and I’ve just barely gotten into it. I just couldn’t resist. Anybody else order it?
RP
Thank god EPO and other like blood boosting products don’t make you into a insane raving bloated ex-athelete who has to rat on his friends to make a buck, just think what that would do to biking.
I guess I’m still glad I don’t know, except for the few that are caught and I know about, you know.
Sad.
That just reminded me of:
Disappointed
Long time dweller first time poster…
Nothing I have heard that Canseco says he did was illegal at the time he did it. I just found out that a recovery drink I’d used for years had ephedra at the time I used it and I had no idea. What’s my point? Nnn… not sure. Back to dwelling.
Actually it was/is illegal to use those drugs unless for theraputic purposes as prescribed by a doctor, it just wasn’t against the rules of baseball. But you’re still supposed to follow the laws.
A last ditch effort to make a buck by nothing more than an average ball player by MLB standards. This whole steroid thing is just made for the media. H E L L O do people really think this is new. The owners know about it, the trainers not only know about it they provide it. And the salaries keep going through the roof. Fact of the matter is that the shame of it all is that it now set a benchmark for others to follow. In other words as a ball player you almost have to do it to reach the level of play guys likes Bonds, Giambi, Mcguire and others have set. Just remember that cream was only for my sore joints. Nothing is going to change, because absolutley nothing will happen to any of these guys other than they get richer. Slap there hand and give them another 100 million dollar contract 
Shit I would take the stuff too, and so would most people given a chance at that type of ticket.
yawn
What were we talking about?
I’ve heard that there’s a current picture of a slimmed-down McGwire in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.
The important aspects of the book have already been let out of the bag … Ivan & Juan in Texas, Mark and Jason in Oakland.
People can knock (or discredit) Jose in many areas … but not (IMO) when it comes to homers and drug use. I believe he (and Caminiti, etc) are telling the truth about steroids in baseball. Watching ESPN classic for even a couple of hours is very revealing (even just back to 20 years ago).
Jose is proving that when he thinks he has been “black-balled”, he will try and do damage right back onto you.
I can remember a time (late 80s, 88-90 to be specific) when Jose canseco replaced “sliced bread” as the greatest thing on Earth. How quick we forget. Now, we have to look back and wonder how much was Jose and how much was Rx.
McGwire was much larger towards the end than when he hit 47HR as a rookie – record at the time – in '87. He was a pitcher at USC till his junior year. He has always been a long ball hitter … always had injury problems. IMO, “staying healthy” (i.e. recovery) is why McGwire used. Yes, even as a lifelong Cardinal fan, I believe, without a doubt, he used steroids … even while breaking Maris’s record. I find the “out in the open container of Andro” to be very convenient … almost as it were intentional. Hmmmm.
Steroids in sports that test for them are prevalent. I can just imagine what they are like in sports that don’t test for them. Well, Sammy? (Hell, Brady Anderson hit 50 home runs. Brady who? See what I mean?)
More folks had 50 HR seasons from mid 90’s to start of 21st century (2000) than all others combined in 100+ years before. I wonder why? They must have been extra rested post-94 strike.
Rampant.
All of the major superstars have basically admitted some type of use, intentional or not. The only thing that can result from Jose’s book is basically an interesting comment from McGwire … which will do nothing to change history.
I’m only about 30 pages into the book, but here is what I’ve gleaned so far. Canseco is bitter (but we all knew that, right?). I did skip over and read an excerpt from about the middle of the book. In that section, Canseco says that Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post wrote a column about him in 1988. In that column, Boswell accused him of using steroids. At the time, Canseco says he was about to sign a $1 million contract with Pepsi to pitch its products. When the Boswell article hit the streets, Pepsi walked away from the contract, other prospective companies he had been talking to did the same thing, and he never got a penny. On the other hand, McGwire was, according to Canseco, using as well. But nobody mentioned steroids and McGwire in the same sentence. Others were treated similarly. Canseco, the Cuban/Latino ballplayer from Miami, was singled out because of steroid use while the golden boy McGwire stayed under the 'roid radar. McGwire (and others) made millions in endorsements while Canseco was much less marketable. So now he wants to right the ship by exposing everybody.
Also, Canseco says he was not a gifted athlete in his formative years. He didn’t make the varsity baseball team until he was a senior, and was a skinny, slow ballplayer who could hit a little but didn’t have the skills to play in the field. He started taking steroids and turned into a superhuman athlete. And yes, in the first 30 pages, Canseco has referred to himself as a “superhuman athlete.” He believes that steroids made him into the ballplayer he was. He also believes steroids are a good thing and, if used correctly and under proper supervision, will improve a person’s length and quality of life.
These are the two things I’ve picked up on so far. Oh yeah, there’s a third thing: Canseco has an enormous ego. He really likes himself.
Now, let me shift gears for a minute. The thing that most people don’t realize (or ignore) is that during the time that McGwire, Canseco, Brady Anderson (I’m glad you mentioned him, TripleThreat; his name is rarely brought up, but he went from a light hitting leadoff man to a 50 homerun guy overnight – another name that isn’t mentioned much is Lenny Dykstra) and all the others were using, it was not against the rules of baseball to use steroids. All other sports had banned steroids, but baseball did not. So technically, none of the users were cheating. Cheating is defined as breaking the rules. If steroids weren’t against the rules, how did they cheat?
That being said, steroids are against the laws of the land, and Canseco could have gone to jail for possessing and using them. But when was the last time you heard about a professional athlete in the United States going to jail for using steroids? Speeding is against the law, and most of us speed, don’t we?
Though steroids were (and are) illegal, these guys weren’t going to jail for using them. No way. Most athletes who get caught using far more dangerous drugs than growth hormone and Winstrol don’t even get prosecuted.
My point is this: Steroids weren’t on baseball’s banned substance list, there was not testing protocol in place, and these drugs weren’t against the rules of the game. It may have been unethical, maybe even immoral, and it certainly set a bad example for kids. But using steroids did not violate the rules of baseball. I don’t consider what they did cheating. Never have. Now, with testing and rules in place, using steroids is cheating. But until recently, it wasn’t, not in baseball.
What we don’t think about is athletes from all generations have always used whatever they had at their disposal to improve performance. Athletes used to eat bull testicles because they thought it would improve their skills. Some of the greatest cyclists of all time have flunked drug tests, including Anquetil and Merckx. The nature of sport is to improve. There is no question that there are things out there that help athletes do that very thing. And they will always investigate those particular things (or substances).
Given the fact that they could take 'roids and not worry about being tested and/or suspended from the game is simply too tempting. Millions of dollars are on the line. Fame, fortune, records, history – if a non-banned substance can help you achieve these things, who wouldn’t take them?
I don’t think I can honestly say that I would have turned down steroids had I been in such an environment. It would be easy for me to say that I wouldn’t and to take a holier-than-thou stance on the matter. But if I’m honest with myself, it would have been hard to turn down.
I still maintain that we have only scratched the surface of steroids in baseball. It doesn’t matter to me why Canseco wrote the book. (And I don’t think his intentions were honorable by any means.) But I do believe what is in the book is true.
RP