We all knew something was going on in the mid 1980s when almost every ballplayer looked like the Incredible Hulk. The super-sized muscles can be summed up in one word: Steroids. I’m not saying that players of other generations and other sports didn’t use performance enhancers, because they did. How else can you explain a 20 inch bicep? However, baseball became the poster child of steroids after Jose Canseco wrote his book “Juiced”.

In Canseco’s book “Juiced”, he alleges that not only did he use steroids, but other prominent players used steroids too. In Juiced, Canseco says that he and fellow teammate Mark McGwire were never buddies and that the only thing they had in common was the use of steroids. Canseco also admitted that if he didn’t take steroids, his career would have faltered a long time ago. (I almost pulled my hair out when the value of my Canseco baseball cards plummeted.)

Tony LaRussa was Canseco’s manager during his time with the Oakland A’s. In an interview, LaRussa says he questions Canceso’s ‘confessions’ of other players using steroids. “First of all, I think he’s in dire straits and needs money” LaRussa said. “I think secondly…I think there’s a healthy case of envy and jealousy.”

Jose Canseco also adds that he’s the “Godfather of Steroids” and that not only did they make him stronger, but steroids helped him maintain a young, vibrant look. In the hundreds of pages devoted to the wonders of steroids, Canseco chronicles only a single moment of heartbreak. When his daughter Josie was still an infant, Canseco’s estranged second wife Jessica, the Hooters girl, disappeared. He called a friend at one of the airlines, who managed to track Jessica to Kansas City. When Canseco finally reached Jessica, she had left him for another jock: Tony Gonzalez, tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs. Canseco was torn apart. He walked to his bedroom closet and pulled out a Street Sweeper shotgun. Canseco says he used the gun to shoot sharks when he went deep-sea fishing. Anyway, Canseco had the Street Sweeper and was ready to do himself in when a tiny noise called him from despair. “Something had decided that it wasn’t my time yet,” he writes. Maybe it was his infant daughter. Maybe God. Or maybe this is just a hunch it was the steroids, calling to save their champion.

Canseco should have manned up and admitted his steroid use several years ago.

-John A. Roberts

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Tags | Baseball, Jose Canseco, Juiced, Mark Maguire, MLB, steroids