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Canseco a product of an avoidable mess

By JOHN ROMANO
Published February 14, 2005

The steroid mess in baseball has reached a point where it is terribly difficult to withhold judgment.

So on which side will you fall?

Do you believe the liar over here, or the liar over there?

Yes, I know, it's a difficult call. You don't want to trust the liar who is accusing. But you find it hard to defend the liar who is denying.

And it only gets worse if you listen to the liars covering up, or the liars feigning ignorance and shock.

Do you want to know why baseball is being held up today by a cartoon character named Jose Canseco? Because baseball looked the other way for nearly 20 years as players such as Canseco changed the game.

By now, you know Canseco's new book is scheduled to hit stores this morning. You should also know outrage is scheduled to arrive this afternoon, followed by incredulity later this evening.

Folks in baseball will shout about Canseco's blood money motives, his past indiscretions and his lack of credibility. And they will be right on every count. But guess what? Some of them are just as guilty as Canseco.

How does Jason Giambi have the nerve to suggest Canseco is a liar?

If you go by his grand jury testimony, Giambi lied in the past about using steroids, apologized profusely about it without using the word steroids, and now acts as if he's appalled to be linked to steroids in Canseco's book.

Heaven knows if Giambi can still play, but he has a promising career ahead in the State Department.

So, okay, there are no heroes in this tale. No one who looks honorable, no one who is above suspicion. They are cheaters and liars. Enablers and conspirators. They are asking us to believe them today, when we know they were deceiving us yesterday.

Canseco is the lead character. Once, the most amazing player on the field. Now, the most pathetic figure outside the stadium.

Based on early reads of the book, he is the Timothy Leary of steroids. He went from team to team, leaving hormones and muscles in his wake. To hear Canseco tell it, you might think he taught Victor Conte how to use a syringe and introduced the Beatles to marijuana.

When you consider the mess that Canseco's life has become - the arrests, the squandered fortune, the selling of his name, the silliness of claiming to be black-balled - it is hard to take his words seriously.

But when you consider the specificity of his accusations, it is hard to dismiss his words altogether.

In excerpts from the book, and Sunday night on 60 Minutes , Canseco has claimed to have personally used steroids with Giambi, Mark McGwire, Juan Gonzalez, Rafael Palmeiro and Ivan Rodriguez.

All five players issued denials. Yet not one sought an injunction to stop the release of the book. Orioles owner Peter Angelos, an attorney, even offered to provide legal help for Palmeiro.

None of us can know for sure how much Canseco embellished, or if his claims are complete fabrications, but at this point, we can't afford to ignore him.

We've already seen too much. We've already had too many confirmations. In recent years, we've learned three former Most Valuable Players (Canseco, Giambi and Ken Caminiti) have admitted to using steroids.

We saw three players (McGwire, Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa) transform their bodies in dramatic fashion, and go on to hit more home runs in a season than any players who came before.

We've seen line-drive hitters suddenly become sluggers, make their fortunes, then disappear into the sunset.

We've heard of Conte's trial, implicating some of the world's greatest athletes in a scandal involving designer steroids, including Bonds' remarkable grand jury testimony that he had no idea he might have been given steroids.

Each time, the athlete denies using drugs. And each time, it gets a little more difficult for us to believe him.

The real shame is that baseball allowed it to get to this point. Allowed historic records to be held in doubt. Allowed innocent players to have to question whether they needed steroids to keep up. Allowed college and high school athletes to believe this was the route to stardom.

As far back as 1988, Washington Post columnist Thomas Boswell suggested Canseco was transforming baseball into a game where steroids were commonplace. (Canseco, at the time, denied the charge and threatened to sue.)

Yet baseball showed no inclination to investigate. Canseco was a draw, and steroids were not at the forefront of the public's mind.

It would take another 15 years before baseball would begin testing for steroids. And, even now, the policy is the weakest among major sports.

You will never convince me that, during the 1990s, trainers, weightlifting coaches and team physicians had no inclination steroid use was rampant. You will never convince me managers and GMs didn't have their suspicions.

You will never convince me it didn't come to the commissioner's attention that his game might be tainted by illegal drugs.

So, as sickening as it is to see Canseco profit by either lying or betraying confidences, it is just as distasteful to see baseball leaders pretending to be outraged by passages from this book.

They had to suspect what Canseco, and others, were doing.

They had to know their silence was contributing to the problem.

They had to know this day might come.

If Canseco is stretching the truth, I'd say he learned it from the best.

[Last modified February 14, 2005, 01:20:17]