Noted baseball historian and former White Sox DH/sparsely-used outfielder Jose Canseco has been making some bold claims to ESPN.com. Specifically:
“Major League Baseball is going to have a big, big problem on their hands when they find out they have a Hall of Famer who’s used.”
To date, Canseco has mostly limited his steroid talk to people he either juiced with personally, or people who he turned onto the sauce during his playing days: Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Ivan Rodriguez, Juan Gonzalez, et cetera et cetera. A quick trip to the most useful site in a sportswriter’s life reveals Canseco was teammates at some point with seven presently enshrined Hall of Famers:
- Nolan Ryan (Texas, 1992 – 1993)
- Rickey Henderson (Oakland, 1989 – 1992)
- Wade Boggs (Tampa Bay, 1999)
- Reggie Jackson (Oakland, 1987)
- Don Sutton (Oakland, 1985)
- Rich Gossage (Oakland, 1992)
- Dennis Eckersley (Oakland, 1987 – 1992)
Now, Canseco hasn’t really misled us (yet), which makes this personally heartbreaking: when I was still young enough to have a favorite baseball player, the first two names on that list above made up my half of my awesome foursome alongside Roger Clemens and Jack McDowell. We all know what happened to Roger, but at least there was some small comfort that the rest of my formative sporting years weren’t wasted trying to emulate guys who would rather I didn’t know how they truly led their lives.
There was a set of baseball cards put out some years ago dedicated solely to The Express, each card detailing some facet of No 34’s personal or professional life, all adorned with images of Nolan on the ranch, Nolan practicing like a madman, Nolan pitching in the Big Game. One in particular had a story on the back about how Nolan’s mom would buy him two pairs of jeans at the start of each school year and wash one pair on the days he wore the other. Nolan, you see, what just like us – just like me!
Looking back, the whole concept looks absolutely ridiculous, but at the time I believed so deeply and so unfailingly in those cards and that version of Nolan. Now, finally, all these years later, the whole thing feels cheap not because Nolan did anything wrong (and let me state for the record, there is no reason to believe he did), but because Jose Canseco went ahead and insinuated that someone of Ryan’s caliber did. You can’t believe him, but you have to.
Maybe Nolan really was a hard-working cowboy, or maybe Nolan was just a guy who knew the right trainer. Maybe Rickey took good care of himself, or maybe Rickey had artificial means of muscle enhancement. Maybe Wade Boggs was a chicken nut and general sex fiend but with the absolute model of a well-developed batter’s eye, or maybe he was aided by an extra half-second of bat speed he otherwise wouldn’t have had. Maybe Eck’s power wasn’t in his mullet but in his medicine. I used to not bother with such inanity; now I, like so many others, just have to know. For the sake of the baseball card collection I haven’t added to for 15 years and the athletic career I gave up on; for every lame attempt at hitting to the opposite field; for every base I had no right stealing; for every batter I hit on purpose; for every dramatic game-winning home run I gave up. I need to know, Jose.
I need to know.