Hello again Canseco fans...

Well, the media frenzy over all this steroid stuff has continued, and
somehow I'm even getting sucked into it now. I've had 3 reporters contact
me in the past few days. What I find particularly amusing is how while I
wasn't misquote, by changing the context of what I wrote, the meaning of my
words changes completely. I wrote much more than just this, but notice the
"spin" applied here.

What's in the article:
-----
"I feel that Jose's admitted steroid use cheapens his career," Mark
Petrillo, 30, an Internet developer from Indialantic, Fla., said on Monday.
"I realize he wasn't alone in his steroid use, but to me, it still takes
away from what he accomplished on the field."

When those words come from the keeper of a popular Canseco Web site
(canseconet.com) and fan club, you know there's a crazy spin on this
baseball season.
-----

What I actually wrote (again, there was much more (notice the "on one hand"
part)):
-----
I realize this is the question you are most interested in me answering....
unfortunately, I'm not really sure how I feel. One one hand, I feel that
Jose's admitted steroid use cheapens his career. I realize he wasn't alone
in his steroid use, but to me, it still takes away from what he
accomplished on the field. How would Jose have done without performance
enhancing drugs? Would he still have made 40/40?
-----

No big deal. Just interesting. I see now how easily people's words can be
twisted.

One more thing before we get to the news... I was personally contacted by
Walter Boyer, the owner of BOOKENDS Book Store in Ridgewood, NJ. That's
Jose's first signing event, and he asked me to invite you all to attend on
Tuesday night (2/22). For anyone nearby, this is a great opportunity to
meet Jose. Here are the details:

-----
BOOKENDS
232 East Ridgewood Avenue
Ridgewood, NJ 07450
Phone: 201-445-0726
Website: http://www.book-ends.com/

JOSE CANSECO - TUES., FEBRUARY 22 - 7:00PM
The hottest Sports Story this Winter is Jose Canseco's "tell all" Baseball
Book, "Juiced" and he will kick off his National Book Tour with a visit
to Bookends on Tuesday, February 22nd at 7:00pm! He will be on 60 Minutes,
Howard Stern, Today Show and Fox TV all this week telling his side of the
biggest scandal in Sports today! Don't miss it...but if you cannot make it,
just call the store to place your order over the phone!
-----

On to the latest news...........

-Mark

==========
The Canseco-fan owner of this blog contacted me and asked me to pass his
link along to you. He's been trying to stay on top of what he calls
"CansecoGate 2005" - click on the links on the right side of his blog to go
back to the beginning.
http://socialdecline.blogspot.com/


==========
From the Arizona Republic:
Canseco is vile, but we must listen
By Paola Boivin
Feb. 9, 2005

Jose Canseco, the man who sold his 1988 MVP plaque on eBay for $30,000,
wants us to buy his tell-all book.

Jose Canseco, the man who auctioned off a few hours in his company when he
was under house arrest, wants us to read about his performance-enhanced
teammates.

I will. In a heartbeat.

Canseco's voice, as smarmy and desperate as it sounds, needs to be heard.
When it comes to steroids, we're at only the tip of this MLB landfill, and
we must hold our noses and weed through the trash until all the evidence is
uncovered.

Think about this: Three baseball MVPs - Canseco, Jason Giambi and Ken
Caminiti have admitted using steroids. Doesn't that cry of a baseball era
in need of a power wash?

Details of the soon-to-be-published book Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant
'Roids, Smash Hits and How Baseball Got Big were reported in the New York
Daily News and include an incident in which Canseco says he injected former
teammate Mark McGwire with steroids in the bathroom stall of the Oakland
A's clubhouse. Canseco also writes that McGwire introduced Giambi to
steroids and that Canseco injected several big-name players, including Ivan
Rodriguez, with performance-enhancing drugs.

No one is suggesting Canseco is a credible source. This is a man with few
friends left in baseball and in dire need of money and attention. He would
be laughed off a witness stand.

That doesn't mean his allegations shouldn't be explored. Hypothetically,
what if Canseco has simply decided to come clean, so to speak? Who put a
time limit on telling on truth?

If Canseco is hurting innocent people with this book, then let's hope the
wrongly accused have their day in court, too, whether it's through a
lawsuit or a full-out assault on Canseco's character.

At the very least, this book is raising questions, questions that aren't
being answered by baseball's steroid policies.

Consider Tony La Russa, who was Canseco's manager in Oakland. Hidden in his
angry rebuttal this week to the book's accusations, La Russa acknowledged
that Canseco often spoke openly in the clubhouse about his steroid use.

Really, Tony? Knowing this information, what measures did you take to
protect the sanctity of the game?

Thought so.

Consider all the players who might be scared straight, and clean, by
Canseco's book. If one of their own had the gall to crack the clubhouse
code of loyalty, someone might again in the future.

If it takes the sensationalistic nature of this book to secure the public's
attention, I'm all for it. If Eminem can provoke anti-war debate with his
song, Mosh, and a silly little ad featuring Terrell Owens can inspire
discussion about NFL hypocrisy, I'm all for Canseco's book rekindling the
steroid debate.

Something needs to light a fire. The result of every poll addressing public
reaction to steroid use in baseball screams indifference, which is bizarre
considering the poetic love we have for the game, a love that has
apparently become dangerously unconditional.

Go ahead. Dismiss Canseco. Just remember: When there's smoke, there's a
raging inferno that avoidance won't extinguish.

==========
From the San Jose Mercury News:
La Russa's credibility on the line
By Ann Killion

This is an interesting two-step Tony La Russa is dancing.

He has been on a worldwide tour as the self-appointed defender of Mark
McGwire's purity, and he's staking that claim to his own credibility.

But, by his own admission, the former A's manager knew Jose Canseco was
using steroids when he was with the team and yet never did anything about it.

Why not? His justification is that it was pointless. The system -- the
league, the players' union, the culture -- didn't want that information.

That's credibility?

Perhaps it is in the world of baseball, where the concern seems to be more
about Canseco breaking "the code" than about what he's actually saying.

What we've learned since Canseco's book hit the shelves is that the tag
"Bash Brothers" was a prescient bit of marketing. Canseco has bashed
everyone he played with. His former teammates and manager are now bashing him.

We've also learned that the A's may have been the first dynasty of the
steroid age, whether you believe all of Canseco's accusations or only the
ones that include himself.

After all, he was the brightest light for a few years, such as 1988, the
year the A's beat Boston at Fenway Park and went on to their first World
Series in more than a decade. He was the league MVP, the
40-home-runs-and-40-stolen-bases superstar.

"Jose Canseco is God," McGwire said that October.

That was the autumn of Ben Johnson in Seoul, South Korea. The autumn that
Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post said that Canseco was suspected of
using steroids and that other players talked about a "Jose Canseco
milkshake." Boswell later said that his source was La Russa.

But Boswell -- as happens with everyone who breaks "the code" -- was
instantly discredited.

"That's a very irritating inference that he took," La Russa said at the
time. "It wasn't anywhere near what I meant. It bothers me that he put me
in there as a source. It's bull."

The charge led to chants of "ster-oids, ster-oids" at Canseco from the
Fenway fans. La Russa's reaction? "I think it was brutal . . . a real cheap
shot."

La Russa is a loyalty guy. You throw at his hitters, he'll throw right back
at yours. If anyone could transcribe the unwritten rules of baseball, he's
the guy to do it.

But was he adhering too strictly to "the code" when he failed to act on his
knowledge of Canseco's use? Did he take it to his boss, Sandy Alderson, the
man who traded Canseco away? If so, what does that say about Alderson, now
a high-ranking baseball executive and a man who could have launched an
investigation?

Alderson told "60 Minutes" that he had heard only rumors about steroid use,
nothing substantive. He also issued a press release Wednesday discrediting
a report by an FBI agent who claims to have warned the league about steroid
use.

The league's position on Canseco's charges is that it doesn't want to deal
with hypotheticals. "Nobody has been convicted or indicted," Commissioner
Bud Selig said.

That sounds suspiciously like the league's stand in September 1988, when
Boswell's allegations were made: "Just because there has been one report,
that wouldn't get us into any kind of investigation. . . . It's an
unsubstantiated charge," was the league's line back then.

All part of "the code."

The other part of "the code" is that it's all about weight training. That's
the fallback Canseco used 15 years ago -- weights and playing volleyball in
the Miami sand. He and Dave McKay -- then an A's coach, now in St. Louis
with La Russa and one of the lead Canseco-bashers -- even wrote a book
together, "Strength Training for Baseball," that came out in 1990. Back
when the A's knew Canseco was using.

We wanted to believe Canseco back then because he was a superstar. So we
don't want to believe now because he's a down-on-his-luck jackass?

In the past week, La Russa's anti-Canseco campaign has been hard to avoid.
He has been on "60 Minutes," "The Best Damn Sports Show," in the op-ed
pages of newspapers. On Wednesday, he even called KNBR radio of his own
volition to talk to Gary Radnich. McGwire, by contrast, has only issued
statements (and by not appearing on television he can prevent the cynical
from noting how much smaller he looks these days).

La Russa is showing his loyalty. He's protecting his former player and his
own reputation.

But the truth is that he won plenty of games with the help of a guy who was
using steroids. La Russa knew it. And he didn't break "the code."

==========
From the Arizona Republic:
Weird stories give baseball a shot in arm - and butt
By Paola Boivin
Feb. 15, 2005

Randy Johnson is with the Yankees. Mike Piazza is married. The Red Sox are
World Series champions, and somewhere in Hades, Lucifer is in pursuit of
thermal underwear.

Workouts begin this week in preparation for a Major League Baseball season
that already has more crazy angles than a Picasso. Leave it to Jose Canseco
and Jason Giambi to send fans into a mad bout of 'roid rage.

"I feel that Jose's admitted steroid use cheapens his career," Mark
Petrillo, 30, an Internet developer from Indialantic, Fla., said on Monday.
"I realize he wasn't alone in his steroid use, but to me, it still takes
away from what he accomplished on the field."

When those words come from the keeper of a popular Canseco Web site
(canseconet.com) and fan club, you know there's a crazy spin on this
baseball season.

Once we shake the unsettling vision of Canseco injecting Mark McGwire's
bare backside, we'll be back. Baseball has that pull. We love the smell of
fresh-cut grass, even littered with pill bottles and used needles, the way
Kilgore loved his napalm in the morning.

We're fickle when it serves the purpose of feeding our baseball addiction.
Have you listened to a Chicago Cubs fan lately? "It's about time the bum
Sosa is gone."

Uh-huh. Aren't you the same guy who kept a Sosa painting surrounded by
votive candles in his closet?

Because of a stellar 2004 season, marked by record attendance and monster
ratings, this steroid scandal is nothing more than a distraction. Biceps
will be smaller but attendance bigger, because David beat Goliath in Yankee
Stadium, which means anything's possible in this suddenly balanced world of
baseball.

A desert team beset by off-season botches has rebounded nicely and, lookie
here, has our approval, which is more than chief operating officer-to-be
Jeff Moorad has from the commissioner's office.

The Diamondbacks also have done their part to contribute to one of the most
anticipated season openers in years. They gave the Yankees Johnson, the Red
Sox Curt Schilling and an April 3 meeting at Yankee Stadium between the
two, a pressure situation so intense it will show up on someone's Doppler.

We'll be back to baseball because we want to see Sammy in an Orioles
uniform, Pedro Martinez wearing Mets colors and Johnson in pinstripes.
Seventeen starters who won at least 10 games last season have new homes.
This wasn't an off-season. It was five months of Extreme Makeover, with
Botox clearly not the injection of choice.

Oops, did we just mention steroids again?

We'll be back because Roger Clemens, 42, is back, after saying for the
second straight year that he intended to retire.

"You got 60,000 people chanting, 'One more year!' That stuck with me," he
told reporters.

Uh-huh. We can think of 18 million other reasons, the highest paycheck for
a pitcher in major league history.

We'll be back because of our fascination with all that is Barry Bonds. Will
he look smaller? Will the boos be louder? And, oh, goodness, did we really
just hear Geraldo Rivera ask Bonds' former mistress, Kimberly Bell, "Are
you a gold digger?"

Did we really just admit to watching Geraldo? Bless me, father, for I have
sinned . . .

What a weird off-season. What's next? Pedro Martinez reporting early?

Oh, wait a minute.