Jose, can you say?

By DAVE SCHEIBER

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 11, 2000

[Photo: AP] Former Devil Ray Jose Canseco

Forget the way he could crack balls off the catwalk at the Trop. Jose Canseco's true legacy with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays? It's the way he cracked one-liners and held forth like a guest on Meet the Press.

Alas, the poet laureate of the Rays locker room has taken his act to the Big Apple. He was waived by Tampa Bay and claimed by the New York Yankees on Monday, ending the Canseco era after less than two seasons of power and pain.

His words, however, live on. Cue the national anthem: "Jose, can you say. . . . ?"

On why some players have huge seasons in the final year of their multiyear contracts, reaping big rewards (March 21, 1999):

"It's coincidence. A lot of things are based on coincidence. People say it has to do with Nostradamus, clairvoyance, ESP. It's all bull--. It's the law of averages."

On playing outfield (March 11, 1999):

"Anything can happen. I can bang up against a wall. Sprain an ankle. I can dive for a ball and jam my wrist -- which I'm not going to dive for a ball, but, you never know, I might get crazy out there. You can collide with an infielder. You can collide with another outfielder. A million things. A ball can hit you on the head. Brain damage. All that stuff."

On whether he had a clause in his contract that would pay him a bonus in the extremely unlikely event he won the Gold Glove for fielding (March 5, 2000):

"For about a billion dollars. That's my biggest incentive -- you get a Gold Glove, you get a billion dollars. So if I pay off every player about $50,000. . . . "

On futuristic visions of baseball (June 8, 1999):

"To me, Vince McMahon is a genius for what he's done with wrestling. ... . . . Baseball needs to do that. . . . There are a lot of places on your body you could wear armor, for instance. Baseball has to change. It's happening already. A few years ago, you didn't hear all this (personalized) music for batters. I'm talking 20, 30 years into the future.

"How about this? What if you had see-through bases, and when someone touched them, they would light up?"

On running his own investment firm (March 22, 2000):

"I don't think most people realize I can even speak English, let alone own a business."

On his ribald reputation, which has often preceded him (March 5, 1999):

"It can be funny. I'll go to dinner with someone, or I'll meet someone, and they will say, "You aren't who I thought you were.' And I'll say, "Who did you think I was?' And they say, "Some aggressive, gunslinging, hotheaded Latin lover who drives too fast.' "

On hitting home runs (April 2, 2000):

"People love home runs. Not just home runs, but long home runs. The kind you don't think, "Is it out?' The kind you think, "How far out is it?' The kind where (a hitter) can just stand and watch. It's power. It's strength. It's the complete domination of a baseball."

On the difference between a singles hitter and a home run hitter (April 2, 2000):

"(It's) the difference between fishing in a lake or fishing in the ocean. In a lake, you know what you're going to get. In an ocean, you don't know what you're going to get or how large it's going to be."

On his guest role in a 1998 episode of Nash Bridges (Sept. 29, 1999):

"It was pretty funny because I was supposed to be from some Latin American country and I spoke perfect English. I was in this country illegally and I had to get married to stay in the country. That was scary enough."

On making the All-Star team as a Devil Ray (July 6, 1999):

"I've come full circle. As a baseball player, no one has experienced as much as I've experienced. I was talked about being the best player in the world, hands down, by far, at one point, being this freak that nobody understood. I stood 6-4, 250 pounds and running 4.3 (seconds), 4.4 40s. The first guy to do 40-40 (homers and stolen bases). Then I was, more or less, an outcast in baseball, being completely forgotten. The worst player. A total joke. Washed up."

On playing the outfield, Vol. II (June 8, 1999):

"I don't want to play too well out there -- they'll want me to play every day. I want to give the other guys a chance. I don't want to show anybody up." After the game, he added, "I didn't have any balls bounce off my head or anything."

On what Rays fans could expect in his first season (Sept. 16, 1999):

"If I'm healthy, I don't think it's any secret to anybody. If I was a gambler and you say, "Jose is going to get 600 at-bats,' I'd bet on 50-plus home runs."

On the club waiving him for the first time in his career, instead of trading him (Aug. 8, 2000):

"I would have thought they could have gotten some Twix bars or something for the kitchen."

Times researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this report.

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