handle being stressed in three different ways at once.

If you are overusing steroids, and you're also using cocaine and

liquor, you've got a big problem.

So what does the smart athlete do? He uses no cocaine, no

marijuana, no ecstasy, no liquor, and only a moderate amount

of steroids, administered properly—and, ka-ching, he's on his

way to those million-dollar contracts. That's a smart player. He

lets the liver work at its normal pace, filtering out the steroid

residue, and he ends up healthy, wealthy, and wise.

The one other drug that's still hanging on in baseball is am-

phetamines, which have always been a big part of the game.

Call them what you want—pep pills, greenies, dextroampheta-

mine sulfate—they've been around a long time. In Jim Bou-

ton's famous 1980 book Ball Four, he was the first one to talk

about greenies in public. He quoted the player named Tommy

Davis, saying, "How fabulous are greenies? The answer is very,"

Bouton continued. "A lot of baseball players couldn't function

without them."

Elsewhere in the book, Bouton describes a player who had re-

cently received a supply of 500 greenies. "That ought to last

about a month," Bouton wrote.

Greenies were everywhere when I first came into the league.

I would say that at least eight out of ten players were taking

greenies back then; they may have been as widespread

as steroids are now. They were as acceptable as popping as-

pirin. Some guys would mix greenies with Excedrin or another

caffeine-laced product. That's old school. It goes all the way

back to the early days of baseball. Especially when they had a

day game after a night game, players would need a little boost

waking up. They'd take a pep pill an hour or so before

the game, and by first pitch they'd have some extra spring in

their step.

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Clean Living

Greenies are still around, but now the guys who take them are

the exceptions. Why the big change? Again, the number one rea-

son is steroids. I never took a greenie. I just didn't see any point.

Steroids get you going. They accelerate your heart rate to the

point where you don't need a stimulant to pick you up. A few

players may have used a combination of both, but that's really

just a few guys who like to be incredibly wired. When steroids be-

came widespread in baseball, I think most everybody realized

that mixing them with amphetamines can have an adverse reac-

tion on you. That's when you saw greenies start to disappear

from clubhouses.

The decline in amphetamines was part of the general trend

toward better fitness that came with steroid use. With salaries

getting so high—and even utility players bringing in $3 mil-

lion a year—the smart players realized that the better care

they took of themselves, the more they kept their bodies

strong with steroids and good nutrition, the more years they'd

be able to play—and the more money they'd make. For a

while everybody was on the fitness kick, eating right, taking

steroids, getting the right amount of sleep. So you saw bigger,

stronger, faster, and healthier athletes, instead of those

raggedy, run-down, pot-bellied ball players of previous eras.

If you were to take a few contemporary major-league teams,

and strip down all the players, you would find that most

ballplayers have pretty good bodies. They're strong and fit,

compared to thirty or forty years ago. It'll be interesting to see

how that changes if more players start backing off of steroids.

Even though major-league baseball hasn't done anything seri-

ous to discourage players from using steroids, there's still a lot of

concern about what's going to happen in the next couple years.

So there's been a movement of guys changing how they use

steroids—some of them using less, some quitting altogether.

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For those guys who decide not to use steroids any more, it's

still possible to maintain about 80 percent of the muscle mass

they have gained, if they go about it the right way. And the

smart ones will consider using a low dose of steroids all year

round.

Some of the players, I'm sure, are thinking of quitting just be-

cause they're afraid of being caught. But that's always been a

fear, and we were always careful. One obvious precaution most

of us did take was doing the majority of our injections at

home—that is, not taking them on the road with us. On an

especially long road trip, we might make an exception, but in

general the trips were eight or ten days, so the players knew

they'd be fine if they injected right before the trip started and

again right after we got back.

But the average baseball player shouldn't really be ashamed

of his steroid use. Because the people who really abuse steroids

aren't baseball players at all. It's the bodybuilders, football

players, and contenders in world's-strongest-men competi-

tions who have pushed things too far and given steroids a bad

name. They're the ones who apparently believe that more is al-

ways better—when actually more is usually too much.

Carefully controlling the amounts of steroids you take, ad-

ministering them at the proper time—that's the way to make

them work for you, without risking your health. Like most

chemicals that can help you, steroids would be dangerous if

used in too large a quantity. Just consider the example

of Botox, whose popularity has now spread from Hollywood.

As most people know, Botox is used to paralyze muscles

to stop the aging process in the face. But Botox is also poiso-

nous—it's a form of botulism, the poison, which can kill

you. The key is knowing how to use it without taking undue

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Clean Living

risks. That's exactly the way to think of steroids: Sure, they

can be deadly if used in ridiculously large amounts, the way

some out-of-control weight-lifters do. But if you're smart, and

careful, and know what you're doing, you can use them to

reach your true potential.

225

You could sense that everybody's stopped what they're

doing just to watch him hit.

JOE MORGAN

I t ' s a general pattern with the media. Certain people in base-

ball develop these huge reputations, and then all of a sudden

they can do no wrong. Take Tony LaRussa, the former A's man-

ager, for example. You have eggheads showing up from Wash-

ington so they can lurk on the infield grass during batting

practice, hoping to get two minutes to stand there and listen to

what the great man has to say about the art of managing. Tony's

an intelligent guy. He even has a law degree. But the simple truth

is that being smart can help you with only one part of the job of

being a major-league manager. If you're a jerk, it doesn't matter

how smart you are.

People are always talking about LaRussa making pitching

changes and outthinking another manager, and that's great for

reporters looking for easy angles. That's the kind of thing

that's pretty easy to follow from a distance, even if you don't

know much about what's actually happening with a team. But

let me tell you, any story like that looks a whole lot different

from the other side. As a player, you pay attention to the rela-

tionships a manager has. Do his players like him? Do they re-

spect him? Do they want to keep him happy? Do they want

him to keep his job?

LaRussa uses a lot of psychology to control his players. One

thing I never liked was the way he'd jump on a player who had

made a mistake—and usually do it just as he was coming back

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into the dugout, so he was sure all the other players would hear.

A manager's criticism should always take place behind closed

doors.

Tony LaRussa has won a lot of games as a manager. He has

also lost a lot of clubhouses. You'd be amazed at how many of

his ex-players just can't stand the guy. I'm not saying this out of

spite. Tony and I had our differences, but that was a long time

ago. I haven't talked to the man in years, and that's just fine with

me. But he's a good example of this same pattern of big names

in baseball who get a free ride in the media most of the time.

To me, the real details of what people are like are a lot more

interesting than these established media storylines, which are

usually tilted so far toward the purely positive or negative that

they get boring fast. Managers, like superstar ball players, are

human beings with ups and downs and moods, good days

and bad days. They are individuals before they are media

caricatures.

Here, for what they're worth, are my own insider's observa-

tions on a few of the more interesting people in baseball.

JOE T O R R E

I spent only a couple of months playing for the Yankees, and

that's not much time to get to know someone. But I respect Joe

Torre a lot, because he was straight with me.

"Jose, you're not really going to play," he told me when I first joined the team. "I'll try to get you in, but you're not really

here to play."

I was glad he told me that.

"I know," I told him. "I know why I'm here."

In 2000 the Yankees had claimed me off waivers, and picked

me up from Tampa Bay, mostly to prevent both the Red Sox and

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"Not Really Here to Play"

the A's from doing the same thing. As an added bonus, they

would have me there as insurance in case someone got hurt—

and maybe to pinch-hit now and then, though I'm not much of

a pinch-hitter.

The Yanks didn't want the Red Sox or A's to get me because they

knew I'd hit the Yankees' left-handed pitchers really well—espe-

cially Andy Pettitte, and he was a big reason they made it through

the playoffs to the World Series. I've hit so many home runs

against Pettitte, it's a laugh. I remember hitting two home runs

against him in one game; then, the next time I faced him, I home-

red again. I just destroy him. He sees me and he melts. He knows

he has no chance against me. So that was the main reason why the

Yankees traded for me, just to keep me from whaling on Pettitte

and the other lefties. From their perspective it was a great move.

But that was the worst time I ever had in baseball, sitting and

watching the Yankees those last two months of the season. I

played only once in a blue moon, and I couldn't stand it. It was

the first time in my career that I was completely, 100 percent

healthy. I could have helped out the organization with my bat

and carried the team—but I wasn't getting to play.

The few times they did get me some at-bats, the Yankees put

me in the outfield, even though I hadn't played out there in I

don't know how long. Those were very tough times for me in

New York; I lived in the city, in this horrible small apartment

that was constantly under construction. (What is it with Man-

hattan, anyway? It seems like nothing there ever comes easy.)

In Tampa, back before the trade, I'd had a foot injury that left

me with a little heel problem. But once that healed up, I ran the

forty-yard dash in 3.9 seconds. "My God, you're fast," they said, but that didn't get me into the lineup.

The media made it look like I was injured and that's why I

wasn't playing for the Yankees. They wanted to present some

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reason besides the obvious: that the Yankees had traded for me

just because they're the Yankees and they could, not because

they wanted me in the lineup. Joe Torre believed in the players

he already had—David Justice was hot, and Glenallen Hill was

hitting pretty well, too—and there was nowhere for me to

play.

It was even worse in the post-season. I wasn't eligible to play

in the American League Championship Series against the Seat-

tle Mariners, which the Yankees won in six games. Then it was

on to the Subway Series, against the Mets, and even though the

Yankees put me on the active roster for that series, I spent most

of my time sitting on the bench doing nothing and feeling

worthless.

In game six, though, I was sitting there on the Yankee bench

on a cold night at Shea Stadium. Roger Clemens was sitting to

my right, and Andy Pettitte to my left, and I was sure I wouldn't

be asked to play. But all of a sudden, in the sixth inning, Torre

called down to me.

"Canseco, you're hitting," he said.

Roger and I looked at each other, both of us totally surprised.

I hadn't been in a game since the regular season; I hadn't even

taken batting practice that day. I was half-asleep. If it hadn't

been for the cold, I'd probably have fallen asleep altogether.

"Holy shit!" I thought. So I stood up kind of slowly, hunched

over with stiffness, my back all cramped up. Roger started pre-

tending as if he had an oil can in his hand, and he started oiling

me like the Tin Man.

I played along, making a squeaky little voice.

"Oil me here," I squeaked. "And oil me here."

Pettitte started playing along, too, and soon all three of

us were cracking up. But that didn't last long. I went up to

the plate to pinch-hit for David Cone, and it was bad. Three

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"Not Really Here to Play"

strikes and you're out. I never even saw the ball. I never took

a swing. I hadn't played in a week or two, so to me it was

like the first day of spring training. That was the worst time in

my life, being completely healthy and yet never even reaching

first base.

Even when they won the playoffs, I never felt like I was part

of the Yankees. When they won the World Series, I kind of hid

in the room. What was I going to do, celebrate? I didn't help

them win anything. I wasn't even on the roster for the divisional

series, for God's sake. I felt completely out of place. I just let

them celebrate.

But they did give me a World Series ring, which was generous

of them. And it's a beautiful thing.

A R T HOWE

Another manager I liked was Art Howe—again, because he was

very honest. I played for Art when I returned to the A's in 1997,

and I always felt that he was telling me the truth. His attitude

was a lot like Kevin Kennedy's, in the sense that he just let the

guys go out there and play the game. Players respected him a

great deal. He did a lot with the organization, working with the

players and letting guys be themselves. He was a very easy-

going, quiet guy.

It's not always the best approach to be a nice guy, but so long

as it works, why not? If the team doesn't respect you, then you

have to change your approach, but the players I knew all had a

lot of respect for Howe.

The media gave Howe no chance to do anything as As man-

ager, none at all. But in 1996, his first season managing the

team, the As finished 78-84—which meant that they had won

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ten more games in Howe's first year than they did in any of

LaRussa's last three seasons.

But it soon became clear in 1997 that the A's owners, Steve

Schott and Ken Hofmann, weren't really interested in winning. I

found that out the hard way, and I'll always be thankful to Art

Howe for being straight with me. I went on the disabled list that

August with back spasms. When I came off the disabled list and

was healthy again, Howe gave me a heads-up.

"Listen, Jose, I'm probably not going to play you, because

the organization doesn't want you to get your at-bats," he told

me. I had a clause in my contract that if I reached a certain

number of at-bats for the season my salary automatically

kicked in for the following season at $5 million plus. But the

A's were eager to avoid that if they could. So even though I

could have helped the team win more games if I'd been in the

lineup, they decided they'd rather save money than win more

ball games. If you look at my stats for that year, I finished with

388 at-bats, compared to 600 or more during each of my first

three seasons with the A's—yet I still had 74 RBIs and twenty-

three home runs.

Once they'd given me the word that I wasn't going to play, I

realized there was no changing their mind. "Well if you're going

to sit me, then just send me home," I told the A's. "Don't have me here not playing."

So that's what happened—I went back to Florida. Only the

organization couldn't let fans know what was really going on.

Instead, they had to make it look like I was injured. For example,

one of the trainers told reporters I was still having back trouble.

"He's seeing a physical therapist," the trainer said. "I talk to him almost every day."

Yeah, right. Even now it makes me mad just to think about

that, because it helped cement another myth about me—that I

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"Not Really Here to Play"

was injured all the time. Again, beware the difference between

perception and reality. Probably 30 to 40 percent of the time I

was reported as "injured," I wasn't really—it was just that I belonged to an organization that didn't want to play me, either for

money reasons or because they'd only acquired me in the first

place to stop me from going to another team.

It happens all the time in baseball that teams ask a player to

be on the DL, even if the player doesn't have an injury. Usually

it's because they need to open up a spot on the roster for another

player. But they don't mind lying to the public about what

they're actually doing. There are an awful lot of hypocrites out

there in baseball. When the A's had traded for me, they'd been

talking about wanting to win. When it came down to it, though,

Schott and Hofmann were so worried about money that they

kept me out of the lineup.

I don't know if that made them hypocrites or just stupid, but

either way it sure didn't sit well with me.

DUSTY BAKER

I've never played for Dusty Baker, but we were teammates in

Oakland right at the end of his career. My rookie year, 1986, was

his last year as a player, and as a young, inexperienced kid I re-

member being amazed by him. I mean, that dude could party.

The one time he asked me to go out with him, I told him no

thanks: the alcohol-poisoning escapades of my minor-league

days were still fresh in my mind, and I knew enough not to risk

temptation.

It's funny for me to come across guys like Dusty, who could

really party, and then a few years go by and all of a sudden

they're wearing glasses and becoming managers and leading or-

ganizations to division titles. But I can see how Dusty would be

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a great manager, because he was a good player and he under-

stands the player's life on and off the field. He has a real knack

for protecting a player and getting the best out of him. I would

have liked to have had a chance to play for him.

R I C K E Y H E N D E R S O N

Rickey Henderson was a genetic freak, a man with such incredi-

ble legs and arms that even past his fortieth birthday he looked

like a mini-bodybuilder. To me, he was one of the best players in

the game, and maybe the greatest leadoff hitter of all time. He

was a good teammate to have, too. He just played the game,

worked hard, and busted his ass every day.

D E N N I S ECKERSLEY

To me, Dennis Eckersley was one of the pretty boys of baseball.

He could go out there and pitch in a three-piece suit, and he'd

be fine. With his long hair, and trimmed-up mustache, he was

one of the entertainers of the game. With his long hair flapping

in the wind, he always looked good. He had always been out tan-

ning, and he was manicured, too.

Dennis was one of those finicky athletes, though. He wasn't a

guy who was going to overpower you. He was more about fi-

nesse and putting some movement on the ball. Plus, he was

from the old school. He got up for every outing. Dennis did a

good job for us on those A's teams, but I have to say that later on,

when we weren't on the same team anymore, I never minded

batting against him. Todd Stottlemyre and Dennis Eckersley:

Among all the pitchers I ever faced in my major league career,

they were the two I was always happy to see.

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"Not Really Here to Play"

BRET S A B E R H A G E N

The one pitcher I truly hated to face, on the other hand, would

have to be Bret Saberhagen. Some pitchers just throw so well

you can't hit them, and that's how it was with Saberhagen, more

than any other pitcher from my era. Everything he threw

moved, and with extreme velocity.

Our major-league careers ran parallel in a lot of ways; for a

while we even had the same agent, Dennis Gilbert. Saberhagen's

first season in the big leagues was 1984, the year before I made

my move up to the A's; his best seasons were in the late 1980s,

when he was having all those great years for the Kansas City

Royals. Later, in 1998, we were both up for American League

Comeback Player of the Year, along with Eric Davis. As Sports Il-

lustrated put it, I deserved credit for "resurrecting" myself "from the cartoon-superhero junk heap."

The only other pitcher I remember really giving me a lot of

trouble was Duane Ward, the Toronto Blue Jays' big setup man

and then closer, starting in the early 1990s. Ward was a big

guy, six foot four, and an All-Star in 1993—and, with that

heavy sinker he had, and that slider from hell, I hated batting

against him.

Then again, I'm not sure any of those pitchers really liked see-

ing me coming, either.

237

Many people are not aware of Jose's activities in

charity work. He was active in Make-a-Wish

Foundation. He was involved in many charity golf

tournaments. He was involved in his own foundation.

He was involved in distributing thousands of dollars in

gifts at Guantanamo Bay and visited refugees there.

JOSE C A N S E C O , SR.,

My father

People believe what they want to believe. If you have a repu-

tation as the bad boy of baseball, you must be a bad guy,

right? Most people just don't spend much time thinking much

harder than that about it—at least most people in the media. I

was never into politicking for myself or putting across some

bogus image, and because I didn't play the PR game, they made

sure I would pay. If I did something contrary to the image of

the reckless, dangerous star, they just ignored it, or treated it

like some strange curiosity that proved all their assumptions

anyway.

In October 1994, the year of the strike, I flew back to Cuba

for the first time since my parents put Ozzie, my sister Teresa,

and me on a plane in Varadero when I was just a small boy.

While I was there, I made sure to pay a visit to the refugees at

the Guantanamo Bay military base, renting a plane with Alex

Rodriguez and dropping off food and toys for the kids there. I

didn't ask for anyone to pat me on the back for that visit to

Guantanamo, and I'm not asking for that now, either. But just

in case anyone reading this is interested in more than a two-

dimensional picture of me, maybe a glimpse of my charity

work might help shed some light on the little bit of good I've

tried to do in the world.

I'm just a man, with all the insecurities and weaknesses of any

other man, but I'm not a cartoon character and I've always done

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my best to treat people right, whether it's signing autographs

even when I'm tired and have already signed fifty, or smiling at

someone and posing for a picture. Even long after I stopped

playing baseball, people still approach me wherever I go, just

wanting to talk to me for a minute, and I try not to be fake with

them. I try to treat them normally, like people, and to meet their

requests whenever I can.

That was my approach going down to Guantanamo, too, try-

ing to bring a little happiness to the kids down there and all the

other refugees. I've donated millions of dollars to charity in my

lifetime, and I'm sure I'll donate millions more. I don't like to

publicize the charities, because then it makes it look like it's all

for show, and the important part isn't writing out the check, it's

giving a part of yourself.

We used to talk a lot, Alex and I. "I love Jose," he told the

Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "Jose is a great friend of mine. He has taught me an awful lot about life and about baseball. People

don't realize what a great person he is and what a big heart he

has. People ask how can you learn from someone who has made

so many mistakes. Sometimes those are the best guys to learn

from. They're able to teach you through their wisdom and their

experiences."

The scene down at Guantanamo was pretty grim, I have to tell

you. We had done a lot of work to make that visit a success, and be-

fore I flew down there we collected ten tons of toys with a telethon

in Miami, so we could hand them out to the kids at Camp Romeo.

As a Latino, I was raised believing that men aren't supposed to cry,

especially not in public, but seeing all those kids gathering around

me and singing for me, that almost busted me up.

I remember one girl in particular. I gave her a stuffed animal

that was a long way from new, but to her it couldn't have

looked better.

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Nice Guys Finish Last

"Look how pretty!" she said, holding it to her chest and

smiling.

That visit was so sad, but in a way it gave me hope, too. This

was during the Clinton presidency, and that August the presi-

dent had thrown a real curve at the b alseros who had left Cuba

hoping to make a new life in the United States of America,

changing the rules and closing the door on the refugees. The

new rules only allowed you to gain entry to the United States if

you first returned to Cuba, so you actually had people swim-

ming two miles from the tip of the peninsula where Guanta-

namo sits, across the bay itself, so they could be back on Cuban

territory and be eligible under the new rules. It was a farce.

On that visit I also had a chance to meet with about twenty

hunger strikers, who were hoping to force the Clinton adminis-

tration to change its policy. They gathered at Camp Juliet under

a tree they decided to call the "Tree of Hope."

"Maintain your strength," I told them in Spanish. "You'll get out of here. Everyone in Miami is thinking of you."

They cheered wildly.

"We're here making our statement!" one yelled back at me.

"But we thank you. Having you here means everything."

At Camp Kilo, they worked through the night picking the

rocks from a field to set up a crude baseball diamond. I held a

bat in my hand for the first time since the strike two months

earlier, and they threw me softballs. I hit some line drives into

the makeshift tents they called home, and then launched a cou-

ple of long ones over the concertina wire separating the camp

from the next one over. The men went crazy. They hoisted me

up on their shoulders, all two hundred and forty pounds of me,

and they all joined together to chant loudly.

"Libertad! Libertad!" they chanted.

And that turned into "Canseco! Canseco!"

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That was one of the most intense moments in my life. Com-

pared to what I heard that day, the emotion that comes from

sports fans can seem hollow and superficial. This was reality.

This was life.

"They're ripping their hearts out for him," Alex said that day.

"And he's doing it for them, too."

I hadn't been in Cuba since 1965, when Ozzie and I were ba-

bies, but Cuba is a big part of who I am. I have always told every-

one that I'm Cuban. I'm very proud of that, and always will be.

"Cubans love Canseco because he has not forgotten us," one

refugee at Camp Kilo told the Dallas Morning News that day.

"We all want to be like Canseco. Not to be a baseball player, but

to get out of here and get to the USA and start a better life."

"Cubans are known in the United States because of baseball,"

said another man at Camp Kilo. "Today is the happiest day

we've had since we've been here. It's almost like we had a taste

of freedom."

One of the people I met that day was another player, named

Euclides Rojas. Cuba's all-time leader in saves, Rojas was known

as the Cuban Dennis Eckersley, even though he was a left-

hander. But eventually he had enough; tired of living in a coun-

try that was not free, he decided to take a huge chance and take

his wife Marta and his little son, Euclides Jr., and join some

other people trying to escape from Cuba on a little raft.

I liked Rojas right away. He's a very smart man, with a calm

dignity about him, and that day at Guantanamo, even in his

flip-flops—the only shoes he had—he had a presence that made

him stand out even among the other proud men at Camp

Tango. He told me about how he had been floating at sea for

days, and how his group had run out of drinking water. It

looked like they might die out there. But then they ran into an-

other boat full of people trying to escape from Castro, and

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Nice Guys Finish Last

traded food for water. Then the U.S. Coast Guard picked them

up and brought them to Guantanamo.

Rojas hoped one day to pitch in the major leagues, but he had

no way of knowing if he would ever be allowed to go to Amer-

ica, much less pitch.

"It's impossible to think of that when I am here," Rojas said

that day. "These are very bad conditions."

All I kept thinking, talking to Euky, was, "That could

have been me."

He and I are almost the same age. It's all just a matter of tim-

ing. If the Cuban government had not decided to let my father

leave the country in 1965, we might never have been able to

leave. If things had been different it could have been me in that

camp, rather than Euclides Rojas.

I kept thinking, "I'm very lucky."

I didn't hear about Rojas again for a while, but he and his

family finally made it to the United States after six months at

Guantanamo, and the next season, he pitched for Palm Springs

in the independent Western League. The Florida Marlins drafted

him in the thirtieth round of that year's amateur draft, and he

worked his way up to Triple-A Charlotte, but he'd ruined his

elbow pitching too many innings for the Cuban National Team.

That injury finally ended his career.

Instead, he turned to coaching. On the very same day his

playing career ended, he started working as a pitching coach in

the Marlins' system and impressed them so much, he even filled

in for the Marlins as bullpen coach for two weeks during the

1999 season. Later, he worked in the Pirates' organization. Then

before the 2003 season, the Boston Red Sox hired him as

bullpen coach.

You've probably never heard the name, but if you watched the

Red Sox in the playoffs or the World Series, you probably saw

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him out there, exerting a calming influence on that bullpen. So

you know the rest of the story: Euclides Rojas, the same proud,

brave man who I met as a refugee at Guantanamo, wearing flip-

flops, now has a World Series ring, and will always be part of

baseball history for helping the Red Sox win the World Series for

the first time since 1918. They'll always remember that in Cuba,

too, and especially in Miami. I guarantee it.

246

If you're a baseball purist like me, you know

the season doesn't really begin until Jose Canseco

gets arrested.

DAVID L E T T E R M A N

The low point of my life was definitely the three months I

spent in jail in the summer of 2003. And it was all for

nothing.

I was arrested in June of that year for supposedly failing a

drug test while on probation. To me, it was obvious that some-

one had switched the urine sample I gave; I know for a fact that

I'd stopped taking steroids prior to the start of to my probation,

so there was no other way the test could have come up positive.

We later acquired a detailed breakdown of the urine sample

they tested, and from that it was obvious that sample could

never have come from me.

I'll never forget the feeling of stepping into the small jail cell

in Florida, knowing I could end up spending five years in

there. Anyone who goes through that experience knows how

terrible it is. I remember the nights I spent trying to sleep on

the little bed they give you, dreaming of seeing my daughter,

Josie, or just being outside, feeling my freedom. Then I would

wake up and be back in jail. It was devastating to realize where

I was.

But to understand how I got there, you need to reach way

back in my life, to the place where all my legal troubles started—

on a Florida highway in the early 1990s, and a stupid argument

between two young people in love.

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It was late, around three in the morning, and Esther and I

were having an argument, which I guess is nothing unusual for

a married couple. What was unusual was the setting: I was in a

930 Porsche, she was in a white BMW, and we were driving

side-by-side on the road in Florida, screaming at each other.

Somewhere along the way, the cars accidentally collided. No

surprise; it's hard to watch what you're doing when you're driv-

ing and fighting at the same time. But it wasn't intentional.

Someone at a gas station saw us go by and called the police.

We pulled over a little later and started talking more calmly, but

then the police arrived and arrested me. And, right there on the

spot, they decided to cite me for domestic violence.

I couldn't believe it—and Esther couldn't either.

"What are you doing?" she asked the cops.

When you hear the phrase domestic violence, you think of a

husband beating his wife. But this was just a total accident, and

yet there I was, already tarred with the domestic violence brush.

A lot of issues extended from those original domestic-violence

charges filed against me by the state of Florida. One of the pros-

ecutors wanted Esther to testify against me, even though Esther

didn't want to do that—to say I'd struck Esther's car on purpose,

that I was trying to hurt her or even to kill her with the car. Es-

ther was afraid that if she wouldn't testify against me, she might

be arrested. She didn't, but in the end I went to jail anyway.

I know I'm no angel. But I truly believe that, ever since that

incident with Esther, I've been tagged unfairly by the media as a

violent person. As anyone who really knows me can tell you, I've

never started a fight, not once in my whole life. I've never insti-

gated a fight verbally, and I've walked away from a lot of poten-

tial fights.

But because of who I am, and the success that I've had, it's

been very easy for the media to turn a couple of marital spats

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An Education Money Can't Buy

and bar fights into a supposed reputation for aggression and vi-

olence toward women.

In this society, once you're labeled as a person who is aggres-

sive, that's it. If you're known as someone who goes out and gets

into fights, people look for you because you're an easy target. I

could be standing at a bar, get knocked out by a guy out of

nowhere, end up in the hospital, and this is what would you read

in the paper the next morning: CANSECO GETS INTO ANOTHER

BAR F I G H T .

Which brings me to what happened in 2001.

The whole horrible experience began when my brother,

Ozzie, and I went out one night in Miami. Ozzie was with his fi-

ancee, and I was with a date, a lovely young woman named

Amber. It was Halloween, and three of us were dressed up as

vampires; Amber was dressed as an Indian squaw. At one point

Amber left the group to go to the bathroom with some other

girls, and this guy I'd never seen before reached down, lifted up

her skirt, and grabbed her ass. So Amber got into an argument

with him—and Ozzie and I walked over to see what was hap-

pening. When the guy saw me coming, he made what looked like

an aggressive move toward me. I didn't want to get into it with

him, but he had a bottle or something in his hand, so I put my

hand up to stop his advance.

"Get away from me," I told him.

When one of his buddies stepped forward, my brother inter-

cepted him and started pushing him back to the bar area. There

were lots of people there, and I lost track of who was doing

what, but I know that I was acting in self-defense. Eventually, the

guy I was dealing with went to help his buddy, who was scuffling

with my brother. My brother knows martial arts; he was able to

take care of them pretty easily. The bouncers came and escorted

us out, but at the time it seemed like no big deal. When the cops

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showed up, no one seemed interested in pressing charges, and

we all went home.

Thirteen days later, though, the police called and asked me

and Ozzie to come down to the station to give our side of what

happened—and when we showed up they arrested us on the

spot. They said they had talked to witnesses who said they saw

me grab both guys by the throat and punch them. That was a

complete lie, but it didn't matter.

I even took a polygraph test—a professional, serious poly-

graph test, administered by one of the leading polygraph exam-

iners in the country and the same examiner used by the State of

Florida in its criminal cases—and passed it perfectly. I chal-

lenged the other side to take a polygraph, and even offered to

pay for it. They said no. (You can guess why.)

So then it went to a jury trial, and that couldn't have come at

a worse time for me. I was going through custody proceedings

with Jessica as part of our divorce, and my attorneys convinced

me to plead out the charge. "Jose, if you get convicted, you're

going to lose your daughter," they told me. "You might have to

go to jail for fifteen years, and your daughter will hardly know

you when you're finally released." That was enough to scare me

into taking the deal—and accepting the probation terms that

have dogged me for the past several years.

The next blow came when I was in California to see Josie and

attend a charity golf tournament, and through a misunder-

standing on my part I missed a probation date. I got a call from

my attorney: "Jose, there's a warrant out for your arrest in the

state of Florida," he told me.

So the following day I flew back to Florida and went before

the judge. He put me in jail for a month, with no chance for

bail. Then, when I came out, they gave me two years' house

arrest with three years' probation. While I was under house

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An Education Money Can't Buy

arrest, they subjected me to a urine test, which actually came up

negative for steroids but contained a minuscule metabolite

remnant that could have been left over from prior use. The

amount was so small that even the State's expert was later un-

able to identify the time of use. But when the State got the re-

sults it jumped the gun and arrested me. And who was it that

nailed me with the steroid charge? The same prosecutor's office

that went after me back in 1992. Same justice system, same re-

sult: Jose goes to jail.

I had a terrible time adjusting to jail. I had a cell to myself, but

it was only about eight feet long by five feet wide. There was a

regular door with a Plexiglas screen on it; the bed was a slab of

metal, with a thin layer of cushion over the top. It was terrible.

You ended up getting sores all over your body, no matter how

much you tried to squirm to find a comfortable position.

The food was awful. It sure made me appreciate those fine

meals I'd been eating for years, both in restaurants and at home

with Jessica, who is one hell of a cook. In jail, you would get

whatever cold slop they wanted to give you. You could order

extra commissary, but that was basically garbage—chips and

candy bars, pure junk food. I would rather go hungry than put

that kind of stuff in my body, and I did. I lost forty pounds in jail.

Before the arrest, Jessica and I had been talking about getting

back together again. She was already my ex-wife at that point,

but we were talking about reconciling—mostly because of Josie,

so we could both be there for her. Then one day I was talking to

Jessica on the phone from prison, and in the background I heard

a man's voice.

"I'm in love with somebody else," she told me. "I want to be with this man. Nobody knows how long you're going to be in jail."

Even before I was in jail, Jessica explained later, she thought it

was over between us. We had been separated for three years at

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that point, and she says now that by the time I went to jail she

was ready to move on.

But on that day, when Jessica told me she was in love with

somebody else, I had a nervous breakdown in jail.

I'm not using the term nervous breakdown lightly. I've gone

through bad periods before, but I have never experienced any-

thing like that, and I hope I never will again. It all became too

much for me. It felt like something inside me was being crushed.

Everything hit me all at once, and I completely lost it. They

called the medical help line there in jail, but they never showed

up. That's how it is in jail: You're a number. You have no rights

whatsoever. It can get very tough to handle.

Only a year or two earlier, I'd been as happy as I had ever

been. My second wife, Jessica, had given birth to our baby girl.

Then, all of a sudden, I was in jail, and Josie wasn't allowed to

visit. I went through a long period when I didn't see my daugh-

ter at all. And that just about killed me.

The whole thing was a complete nightmare, and it's still

going on. Every month I have to fly back to Florida from

southern California, where I live now, just to see my probation

officer. We talk for five minutes, and then I leave until the next

month.

And now, just to add insult to injury, the guys from that bar-

room brawl are suing me now for millions of dollars. They ad-

mitted in a police report that the one guy grabbed the girl's ass,

which started the whole thing (though the guy later denied that

he'd done so). Yet still they're suing me. This world is completely bizarre to me.

It took me a long time—not until I'd spent three months in

jail—for me to realize just how willing the media was to bury me,

how few people there were actually willing to stand by me when

things got tough. It was a real eye-opener, let me tell you. My time

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An Education Money Can't Buy

behind bars probably taught me more about society and about

people than I had learned in my entire life to that point.

As profound a learning experience as it was, though, I

wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Jail doesn't make you better,

it makes you worse.

Before jail, any of my friends will tell you, I was the nicest guy

in the world. I'd give anything to my friends, or even just to peo-

ple off the street. I'd try to help all kinds of different people,

even bums off the street. I was the biggest sucker.

Now I'm completely the opposite. I'm a total businessman.

Nobody can run anything by me and get away with it. Before,

I was such a nice guy. I would put myself in harm's way

for everybody. But what my time in jail taught me is that nice

guys do finish last. I've had my education. I'll always associate

being a nice guy with being set up, having no one come to

my defense, and ending up in jail. And that's not for me, not

anymore.

Shortly after my breakdown, though, the case was dismissed

and I was released from jail. Why? Because the evidence was

dubious and it also turned out that the chain of custody on my

blood test was full of holes. I was put in jail for no reason—for

three months.

When Judge Leonard Glick, of the Miami-Dade Circuit Court,

gave the word that they were releasing me, he added: "Good luck

to you." As he was speaking, I reflected that I had lost my daugh-

ter, I had $130,000 due in attorney's fees, I'd lost endorsements.

And there he was, wishing me good luck.

We are now suing the laboratory that turned in the question-

able results.

I can't prove it, but I can't help feeling that, behind the scenes,

some people in Major League Baseball were working to help

bury me—to keep me in jail as long as possible. I've heard as

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much from people who were in a position to know, and I believe

them, even if I'll never be able to convince the world of what was

actually going on.

Think about it: When I was arrested after that bar fight, it was

because I was defending a woman. But now we're going to a civil

trial, and the case against me is based on their claim that steroids

have made me aggressive. They're trying to make it out that I go

to nightclubs all the time, beating up men and women alike.

The only people who really stood by me when I was in prison

were my brother, Ozzie, my dad and my sister, and my nephews

and niece. Everyone else disappeared. That taught me a lot.

And because of it all, except for my probation visits, I will

never again set foot in the state of Florida.

256

At first I felt like a cheater. But I looked around, and

everybody was doing it.

KEN C A M I N I T I

Of all the bad information that's been spread about

steroids, one of the worst misconceptions is the idea that

everyone who takes steroids loses their mind and turns into a

nutcase. People who know me will tell you that I'm a very

calm, even-tempered individual. It's very difficult to piss me

off. I've had times when I've gotten angry, sure—but who

hasn't? That has nothing to do with steroids. I mean, seriously,

if a person is taking steroids, he's not ever allowed to get

angry? And if he does, then it's got to be "'roid rage"? To me,

that's just ridiculous.

Even people close to me have wondered whether steroids

would eventually change my behavior. My second wife, Jessica,

used to ask me all the time whether she should expect to see the

steroids producing any side effects. I told her not to worry about

it, and gave her a primer course on the nature of steroids and

how they work.

I've never seen any sign of this so-called 'roid rage in any

other baseball players, and I've never felt anything like that af-

fecting me. Does using steroids ever alter your moods? I'm sure

in some ways it can, yes. Any chemical, if used incorrectly, can

alter your mood. Then again, a lot of things can do that.

Spending too much time in traffic can do that. Or eating too

much of one food. But people love their stereotypes, and the

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steroid-crazed athlete is one that's been spread by the media

for years.

The anti-steroid crowd has gone to some lengths to convince

the public of the emotional dangers of steroids. But there's al-

ways a specialist in a white coat out there somewhere to verify

such a claim. Do such specialists really know more than I do,

after personally experimenting with steroids for twenty years?

No way. They may know what the books say, but have they felt it

in their system? I know what works and what doesn't, through

experience. I've never had mood swings, and I've never been

afraid I would get them from steroids, either. I'm just not that

kind of guy.

It's all about knowing your dosage. Baseball players don't

need to take steroids in amounts so large that the chemicals

themselves begin to change. Baseball players—at least those who

know what they're doing—are shooting more for stamina and

strength than for sheer bulk. It's when you see a guy gaining 100

pounds in a year that you have to worry—and, yes, there have

been a few guys who have gone a little overboard.

I was very sad when the news came in October 2004 that Ken

Caminiti had died, in New York, under questionable circum-

stances. I couldn't believe it, and like most people, at first I didn't

know what to think. But I knew Ken had been having a lot of

problems with drugs. Cocaine will kill you faster than anything.

It's just so sad to see a fellow baseball player pass away so young.

Ken was just a year older than me, and broke into the big

leagues only a couple of years after I did, but he spent his whole

career in the National League and I spent mine in the American

League, so I never really knew him. He was a big, powerful,

good-looking guy, and always kind of quiet.

I remember being surprised when he told Sports Illustrated

that he had used steroids. The timing seemed strange, and I

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Did He or Didn't He?

wondered why he did it. I just couldn't understand; he didn't

seem to have anything to gain by revealing his usage. Later, after

he died, you heard all kinds of talk that his death was somehow

related to steroids, even though no one had a shred of proof. To

me, Ken Caminiti's death was a real tragedy—someone so full

of life dying so young—but if people want to link his problems

to his experimentation with steroids, they're barking up the

wrong tree.

People always mention Lyle Alzado, who died tragically of a

brain tumor, as another supposed steroid tragedy. But how do

they know that? Scientists have done a lot of research, and up to

this time they've never really tied steroids with cancerous tu-

mors. Any time an athlete gets sick, it's easy for the media to

point to steroids. But they're never doing more than guessing,

because there is no scientific proof.

Even after everything I've explained in this book, I under-

stand that some people are going to act like those hear-no-evil,

see-no-evil, speak-no-evil monkeys, holding their hands over

their ears or their eyes or their mouths. But are steroids really

evil? No, they aren't. What is evil, the way I see it, is willful ignorance, or even worse—and even more widespread—the behav-

ior of those who knew just what was going on with steroids in

baseball but pretended they didn't know. They pretended they

weren't involved, even though, as we all know now, nearly every-

one was complicit. To me, the real question is how long people

persisted in sweeping the truth under the rug, instead of facing

the public directly with the facts.

I'm not talking about any one person here. No one person is

ever in charge of anything, not even the United States of

America. A president needs Congress if he wants to get any

laws passed. He needs to deal with the Supreme Court and the

judicial system. Presidents share power in other ways, too, the

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way George W. Bush has with Dick Cheney and Donald

Rumsfeld.

It's no different with Bud Selig, the commissioner of base-

ball. The real power in baseball is dispersed among a whole

host of owners—many of whom apparently weren't inclined to

challenge the players on their steroid use, which was pumping

up their bodies and their home run totals. And then later, as it

became more of a public controversy, they decided together

that they would deal with the potential scandal by denying

everything and stalling for more time.

This book will make it much more difficult for them to deny

it all much longer—at least it will if people start thinking for

themselves, especially the sportswriters and broadcasters out

there who knew all along that this was going on, but never

found a way to report on it.

I don't have any videotape footage of me poking Mark

McGwire in the butt with a needle. But this is my challenge: I'll

take a lie detector test on the subject in a minute, and I'll pass

with a perfect score. To you media types out there who want to

attack me, the way the media has always attacked me, I say:

Bring it on. Take your best shot. Try to change the subject and

turn this into a debate about Jose Canseco, the big Cuban flake.

If that's the only way you can distract people from the fact that

for years you've pretended not to notice the steroid revolution,

so be it.

But if you think I'm a bad guy because I used steroids and

spread the word about them, then what does that say about all

of you? How many of you have tracked down Mark McGwire,

since his retirement, and asked him direct and straightforward

questions? Who has taken a look at him and how much weight

he's lost since he was a player? Pretty hard to figure that one out, eh? Once protected, always protected.

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Did He or Didn't He?

So other than McGwire, and Juan Gonzalez, Ivan Ro-

driguez, and Rafael Palmeiro in Texas, what more can I tell you

about players and steroids?

W I L S O N ALVAREZ

Later in my career, when I was playing in Tampa Bay, I edu-

cated the left-handed pitcher Wilson Alvarez on steroids and

growth hormone, and from time to time I would inject him,

usually in some isolated nook in the stadium. He had a prob-

lem with his weight, and he asked me to help him do some-

thing about that. So I tried to inform him on getting growth

hormones, which can cut fat, and I put him on a lean cycle of

steroids. He actually did pretty well on that regimen and lost

some weight—in contrast to players like Giambi, who bulked

up absurdly.

DAVE M A R T I N E Z

Another teammate of mine in Tampa Bay was Dave Martinez,

born in New York City, who was originally drafted by the

Chicago Cubs. Dave has also played for the Montreal Expos, the

Cincinnati Reds, the San Francisco Giants, and a bunch of other

teams, including the Devil Rays. People who assume that only

sluggers take steroids ought to look at some pictures of Dave,

who was only five foot ten and 175 pounds. He played most of

his career in the outfield.

Like so many others, Dave approached me about steroids.

He's a nice guy, and I was glad to help him out. I injected him

the first few times, just to ease him into it, since he was a little

jumpy getting an injection like that. Nobody wants a needle

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stuck in them, but other than Dave, they were all pretty good

about it. I'm a good injector.

I taught Dave enough that he could continue on his own, but

I don't really know whether he maintained the program or not;

we weren't teammates for that long, and I didn't get a chance to

monitor him over a period of time, the way I did some guys. But

Dave Martinez is a good example of how even a player no one

would ever suspect of using steroids did just that—maybe not

seriously, maybe not for a long time, but more than once and

purely of his own volition.

BRET BOONE

I remember one day during 2001 spring training, when I was

with the Anaheim Angels in a game against the Seattle Mariners,

Bret Boone's new team. I hit a double, and when I got out there

to second base I got a good look at Boone. I couldn't believe my

eyes. He was enormous.

"Oh my God," I said to him. "What have you been doing?"

"Shhh," he said. "Don't tell anybody."

Whispers like that were a sign that you were part of the

club—the bond of a secret code or handshake. You were united

by this shared knowledge, and the experience of unlocking so

much more of your body's natural potential. Still, though,

sometimes you just had to laugh—and it was that way with Bret

Boone. Sure enough, Bret used his hulking new body to go crazy

that season. He practically doubled a lot of his numbers. He

went from nineteen homers to thirty-seven that year, and from

eighteen doubles the previous season to thirty-seven that year.

He had 141 RBIs, after nine years in which he'd never broken

ninety-five in a season. That alone should have been enough to

tell you what was going on, but the reporters covering Bret

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Did He or Didn't He?

might as well have been sitting up in the pressbox with their

hands over their eyes.

A Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist named David An-

driesen actually wrote in May 2002: "Speculation was quiet and

infrequent, though, and we never asked Boone last year whether

his performance was steroid-fueled. Aside from the numbers,

there was no reason for suspicion, and we never saw a hint of

tough-to-hide side effects commonly seen in steroid users."

A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Like a lot of re-

porters with very little knowledge about steroids, and no practi-

cal experience whatsoever, this guy got caught up in the whole

side-effects distraction. In fact, if you use them properly, as I've

mentioned, the side effects usually aren't a problem.

The amazing thing was how obvious it was: All they had to do

was open their eyes and take a look at this little guy, with his small

frame and his huge arms—arms that were bigger than mine! His

great season that year just goes to show you how a new set of

muscles can help an athlete. And those financial rewards weren't

far behind: Based on his performance in 2001, Boone went from

making $3.25 million to pulling down $8 million a year.

Who wouldn't want a $4.75 million raise? Who wouldn't be

willing to take some small risks for that kind of cash?

If I told you I'd pay you that kind of money to swim across a

lake filled with crocodiles, chances are probably even or better

that you'd take the chance. But what's riskier? Steroids or the

damn crocodiles?

The crocodiles, if you ask me. By a mile.

T O N Y S A U N D E R S

One truly sad case was Tony Saunders, a left-handed pitcher

who was my teammate in Tampa Bay during the 1999 season. I

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tried to talk to him. I really did. He was about six foot two, but

when he got going with steroids he just kept getting bigger and

bigger, until he looked like a bodybuilder.

"Listen, you've got to dose that stuff down," I told him; as a

pitcher he needed a leaner, sleeker physique. And he agreed. He

complained to me that the growth hormone and other chemi-

cals he'd been taking had made his body too big, too tight.

But he didn't change his program—and a terrible thing hap-

pened. That May, he was pitching in a game against the Texas

Rangers, and his arm just snapped. It was awful. He broke the

humerus bone, from the elbow to the shoulder, and that ended

his career. It's impossible to know whether steroids were respon-

sible for compromising his bone density—it may be that he just

didn't know his own strength.

When I see things like that, I just shake my head in sadness.

Some people just don't understand the power they're working

with. They get so carried away wanting to get bigger—but

baseball's not about bigger. Baseball is about flexibility and

longevity. It's about recuperation time, maintaining a psycho-

logical edge, and stamina. If anything gives you stamina, it's

the proper mix of steroids done the proper way—not heavy

steroids, which can bulk you up, slow you d o w n . . . or stop

you altogether.

If people want to think of using steroids as cheating—even

with the whole baseball industry in on it—that's fine with me.

But if that's how people are going to talk about steroids, they

should at least keep in mind that baseball players, like anyone

involved in a highly competitive activity, have always looked for

ways to gain an advantage. They have always pushed the

boundaries of what is fair and unfair, what is cheating and what

is just being clever.

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Did He or Didn't He?

Remember Gaylord Perry's mean old spitball? That extended

his career for years.

Or how about corked bats? There have always been players

willing to use a bat that's been filled with cork to give it a little

more spring. I remember talking once with Albert Belle about

corked bats. Belle was a strong man, and it was all natural; he was

one of the very few superstars of that era who never used

steroids, as far as I know. But sometimes he did like to swing a

corked bat in a game.

"Albert, man, you've got to hide bats like that," I told him.

"You know, you're going to get caught if you don't."

He gave me one of those fierce Albert looks that people were

always misunderstanding. "But everybody's using them," he

said. "I might as well use one."

But I think Albert was exaggerating. A lot of us never used

corked bats, and never wanted to. For me, they never worked be-

cause my bats were so darn heavy—thirty-five or thirty-six

ounces. (The one time I swung a corked bat—just for fun, in

batting practice—I cracked the head of it.) McGwire never even

swung a corked bat, I guarantee it. He had corked biceps. Why

would he need a corked bat?

There are plenty of little secrets like that in baseball, things

that most fans don't even know about—until someone gets

caught, the way Sammy Sosa did for using a corked bat in June

2003. When Sammy's bat broke during a game, home-plate um-

pire Tim McClelland decided to make an issue of finding a little

cork among the pieces.

To me, though, the corked-bat controversy was just another

instance of what I've been saying all along: If that had been a

different player, I guarantee that the umpire would have covered

it up. Umps cover that stuff up all the time if they like the player.

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J U I C E D

If it had been an untouchable, a McGwire or a Ripken, then for-

get about it—there's no way any ump would have made an issue

of it. But it was Sammy Sosa. And the whole thing got blown out

of proportion, until it became international news.

Sammy didn't deserve that.

268

I love playing baseball, but sometimes I feel like the

gorilla in the zoo. People watch the gorilla, stare at it,

point at it, trying to figure out why it's doing what

it's doing.

JOSE C A N S E C O ,

October 2, 1989

One thing that always puzzled me was when people used to

claim that somehow I didn't love baseball enough, or didn't

respect the game enough. That's the kind of thing I heard every

so often from outsiders and media people—but never from

other players.

Baseball is the best game in the world.

Believe me, I care about the game; I busted my ass for it. I

played through three back surgeries. I played through elbow

surgery. If you play a power game, the way I did, you're going

to have some injuries; that's only natural. But I always tried to

play to the best of my abilities. I always worked to honor the

game.

I never sat out with a minor injury or anything like that.

That's another thing people don't really recognize. They don't

know what it's like to have to go out and stand up straight so you

can hit more home runs after three back surgeries. That's what I

did—not just for my career, but for the fans, and for the game.

No game in the world can match baseball, in its pure form.

But as a sport, organized baseball has its problems. Sure, the

owners turned a blind eye to the steroid revolution because they

felt they had to do something to save the game. And, sure, I can't

stand their hypocrisy in claiming ignorance. But steroids are not

the problem with baseball. No, the real problem is: Baseball

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doesn't know how to sell itself to people. The people involved

don't seem to care about giving the fans what they want.

Even to this day, I have a big following among fans. They re-

member the excitement I generated back when I was MVP—the

forty-forty man who dated Madonna and kept the headlines

coming. There was always a buzz of interest around me.

Whether it was during batting practice or during the game, I

created a stir wherever I was.

I know all this sounds immodest, but I'm not trying to blow

my own horn here. My point isn't that I was the world's best

player. The point is that I was an entertainer, I knew it, and I

never had a problem with it. I've always considered myself that

way; I've always told the media: We're all entertainers, or should

be, anyway.

Besides Bo Jackson, who came along the year after I did, there

were no athletes my size that could perform the way I could.

That just wasn't how baseball players were built. There was no

one who could run as fast as I could run. I remember racing

Rickey Henderson and beating him constantly. "I'm not going

to race you any more," he told me. "I'm embarrassed to let a guy your size beat me." Rickey was one of the fastest guys in baseball—yet despite a forty- or fifty-pound weight difference, I was

actually faster than he was. Besides Bo Jackson, I was hands

down the biggest, fastest guy in baseball. The fans knew it, and

they loved it. It brought more excitement to the game.

I could be entertaining even when I was controversial—or

maybe I should say especially when I was controversial. That's

why, when those fans in Boston started chanting "Steroids,

steroids," I just turned and flexed my muscles at them. I knew

they'd go nuts, and they did. They didn't have a problem with

me being on steroids. They just wanted to have some fun at the

ballpark. And I gave it to them.

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The Future of the Game

I truly believe that most of those fans would look at me and

say: We came out here today, and Jose gave us our money's

worth— whether he hit a few home runs, or struck out, or flexed for us. They liked seeing me walk out on the field looking

good—six foot four, 250 pounds, tall, dark, and handsome.

They liked watching me move, watching the way I ran. And

they loved it when I did something out of the ordinary to get

their attention.

The fans were entertained by watching guys like me, or Bo

Jackson, or even Ken Griffey Jr., though he wasn't flashy. Randy

Johnson, with his stature, was an entertainer; so was Roger

Clemens. Those were people who made it worthwhile for fans to

come out and pay for their tickets and parking and hot dogs and

sodas. They're the people who made the fans feel: Today, I got

my money's worth.

Back in the 1980s, the Oakland A's were a team that delivered,

game after game. Mark McGwire and I were the most intimidat-

ing duo in baseball—not to mention the biggest. People still tell

me today: Jose, when you came up to bat, no matter what you did,

we just sat still and didn't move. Nobody got up to get food, or go to the bathroom, because they didn't want to miss something

extraordinary, like a ball being hit 550 feet.

That team was like a juggernaut. And believe me, we made

the most of it—on and off the field. Our theory was to go into

cities and have our way. We went out in groups, and the women

were everywhere, ready to jump into our limousines and go

with us. On the team bus after the game, we'd watch them as

they chased us in their cars, flashing their boobs or throwing

their underwear at us. Sometimes they'd be sitting in their cars

naked. It was crazy. We were like rock stars.

We had a presence, those teams. Whether we were going to a

nightclub or out to dinner, people knew we were there. It was a

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J U I C E D

team of characters: Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco, Rickey Hen-

derson, Dennis Eckersley, Dave Stewart, and on and on. We had

all the show guys in baseball, each one of them with a different

character and an interesting background.

I think that's what the game is missing now. I think baseball is

struggling again, and it'll keep struggling if some major steps

aren't taken to stop the erosion. Baseball needs leadership, and it

needs imagination. It needs to remember that this is a game

about individual athletes, not just money and ballparks and

stats. It needs to encourage its players to turn themselves into

entertainers, and look for new players who are born that way.

And the teams have to learn how to market their players that

way—the same way pro wrestling does.

Of course, there are limits to the approach. As in any other in-

dustry, including basketball or movie making, not everyone is

going to be marketable. Barry Bonds is marketable. Alex Ro-

driguez is marketable. Those kind of players have extraordinary

talent. But baseball needs to do a lot more to bring out those

personalities. The only way to do that is to hire a completely dif-

ferent marketing entity, outside of the Major League Baseball

power structure, and market the stars of baseball in a fun, clever,

unpredictable way that really gets people going.

The strategy of relying on steroids for bigger numbers and

bigger players worked—at least for a while. It gave baseball en-

ergy and excitement when that's what it needed. I'm sure

steroids will always be part of the game. But steroids alone aren't

enough to keep the game afloat, and it's clear that the powers

that be have realized that.

They blackballed me from the game because I was the

Chemist—the godfather of steroids in baseball. They looked

up and realized that the players' salaries had gotten too high,

and the players themselves had gotten too big and strong—all

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The Future of the Game

because I started things off by educating a handful of influential

players on steroids, and showed them how to use them properly.

All kinds of records were being broken, and the old-timers were

complaining about how the new records were tainted. The

horses were already out of the barn, but they sent me packing

anyway.

Now, I'm sure they're wondering how to get steroids out of

the game—how to herd those horses back into the barn. Their

first step was to cut off the individual who brought it in—the

stud, the buck, whatever you want to call him. By doing that,

they hoped to send a signal to everybody: Canseco's out. Better

clean up your act, or you'll be next.

As always, though, the real reason they want to stop the

steroid revolution is that these more powerful players were cost-

ing them too much money. Not that they're going broke: The

owners may say they're losing money every year, but if the fans

understood how many billions there are in TV money—if they

realized that teams would be making thirty or forty or fifty mil-

lion dollars a year even if they never sold a live ticket to a

game—they would be amazed. Tickets and concessions? That's

just icing on the cake.

But that doesn't stop the owners from crying poverty. The

truth is that some teams are making an astronomical amount

of money, while other teams are only making a lot of money.

And everybody wants to get into the astronomical club. The

Milwaukee Brewers want to make as much money as the New

York Yankees, even though the Brewers are fielding a brutal,

horseshit team. It's beyond me. Every team comes in at the

beginning of the year and declares that they've put together

the best team in the league. But the players know what a load

of bullshit that is. Just look at the players they're spending

their money on, and you can see that many of them aren't

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even trying to win—never mind putting together a world-

class team. They're trying to save money. They don't really

care about giving the fans what they want.

Baseball needs to change, but I don't know if it will. I would

never buy a baseball team, because I probably wouldn't agree

with most of the things the other owners were doing. I could

never agree to blackballing players, the way they blackballed me,

or colluding against players.

The owners are constantly being caught out in their dirty lit-

tle tricks. Last year, after they were caught colluding again, I re-

ceived a check from Major League Baseball for $290,000 as part

of the settlement of a long-standing salary-fixing case. People

blame the commissioner, Bud Selig, for this kind of problem.

But I don't really think he has that much authority in the first

place. No one individual ever really controls a big organization

completely, and it's the same in baseball: The brotherhood steers

the ship. That's why when the owners collude, they all get caught

together. It's also why it's hard to believe that baseball will really

change its stripes—unless there's a major shakeup.

276

Genetically, I wasn't dealt the best hand. That's not to knock

my father, or his father back in Spain, or all the generations

that went before. My dad is smart, and he passed his brains on

to us; in the end, that's what matters most. But when it comes

to my body, I'm here to tell you one thing: Despite what we're

all used to thinking, genetics is not destiny. It's a starting point,

that's all.

Look at me. See me on TV, or in the newspaper, and you'll see

that we do have choices in life about how we want to look and

feel. If you don't mind turning forty and feeling worn down and

powerless, and looking like someone on the down slope to the

nursing home, that's your choice. But if you want to head into

your forties feeling strong and active, and looking as good as

you ever have, the way I do, you can choose that, too.

I have chemically restructured my body, giving myself one of

the best physiques in the world and enabling myself to do things

at forty that most twenty-year-old kids couldn't do. Best of all, I

have prepared myself to maintain that body for years to come.

My strength, vitality, and appearance are my best argument for

what I'm saying. If I were exaggerating the effect that growth

hormone and steroids can have when used properly and care-

fully as part of a program of weight lifting, fitness, careful nutri-

tion, and clean living, then why would I look and feel as good as

I do?

J U I C E D

The only answer is, I'm telling the truth. So please keep that

in mind as you see me out there talking about the future of

baseball, and you see the sportscasters and media types who I

know are already preparing to take their best shots at me, with-

out even bothering to read this book and think about what I've

said. I don't care much about the blowhards on TV; that's their

job, to shout at each other in high-pitched voices and look self-

satisfied.

But I do care about you out there—regular people with good

sense. And all I ask is that you trust your own instincts. I think

people know when they're being told the truth, and when

they're hearing lies. And I'm sure that the truth in this book will

shine like a bright light for anyone who isn't willfully blinding

himself to it.

All I'm saying is that the lives we lead are the product of the

choices we make. What I've learned is that there is a way to stop

the aging process, or at least slow it down by 90 percent. If you

stick with a program of good nutrition and a consistent ap-

proach to fitness, and know the right mix of steroids and growth

hormone to take, you should be the same at fifty years old as

you are at thirty.

For me, turning forty was a great experience. It felt like a cel-

ebration, not something to worry about. I can't emphasize it

enough: If you look good, feel good, and have energy, life after

forty is full of promise. I fully believe that in the future, as my

ideas are accepted, more and more people will feel the same

way.

We've still got a lot to learn about the power of steroids. I'm

sure new chemicals will be developed in the coming years, which

will open up new possibilities we can't even imagine at this

point. As that happens, and other people experiment on them-

selves over time, I expect we'll see human beings commonly

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Epilogue: Forever Young

living to be a healthy 120 or 130 years old. What is aging, after

all? Any of you out there who think you have all the answers on

that one, go ahead and take a step forward.

The truth is: Even the top scientists really aren't sure exactly

why our DNA starts breaking down after a certain huge number

of cell divisions. What role can systematic use of growth hor-

mone play in resetting our bodies' natural lifespan? Nobody

knows, but it's going to be interesting to find out, that's for sure.

Stem cell research and other developments in biomedicine and

biotechnology will only accelerate the trend toward longer lives.

If you think about it, such developments will surely bring all

sorts of new challenges for the world of sports. Before too long,

the sort of physical changes we've seen because of steroids and

growth hormone could look like nothing. With the many mil-

lions of dollars at stake in sports, athletes will always pay for the

latest edge they can find. Genetic engineering and gene therapy

could push science to make bigger and stronger athletes than

even now. Maybe the combination of genetics and steroids can

make a superhuman athlete. It's just a question of working out

the science.

One thing is for sure: Ideas like age and life span are totally

relative. Having cracked a few books in my day on the subject of

steroids and related areas, I know scientists believe that as re-

cently as ten thousand years ago most people didn't live past

thirty years old. Wrap your mind around that one: Back then

you were lucky to see thirty. What we're seeing now is just the

natural extension of a long trend toward longer and longer life

spans.

Civilization started, after all, when cavemen figured out how

to use tools. They learned to work with flint so they could make

sharp points to put on the end of their spears, and that techno-

logical step not only enhanced their lives, but increased their

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J U I C E D

time on this earth. Isn't that really just the first step toward ap-

plying technology to our own bodies? Some time later, a new

group of cavemen figured out that there were useful properties

associated with certain herbs they'd come across. Some herbs

helped calm the stomach. Others helped bring down a fever.

Those discoveries, and others like them, led to longer lifetimes.

There have been a lot of big discoveries along the way since

then—right down to penicillin. The point is, at every step along

the way, there have always been naysayers—people who thought

the status quo would always remain, even though the lessons of

history teach us otherwise.

For example, one so-called expert named Louis Dublin made

an interesting prediction back in 1928. He said he was certain

that life expectancy would never be more than 64.75 years.

That's pretty priceless, guessing down to the .75 like that; you

can just imagine how he worked it all out with a slide rule. He

was wrong, of course. He was a fool to imagine he could place

limits on human progress and human potential. As recently as

2002, life expectancy was 76.7 years—and only an idiot would

expect it to stop there. A recent article in the magazine Science

predicted that average life expectancy will reach 100 sometime

around 2060.

For that to happen, of course, the human race will have to

break certain bad habits—things that are truly harmful to the

body, like smoking cigarettes. We will have to change as a cul-

ture to eliminate our addiction to high-pressure lives, and our

fetish for stress. The problem with stress is that it takes its toll on

your body and your body's ability to maintain itself. We'll have

to find a way to get our act together and clean up the chemicals

in the air and the water that bombard us all the time. Chemicals

can rob us of life as surely as they can enhance our lives. You just

have to know how to use them.

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Epilogue: Forever Young

We're due for an open discussion about our attitudes about

using chemicals to give ourselves a better quality of life, and I

hope this book helps make that national discussion more honest

and revealing. It took me some time to think about what I

wanted to say in this book and compose these chapters, but

things have a way of working out, don't they? If you're reading

this as the steroid controversy is picking up in the new season, I

hope it'll help you get beyond the headlines to something closer

to the truth—the way we, the players, lived it.

The biggest and most important of those controversies has

probably been the one in California over the lab that allegedly

supplied Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, and a

bunch of other top athletes with designer steroids. The more

people learn about the nutritional supplements company known

as the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO), the more

they understand what cutting-edge stuff we're talking about

here. The important thing to know is that, according to press re-

ports, BALCO was doing it right: They were giving blood tests to

Bonds and Giambi and the others. As I've been telling people for

years, that's the only way to design a cycle that's right for you—

to know the details of your body, your different hormone levels,

and tailor your dosage accordingly.

The San Francisco Chronicle has come a long way on this sub-

ject over the last fifteen or twenty years. It was the Chronicle that helped create the public image of me as a dangerous criminal,

from that overblown 1989 headline CANSECO ARRESTED—

LOADED PISTOL IN HIS JAGUAR on down. But you've got to give

them credit for being one of the few papers to do any serious re-

porting on the rise of steroids in baseball. When they ran those

two big stories in December 2004—one saying that Jason

Giambi had testified to using steroids, the other reporting that

Barry Bonds had told the grand jury he used steroids without

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J U I C E D

knowing what they were—the reality of steroid use in baseball

finally hit home, even among longtime doubters.

Ever since those two Chronicle stories hit the stands, people

across the country have finally begun to talk about steroids as a

reality, not just a dark rumor. The week after they hit, you finally

saw prominent media people admitting that the presence of

steroids in baseball had been swept under the rug. That was

when Howard Kurtz made his point about the media on his

CNN show. "But in fact, when Mark McGwire broke the home

run record with seventy homers back in '98 and Bonds with sev-

enty-three broke that record, those were great stories," he said

on December 12. "Maybe nobody in the press wanted to inter-

fere with what was a nice story for baseball."

That was a big step forward, and I hope the discussion sur-

rounding this book will be the next one. Ultimately, it all de-

pends on whether people are looking for answers, or just settle

for pointing fingers and assuming they know more than they re-

ally do.

As for the BALCO case itself, it's hard to know which way it will

turn. Usually when a legal case ends up becoming a media circus,

the way this one has, nothing much pans out in terms of prosecu-

tion. That's often why these leaks start in the first place: The case

isn't as strong as prosecutors would like. Barry Bonds is smart, we

all know that, and if he keeps denying that he ever knowingly used

steroids, he'll be in the clear. The only issue that Bonds will have to

face is the question of whether he perjured himself in front of that

grand jury. If he's careful, he will be fine, but if he says something

that contradicts his sworn testimony, he could end up doing some

time in jail. Having been there myself, I hope for his sake that

doesn't happen.

No matter how this BALCO case works out, the one thing we

can all agree on is there's no going back to the way it was before.

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Epilogue: Forever Young

There's no more pretending. What we have to look forward to is

a world where honesty about steroids is the only policy.

The challenge is going to be demonstrating to people that

steroids can be a good thing.

I've never said it will be easy to educate the American public

about all this, to get them to accept what biochemistry and

biotechnology can do to change our lives. We're really only get-

ting started on that national conversation, and we're in for an

awkward period as the revelations about steroids start to sink in.

In the short term, you can count on plenty of people urging

baseball to crack down, to wipe steroids out of the game.

What I'm hoping is that some more intelligent, forward-

looking voices will come out and urge baseball to embrace the

potential of steroids—to fight for their place in the game, and in

our lives.

As for me, I plan to enjoy the freewheeling debate this book

will help unleash. I've said again and again that the reporters who

covered me were blinded by their own biases and prejudices

about me as a Latino, and never got to know me. They thought

they understood me, but they were really just shouting in an echo

chamber, reacting to an image they helped create. Those same

people have been putting out the word that I've written this book

out of desperation. And you know what? They can think what

they want to think. I don't really care about all that anymore.

Life has taught me so much about myself, and made me ap-

preciate what really matters. When I was in prison, I vowed that

when I got out I'd make the most of every day and appreciate

every minute I could spend with my daughter, Josie. A vow like

that is something you never forget; our time together is the most

important thing to me. She has me wrapped around her finger,

but so what? She's not the first beautiful little girl with a big per-

sonality to have a daddy who loves her to death.

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J U I C E D

Do I think about the disappointments I've had in life? Not

much. I still wish I'd had a chance to reach five hundred home

runs in my baseball career, which would have put me into the

Hall of Fame; all it would have taken was one more season, if a

single organization had given me that shot. But what's done is

done. I'm through looking back on all that. What matters is

looking forward to the years ahead, to watching Josie grow up,

and to the fresh challenges that will await me in my work life.

I've always had a lot of fans who stood by me through ups

and downs, and also a lot of detractors. To both groups I'd say:

Don't you worry about Jose Canseco. I've been through a lot in

my life, but despite everything I'm doing just fine. I may not be

a hero, but I'm not the bad guy they made me out to be, either.

Accept me as I am, the way I've learned to accept myself—and

you may just find you're in for a few surprises.

284

There are many people to thank for making this book possible. I

would first like to thank Major League Baseball for giving me

the opportunity to play the game I love—as well as for their

crazy politics that has made the content in this book necessary.

Thanks to Doug Ames and Michael Wallman. Thanks to Judith

Regan, Cal Morgan, Daniel Nayeri, and the entire team at Regan-

Books. Thanks to Brian Saliba. Thanks to Steve Kettmann.

Thanks to Bret Saxon. Thanks to my entire family, who's always

been my support group: my brother, Ozzie; my father, Jose Sr.,

my sister, Teresa; my niece, Barbie; my nephews, Frankie and

Jessie; and my dog, Zeus. And a special thanks to the love of my

life, my daughter, Josie.