Jose Canseco's Big Shitty Book: Juiced

I just finished reading Canseco's 284 pages of whining, self ego-stroking, tell-all babble. What a piece of crap. I shouldn't even have bothered, and in fact, had no plans to bother, until I saw it sitting on the new arrival shelf at our local public library. I did have to snicker at his notes that he didn't care what people thought of his book, as long, of course, as they paid full price for it. Ha, ha.

He spends most of the book on a central theme: I'm a human, everyone is a human, but boy, am I just about the greatest human to ever grace baseball with my presence. He whines a lot about his performance not being what it could have been, had he not been injured, but he also whines about people saying he was always injured. He insists that steroids, properly administered (he refers to himself as The Godfather of Steroids, also The Chemist), don't increase risk of injury. So how does he explain his persistent injuries? Well, he doesn't: he mentions some of them, like the three back surgeries, but insists that steroids where why he recovered. He pooh-poohs, without any explanation or stated basis, the idea that Ken Caminiti and Lyle Alzado's deaths were steroid related. His only basis for this is a sort of contorted reverse logic: because there was no scientific proof that steroids caused either death, therefore, it is clear that they did not. Hmmmm...

Canseco repeatedly claims he was framed, then railroaded into taking a plea stemming from a barfight where he claims he didn't preally hurt anyone and acted only in self defense by putting his hand out to motion to someone to stop. (Context: he also mentions that he holds black belts in three martial arts: Japanese Karate, Tae Kwon Do, and Muay Thai.)

He insists that his probation violation for failing a drug test was clearly the result of someone swapping urine samples with him. This, at the end of a 284 page book extolling the magical virtues of steroids, and The Chemist's proud use of them?

He insists that he is not only the nicest guy ever, but that he is also not a domestic abuser. This despite admitting that during one argument where his then wife was sitting in the front seat, he reached in front to grab her by the hair to get her attention? That in another incident with another wife, he and she were driving down the road fighting and screaming in SEPARATE cars, and, oops, wouldn't you know it? Their darn cars collided.

He talks about being a fun-loving, easy-going, cuddly guy, then explains away his arrests for carrying loaded firearms on hospital campuses, beating his wives, and just happening to have a machine gun nicknamed "Street Sweeper" in his closet that he was going he kill himself with (he put the gun down on his bed, and decided to cuddle his infant daughter instead. It was left unclear whether he put away the machine gun before cuddling with his daughter.)

Canseco repeatedly refers to his own superhuman abilities, and how amazing he was, and at one point, says he was the greatest player in baseball. He's especially proud of being the AL Rookie of the Year in 1986, and of his 40/40 season: 42 home runs, 40 stolen bases, resulting in his being voted the unanimous American League MVP in 1988. Yes, this is something to be proud of.

But the greatest player in baseball? The most amazing physical speciem to grace the game? A poster boy for why steroid use is so great for professional athletes? HUH? Let's review his somewhat checkered and inconsistent career: he led the league in home runs only twice: 1988 (42) and 1991 (44). He hit over 40 home runs only one other time: 1998 (46), which placed him third on the league.

What else did he do in 1998, you might wonder? He led the league in strikeouts, with 159. (He struck out 1942 times in his career, in 7057 at-bats.) His career batting average is .266; in only three seasons out of seventeen did he hit over .300, and one of these, 1985, with a .302 batting average, he only had 96 at-bats in 29 games.

Canseco go on and on about his running abilities, especially for someone so large and muscular: for example, he brags repeatedly about running the 40 yard dash in 4.3 seconds, and at one point, makes the preposterous claim to have run it in 3.9 seconds (page 231). After those 40 steals in 1988, his next highest total was 29 in 1998, then 26 in 1991, and then only four other seasons did he have more then 10 steals. He was only in the top ten for steals one time, in 1988, when his 40 steals placed him fourth in the league.

How ridiculous are his claims about running? Well, for starters, he only lists his times in the 40 yard dash, a distance/event that the IAAF, track & field's international governing body, doesn't even recognize or record (The shortest distance the IAAF recognizes for world-record purposes is an indoor 50 meters, or about 54 yards, per this excellent article on the official site of the U.S. Olympic Team.) That article goes on to debunk the mythic 40 yard times that many NFL players put up.

In my research, I can't find ANY serious claims that ANYONE has EVER run the 40 yard dash faster than 4.15 seconds, even with extremely questionable timing methodology.

Oh, apparently, Canseco is explaining his ridiculous 3.9 second claim as a typo.

Even more fun/ny: in this article he's quoted as saying he ran a 3.39 second 40-yard dash!

This isn't to say that Canseco's book is entirely without merit: it did bring the topic of cheating through steroids to the attention of the public and the snoozing congress, it also speaks to the undeniable truth of racism in baseball. Sadly, though, Canseco is such a fucking ridiculous clown that the couple of important messages he has are lost in the fog.