Jose Canseco: Roids, Babies, and A Whole Lotta Lies

The first Dodger game I ever attended, I was rather young, young enough to hardly remember the details of the game, and young enough to have been so antsy and impatient and so unfamiliar with the game of baseball that my brother and father and I left after only three innings. We were in right field and playing right in front of us was the right fielder for the Oakland Athletics, a bright faced youth with the name CANSECO printed on his back. Jose Canseco - a man my father foolishly said "Would never make it in the big leagues." He may have been right, had it not been for the drugs and the wicked ego he had that made him the T.O. of his time. A time during which he was known for his 500 foot monster home runs that made it look like his bat was spring loaded, like the ball was made of cheap rubber. He was also named Rookie of the Year, won the World Series twice (Athletics 1989, Yankees 2000), named American League MVP, and an All-Star six times, and named American League Comeback Player of The Year. Yet all these accomplishments are not what he's really remembered for. Instead he's known for the many acts of retardation that have drowned out his shining accomplishments and rusted them over with a brown murky water that has been his personal life.

Namely, he has a thing for steroids.

The two of them met on a warm summer night in Miami Florida, when Jose was only 12 years old. He was chilling by the beach, admiring all the muscle men and their sun burnt bodies, like he always did. There were other boys around him, picking on him, like they always did. They liked to pick on Jose because he was smaller and couldn't play stick ball. Every time he came to the plate the broom handle they used as a bat would swing through the strike zone and hit nothing but air, every time, 1-2-3, Jose would strike out, and they would all laugh and take to making fun. They were making fun of him now, throwing stones at him, and though Jose was hurt, he didn't show them any attention, like he didn't notice them at all. After much bugging they eventually got bored with Jose, and left him to his muscle gazing.

"Oh how I wish I could be like them." He would think. "So pretty. . . and muscular, and strong. Why if I was like them, those boys wouldn't pick on me anymore, oh no. I'd be something for them to gawk at, and they'd all want to hang out with me, but oh no, I'm cursed with these pencil thin arms. . . this disgusting figure." Even at 12 Jose already had a distorted body image. He thought of himself as a scare crow, hideous enough to scare away crows, or a standing match stick you could knock over just with your breath. He was weak. His musings however were ended when his eye was caught by a shady fellow who came out from behind a palm tree near him. He had a bag in his hands. He motioned Jose over with a boney finger, and when Jose arrived he emptied the contents of the brown bag into his whale-bone palm.

"Why do you let them pick on you like that? Why do you let them pick on you like that, when you can have this. . ." The boy looked blankly up at him. "It will make you strong, it will feed your blood and give you the heart of an ox. . . Your muscles will harden as if they were made of rock, and you will stand tall and confident, it will make you everything you've wanted to be."

Everything you've wanted to be. The words hung out over the air right over Jose's head, tempting him. It all seemed too good to be true, could all of his problems be solved with this clear liquid kept in tiny bottles before him? The temptation of it possibly being true won out over the dread of it being false, or maybe even poison. He bought the elixir with stolen money and ran to his home and into the backyard, feet clumping across the lawn to where his clubhouse was kept. It was a place where he could be alone, and it is the place where he first shot up steroids. Four months later Jose could beat up those boys, and he did, and even developed into quite the stick ball player. Although he always dreamed of being a body builder down on muscle beach, fate had chosen him for a ballplayer: he was signed by the Oakland Athletics right out of high school.

The rest is history, like this little gem.

Jose Canseco, seen here May 26th, 1993. Carlos Martinez hits a long fly ball to right field, it comes down like a dead bird and hits Canesco right in the head as he tries to vainly catch it, and it bounces over the right field wall and is announced a home run. Thank God you're so hard-headed, Jose.

The ball produced a welt on his head, and a cancerous retardation started in his brain, one which went unnoticed by doctors and all the brain scans. This coupled with the steroids slowly worked on him, and what once was a promising career, slowly dwindled and was reduced to nothing but scandal and boisterous comments by Jose Canseco, things like "I brought steroids into baseball" and "When I tested positive, it was a scandle brought on by Major League Baseball, they wanted to get rid of me, because I'm the kingpin of steroids." He had spent an entire career building a bad ass image, by sleeping around all the time, beating up his wives, and power housing his way around the base pads, but in reality he was still that 12 year old boy from Cuba, who moved to Miami and fell in love with muscle bound body builders on the beach. He was still soft, even if he didn't know it. And I know this because I met Jose Canseco once, at a bar I can't remember the name of. He was sitting at a table with some friends and women who weren't his wife. He had just finished The Surreal Life, so his fame had been sparked and he was in the public eye again. People were coming up to him asking for autographs, photos, things of that nature.

I had different plans.

"You know I've been to the future?" In my drunken state I took talking shit.

"Really?" He said. Depleting brain mass had made him quite guillible, and the drinking wasn't helping much either.

"Yeah. . . 300 years into the future, and there are no ball players." His face turned to one of shock, he looked as if he may cry. "Yeah no ball players, only wanna-be's, the genes of the game, the blood of our nation's pastime was lost over all those years, after more and more ball players took to steroids, and in turn more and more of them became infertile, until the last "baseball gene" known to human beings was lost. . . Now in the future, the fields are full of fumblers, Bill Buckner's - Right Through The Legs, outfielders that get lost in the sun, catchers that don't catch, pitchers that don't pitch. . . All the genes have dwindled that far.

The collective nuts of baseball shriveled. . . In the future no one goes to see them anymore, nobody gives a shit, its a game that's far too slow in a world far too fast - people don't get it. Even if they did, there isn't talent on the field anymore, they're all like Roy Hobbs after the bullet - gone, washed up, down and out, and its all your fault Jose. . . all your fault. Seeing as how you claim to be the man who brought steroids to baseball. . . Way to gooooo buddy." He started bawling uncontrollably, pulling up his shirt to wipe his tears and leave it all salty and wrinkled and wrung out. He looked like a giant eight year old, who had just been told there was no Santa Claus, there was a dull look in his eyes. His dreams had been shattered.

"Baby want his bottle?" He nodded and went to feeling his pockets for lumps. He got out all of the supplies, and shot himself up with some steroids. It fed him, and as the syringe entered his body his eyes closed, and he cooed just like a baby, safe and warm clutched up against his mother's bosom. The fertility drugs he used, which he claimed to help "enhance performance" had turned him into a crying little pussy who'd break down all tear-eyed after a beautiful thought, or after he stubbed his toe. He had gone soft, in more ways than one.

But that was many years ago.

Now he's a writer, a reality star, and all around - bitcher. If interviewers ask him about ratting his friends out, his roid rage comes through, his veins come to the surface and his face turns beet red - he just about rips his clothing he swells so much. He's written two books, the first one was Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got BIG. A wonderfully retarded tale, all about Canseco, and shooting up in random bathroom stalls, bending over so Mark McGwire can place the needle in his ass. He effectively rats out all of his friends, because Canseco is so retarded, he fails to see that steroids are against MLB rules and regulations. Breaking such rules can mean being banned from the game entirely, banned from the Hall of Fame, etc, etc. He recovered however, with his second book Vindicated: Big Names, Big Liars, and The Battle to Save Baseball. A complete 180 from his previous work, "One of Juiced's central precepts is that steroid use is not in fact a bad thing, as long as the person is being monitored by a physician, and the dosages are small. Canseco believes that steroids can not only improve the game of baseball, but also improve and lengthen our lives." Perhaps with Vindicated, he finally realized being the self-proclaimed Godfather of Steroids would be something that would hinder him getting into the Hall of Fame. . . Who would of thunk it?

He's so blindly retarded, he had found himself to be a total athlete, and even attempted MMA fighting, and fought only one fight. He was defeated in the first round in 1:17 seconds. It was a slap in the face to Canseco, his ego dwindled and his faith in steroids dwindled, but only slightly. For he believed steroids to be a good thing, when monitored and the user is checked by a physician regularly. This may be true, but this could easily be said about anything.

He's so hopelessly retarded that his entire career has been tainted by steroids, and he doesn't seem to understand why its a bad thing. He doesn't have a problem with the fact that he's never shown anyone would he can really do, with his own natural talent.

He's so sadly retarded that he's been in trouble with the law for domestic abuse with his first wife, after he crashed into her car. They got divorced soon after, but Jose didn't care, he still had his true love, steroids. He was also in trouble with the law for smuggling in woman fertility products, which he intended to use to help deal with his "steroid abuse." What he failed to realize was that these drugs were literally eating him alive, and making him more and more less of a man, one pill at a time.

He's so tragically retarded that he was once stalked by Madonna, who apparently had a thing for him, but now is scumming his way around Hollywood with the D-List: Reality Stars. Every once in awhile when he starts to fade away, he "writes" a book about his life and the dirty underbelly, which only further destroys the relationship between him and the rather queer come-over old man commissioner of baseball. By know he's just a parrot that repeats one or two phrases, and his vocabulary is just as limited now, and just as annoying. He lives in the past, because his life is practically over, he'll always been known as Baseball's Number #2 Blooper in its long history.

It is for these reasons iR declares Jose Canseco Completely Retarded.

Jose is still married to his first love, his high school sweet heart, steroids.