current reading

i was reading jose canseco's book Juiced : Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big that just came out.. details on the book can be found here at amazon

as a baseball fan i can't help but have something to say about canseco's book and its description of a pervasive almost rampant culture of use of steroids and human growth hormone within major leage baseball.. the book has caused a national furor most likely because its the first expose of major league basball (on this issue)..perhaps because canseco is quite candid and descriptive.. perhaps because canseco has always been a media figure.. canseco has hawked his book on radio and television (including a 60 minutes story the day before its publication) and its become a national bestseller...

originally when i read the book i thought steroids would be just a small part of the book but it is primarily about steroid use... everything sort of revolves around the dreaded 'roids...

its been comic to see one after another of the parade of players implicated in the book by canseco coming out with responses to distance themselves from canseco: "I knew him only when i was 13" or "i barely talked to him while we were teammates" or "i haven't talked to him in years..".. or "he was never my friend"....rather unbecoming...

there is little doubt canseco ain't a likable guy.. that he's kind of an egomaniac.... that he thinks he's always the fall guy...etc..but after having read his account i'm sad to say, regarless of some of the media's attempt to discredit the story by killing the messenger, i believe him... i believe the story of a rather sorry disreputable figure: jose canseco...no doubt there are loose ends, some falsehoods, etc...and i am made uncomfortable by canseco's glorification and justification for the use of steroids but i do think he makes a convincing case that there was a lot of steroid use or "juicing" beginning in and about 1986 and rapidly expanding in the late 1990s...its a real shame but the reality seems to be that almost without doubt mark mcgwire, barry bonds and pretty much almost any ballplayer who reached 50 home runs in a season was juicing...brady anderson for example with his season with more than 50 home runs which came out of nowhere and never came close to being repeating...sosa...giambi (both brothers it turns out-today we read that jeremy has joined jason in admitting to juicing).. and perhaps many others..rolen comes to mind..just looking at his physique two years ago i remember remarking how he looked just like mac (mcgwire)! well he probably picked it up from mac who learned some of the tricks from jose..i don't know rolen used or uses steroids but i now have to wonder... mcgwire, as canseco alleges, probably did pass on lessons concerning steroid use to jason giambi....

the thrust of a lot of the media coverage and it seems many baseball fans is "shame on canseco".."what a bastard! to expose his own baseball brothers".. in this war cultured america its not surprising that some seek to extend the "band of brothers" ethos to the baseball field but i don't think the analogy is a good one...its easy to blame cansesco for raining on the parade.. we all enjoy the longball.. and we all delighted in mcgwire's 70 home runs.. even until bonds' recent admission he unwittingly (!) used steroids i was excited by his pursuit of hank aaron's record.. part of me wanted to believe and reasoned that players were more fit.. that stadiums might be smaller.. even that the ball might be juiced a bit... but it seems that even if these facts were all true they would not be as large a part of the explanation for the surge in offensive productivity by major league baseball players as steroids... i understand that many don't want to tarnish the reputation of the game but i say let us focus our blame on the steroid users (and that does of course include canseco too)...

canseco's take is basically that steroids can make an average ballplayer into a great one by adding power/speed through increased muscle twitch/fibers and also by increasing confidence..canseco believes some raw talent is necessary but that steroids can make a good player into a great one and a great one into a barry bonds...he writes that in his case the steroids really did help him go from a skinny kid drafted in the 15th round to major league baseball rookie of the year in something like 2-3 years...he describes his transition from a skinny kid to a muscle man...

i'm not going to spend time writing about canseco's description of his sex life, love for cars, sense of bitterness about a game that did a lot for him (if it was not for basecall jose you would be parking cars in south beach), bragging, etc.. let me be frank: canseco comes off as a first class a-hole..even going to the pathetic extreme of ripping on ben grieves as an incredibly pathetic ballplayer that would have benefitted greatly from jose's tutelage on steroids..jose has his head so far up his ass that he thinks ben grieves is the idiot while the cheater is the smart one... but that is jose's take..he sees nothing at all wrong with use of steroids and in fact sees it as a perfectly normal function of the capitalist system and science... in canseco's world how could you not use steroids if for example as he alleges is his case you had made a promise to your mom on her deathbed to become the best athlete in the world (to use your dead mom as a justification is beyond the pale!) or to hook up for life your starving family in the dominican republic (he speculates on wether this is what motivated tejada to use steroids- in this instance- one of the weaker in the book he makes clear he has no evidence tejada juices)...

but.. again..however shady and slimy canseco may be i think that if we concentrate on what he is saying about steroid use in baseball and look at whats been going on with the BALCO trial in san francisco (which directly touches on bonds and giambi and others..)..i think its tough to doubt much of canseco's account...moreover, if we simply look at the game of baseball its tough to dispute that the change in player physiques has been remarkable in the past 20 years....that home runs for a while were flying(and they are back on the way down which is even further proof that players were juicing .. of course home runs will go down now that players are more worried about being caught!..just watch)...the question is how do we move forward with baseball.. canseco seems to feel that players should be allowed to use steroids and human growth hormone.. i'm not sure this is acceptable.. a player should not have to use drugs to be competitive.. canseco, by the way, also argues that steroid use increases your ability to overcome injuries and increases your longevity....when you look at a guy like ken griffey who does not use steroids and you compare him with bonds who does..it does seem a bit unfair that one guy is trying desperately to bounce back from injury after injury while the other guy is hitting moonshot after moonshoot...

one last point: it would be interesting to know, for me, when major league baseball decided that steroid use or human growth hormone use was against the bylaws of the game....perhaps steroids used for years were not against the bylaws of baseball? in that case there is technically no violation... i also believe that while its nice to believe as gammons seems to write in his latest column that all is fine with baseball now that there is active testing of players going on i have no assurances that players are not still utilizing steroids/human growth hormone and somehow masking their presence on tests.. it would be highly naive to believe that because players are not caught they are not using....