Hey everyone,

It's been a while since I've emailed you any news. Sorry about that. I
thought I had sent most of this stuff out a couple of weeks ago, but I
guess I forgot. Oops. All the latest post-bar incident news is below
(Jose passed a lie detector test), plus some talk about Jose's investment
company, his chances of making the Hall of Fame, and a paper written by a
member of this list.

The Hall of Fame article includes a surprising Canseco/McGwire
comparison. Check this out:

Player G AB R H HR RBI TB XBH AVG
McGwire:
1874 6187 1167 1626 583 1414 3639 841 .263
Canseco:
1887 7057 1186 1877 462 1407 3631 816 .266

Other than the 121 HR difference, their offensive production is nearly
identical. Surprising, isn't it? Read the entire article for the full
breakdown.

-Mark

==========
This is an except from an email someone sent me, regarding the bar incident

-----
I was at the bar that night and know the two guys that Jose and Ozzie beat
the crap out of. They did NOTHING to Jose or his "girlfriend". From what I
can tell, both the Canseco brothers think that the rules of society don't
apply to them and they can drink to excess and then express their
"feelings" however they wish. According to the Miami police, there are
about a dozen witnesses, none of whom support the "We were the victims" story.
-----

I wrote back asking for more information, but received no response.

==========
From the AP:
Canseco plans to take lie-detector test to prove his innocence
By KEN THOMAS

MIAMI - Former American League MVP Jose Canseco plans to hook himself up to
a polygraph machine next week in front of reporters to prove his innocence
in a Halloween night scuffle at a local night club.

Canseco, a free agent after playing last season with the Chicago White Sox,
said Wednesday he never punched anyone during a night club fracas on Oct.
31 and accused two California men of trying to use the incident to extort
money from him.

"There are a lot of lies being said here and I want everyone to be patient
and understand that all of the truth will be brought out," Canseco said.

Canseco and his twin brother Ozzie were released early Wednesday after
being charged with aggravated battery. Police said Canseco grabbed a club
patron by the neck, punched him and broke his nose. A second man needed 20
stitches in his lip.

Jose Canseco, 37, a Miami native, was charged with two counts of aggravated
battery, a second-degree felony. He was released from the Miami-Dade County
Jail after posting a $15,000 bond.

Ozzie Canseco, who had a brief major league career and played the last two
seasons with the minor league Newark (N.J.) Bears, was charged with one
count of aggravated battery. The Miami Beach resident was released after
posting a $7,500 bond. The Cansecos are scheduled to be arraigned before
Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Kevin Emas on Dec. 4.

Jose Canseco said he would publicly take a lie-detector test next week in
Miami to clear his name.

"This is a typical scam to extort money from an athlete," Canseco said.

Canseco, who was wearing black leather vest and black leather pants, and
his brother were at Opium, a Miami Beach night club, with three women. He
said one of the men violently groped one of the women, so he pushed one of
the men with his left hand but never hit him.

Canseco said his brother began pushing the other man and a scuffle broke out.

"Obviously, I'm the guy with the name here, I'm the one with the money and
I'm the one who's being blamed," he said.

Miami Beach Police detective Bobby Hernandez said the Canseco brothers
"basically beat these guys up, putting them in the hospital." He called the
fight "an anger control problem" and said the former All-Star should have
alerted security instead of fighting.

Police said Alex Pressley, 38, of Laguna Beach, Calif., sustained a broken
nose in the fight and his friend, Alan Cheeks, 33, of Redondo Beach,
Calif., received stitches for a cut lip.

Cheeks referred calls to his lawyer and Pressley did not return a phone
message.

Hernandez said police have spoken to Pressley and Cheeks and 10 witnesses
at the club. The Canseco brothers spoke to police for about two hours
before their arrest.

Jose Canseco has been in trouble with the law before.

In 1998, he pleaded no contest to a domestic violence charge for hitting
his wife, Jessica. He was sentenced to one-year probation as part of a deal
with prosecutors.

In 1992, he was charged with aggravated assault for ramming his vehicle
into a new car driven by his first wife, Esther. He agreed to community
service and counseling.

Canseco is a free agent after hitting .258 with 16 home runs and 49 RBI for
the White Sox last season.

Canseco won the American League MVP with the Oakland Athletics in 1988 and
ranks 22nd on the career homer list with 462.

==========
From the AP:
Look for 2007 to be a Hall of a year
Four first-ballot players could be enshrined
November 14, 2001

You might want to start booking rooms in Cooperstown, N.Y. for the summer
of 2007 right about now. The National Baseball Hall of Fame induction
ceremonies that year will include Cal Ripken Jr., Tony Gwynn and Mark
McGwire. A fourth first-ballot Hall of Famer, Rickey Henderson, might be
joining them, too, though he will be back in uniform next season if
somebody offers him a job. And is there room for Jose Canseco as well?
(Memo to Jose: The nightclub business in Cooperstown is a rather sedate
one.) Would that be the greatest Hall of Fame class ever?...

...Ripken, Gwynn, McGwire and Henderson are no-brainers as first-ballot
candidates, just as Ozzie Smith is this year and Eddie Murray is next year.
What about Canseco? He has been outspoken about sticking around long enough
to hit 500 home runs -- he needs 38 more. He may be running out of chances.
Canseco needed to play independent ball last season before a big league
club, the White Sox, gave him an opportunity. Showing up on police blotters
doesn't help the case for a 37-year-old DH who struck out once every 3.4
at-bats last year (75 of 256).

Still, even if Canseco never plays another major league game he's had the
kind of career that will test how the modern BBWAA voter (including yours
truly) weighs offensive numbers in this age of unprecedented slugging.

I admit I was surprised to see how close Canseco's career numbers in many
categories are to McGwire's. All these years since the Bash Brothers came
together in 1986 (Canseco actually debuted one year earlier), McGwire and
Canseco are separated by only seven games, seven RBIs, eight total bases,
21 runs and .003 points on their batting averages. Take a look at their
brotherly similarity:

Bash Brothers
Player G AB R H HR RBI TB XBH AVG
McGwire:
1874 6187 1167 1626 583 1414 3639 841 .263
Canseco:
1887 7057 1186 1877 462 1407 3631 816 .266

Does this mean that Canseco is every bit the first-ballot Hall of Famer
that is McGwire? Of course not. It reminds me of the Kirby Puckett - Don
Mattingly argument. Mattingly's final numbers were eerily close to
Puckett's, but Puckett had more Hall of Fame-quality seasons than did
Mattingly. A players' final career numbers are but a guideline. How those
numbers are amassed is more telling.

For instance, McGwire finished in the top 10 in MVP voting five times;
Canseco twice. McGwire won four slugging titles; Canseco one. McGwire made
12 All-Star teams; Canseco six. McGwire won four home run titles (not
including the season when he hit 58 while switching leagues); Canseco two.
The comparison starts to fall apart.

Remember, too, that Canseco last played more games in the field than as a
DH when he was 28 years old, back in 1993. He's used a fielding glove in
only 128 games in the eight seasons since. He's essentially been a
part-time player for as long as he's been a full-time player.

Further, let's look at their on-base and slugging percentages:

OBP SLG
McGwire: .394 .588
Canseco: .353 .515

Now the separation between the Bash Brothers has become obvious. McGwire
(.982) ranks 10th all-time in on-base plus slugging percentage. Canseco
(.867) ranks 94th, just ahead of Zeke Bonura.

(A disclaimer: Walks and homers are such a big part of today's game that 13
of the top 25 OPS marks belong to active players. I'm not quite ready to
accept, for instance, that Jim Thome is a better player than was Hank Aaron.)

Dave Kingman holds the record for most home runs hit by a player never to
be elected to the Hall of Fame (442) among those eligible. He also holds
the record for most home runs in his last season (35), a record McGwire
approached this year (29). Canseco is more likely to challenge Kingman than
he is to join Cooperstown's elite Class of '07.

==========
From the Miami Herald
Attorney: Canseco passes lie-detector test to prove innocence

MIAMI -- (AP) -- Former American League MVP Jose Canseco passed a polygraph
test he took to prove his innocence in a Halloween night scuffle at a local
night club, his attorney said Wednesday.

Canseco, a free agent after playing last season with the Chicago White Sox,
answered questions Monday regarding the fracas. Police said the baseball
player grabbed a club patron by the neck, punched him and broke his nose. A
second man needed 20 stitches in his lip.

``The results show that I'm telling the absolute truth and the so-called
victims and witnesses are liars,'' Canseco said. ``There's definitely a
conspiracy going on here.''

Among the questions administered by George Slattery, a forensic examiner
hired by Canseco, were if the baseball player punched either of the men or
if he grabbed one of them by the neck. Canseco responded ``no,'' according
to a transcript of the exam.

Slattery also asked Canseco if he pushed one of the men in the chest
because he feared for his safety. Canseco said ``yes.''

After the incident, Canseco was charged with two counts of aggravated
battery, a second-degree felony.

Canseco said he was at a Miami Beach night club, with his brother and three
women. He said one of the men violently groped one of the women, so he
pushed one of the men but never hit him.

``This is incredible that these people can assault sexually the date I was
with and turn around and try to make us look like the actual criminals,''
said Canseco. ``This is what every celebrity fears most.''

Canseco said his twin brother began pushing the other man and a scuffle
broke out.

Osvaldo ``Ozzie'' Canseco, who had a brief major league career and played
the last two seasons with the minor league Newark (N.J.) Bears, was charged
with one count of aggravated battery. He is a Miami Beach resident.

Jose Canseco, 37, of Miami, has been accused of domestic violence twice. He
pleaded no contest in 1998 to a domestic violence charge for hitting his
wife, Jessica. In 1992, he was charged with aggravated assault for ramming
his vehicle into a new car driven by his first wife, Esther. He agreed to
community service and counseling.

Jose Canseco is scheduled to be arraigned before Miami-Dade County Circuit
Judge Stanford Blake on Dec. 7.

==========
From the Baltimore Sun:

JOSE CANSECO: Looking to expand his investment company while he continues
his major-league playing career, the veteran slugger has changed agents.
Canseco, who needs 38 home runs to reach 500 for his career, switched from
the Beverly Hills Sports Council to Chicago-based Alan Nero. He said his
decision was based largely upon a desire to market his company's services
to Nero's players.

While Canseco, 37, works at his investment business, he also plans to
continue his pursuit of 500 homers, a milestone that would improve his
chances of making the Hall of Fame.

Although Canseco hit 16 homers in 256 at-bats for the Chicago White Sox
last season, he's a long shot to return in 2002.

==========
Lastly, a paper written by Johnny Vines:
big_johnny_v@...
In or Out?
Is there room enough in Cooperstown for Jose Canseco?

He ranks 22nd on the all-time homerun list with 461, and he has sworn to
get to 500 before his career is over. But will Jose Canseco have to hit
that elusive mark of 500 to secure himself a place in Cooperstown? Most
would say yes, but I don't know that "most" have actually sat down to put
Canseco's career into perspective.

There are currently sixteen members in the 400-homerun club, but how many
of these members would consider their feat a disappointment? One
immediately comes to my mind, and his name is, in fact, Jose Canseco. Yes,
Canseco has put 461 balls over the fence (not including the one off his
head), but he has also lost over four years of his career to
injuries. Give Canseco those four years back, and he would almost surely
be a member of the 600-homerun club, not to mention that he would be
chasing 700 homers, not 500. However, Canseco's accomplishments during his
sixteen-year stay in the big leagues are certainly not limited to his
number of homeruns, or as it pertains to him, the lack thereof.

Canseco burst onto the Major League Baseball scene in 1985 for twenty-nine
games. It didn't take long for fans to see that this man could hit the
ball farther and get around the bases faster than just about anyone in the
game. Standing 6'4" and weighing somewhere in the mid-200s, Canseco
possessed the body of a Greek god and was, in fact, the next generation of
baseball player ten years before the rest of the "next generation" showed
up. In 1986, his true rookie season, Canseco clubbed 33 homeruns, swiped
15 bases, and drove in 117 runs to become the American League Rookie of the
Year. Two years later he was named the unanimous AL MVP as he became
baseball's first "40-40 Man", hitting 42 homeruns and stealing 40
bases. Canseco was baseball's homerun king in 1988 and again in 1991 when
he went deep 44 times. For those who say that Canseco's career was over in
the early nineties, they must be oblivious to the fact that in 2001, he
became only the ninth player in history to hit 400 homeruns and steal 200
bases. On top of all this, Canseco has been selected to six All-Star
games, the most recent being the 1999 season.

Some may argue that Jose Canseco's chances for the Hall of Fame have been
tarnished by his life off the field, which includes a somewhat extensive
criminal record. Using this as criteria for immortalizing the names of
players who have, in their time, dominated the game of baseball is a crime
in itself, as is made obvious by the ludicrous fact that baseball's all
time hits leader is absent from Cooperstown, but that's a story for another
day. There is no question that Jose Canseco has made an impact on the game
of baseball. The only question that remains is: Will he make it to the
Hall of Fame? I honestly believe that anyone who can accurately read and
analyze a statistics sheet will tell you that not only is he one of the
great players to ever circle the bases, but Jose Canseco should indeed be
in line to get his one-way ticket to immortality.