Thursday, April 3, 2008

The More you Know

Anyone who follows sports, even marginally, has been exposed to the steroid isue in Major League Baseball. Jose Canseco's book, "Juiced" confirmed what many fans had already suspected about the concept of steroids and baseball. For many, this was a devastating allegation and it opened up a can of worms, the effects of which we are still feeling today. It may not be possible to grasp the full scope of this scandal for many years to come. I, for one, thought that the majority of the finger-pointing would be settled after the Mitchell Report was released, but apparently our good friend and snitch Jose Canseco wasn't finished; a fact he made apparent recently when he mentions in his new book (?!) that he passed along the name of a steroid supplier to Mr. April, Alex Rodriguez. Even though there is a possibility that this is true, I have some problems with both the timing and placement of this new rumor.

When I first heard the news on ESPN, my thought was "Why is this coming out now, as opposed to two years ago? Did Canseco not even read his own book?" I assumed (my first mistake) that "Juiced" would have detailed all of Canseco's dealing with steroids, who he hung out with and how it all went down. I thought, was he walking down an aisle at Barnes and Noble, saw his face on a cover and decide to give it a shot? What was it like a few months later when he stormed into the MLB offices, slammed the book down on a table and say "Guys, I just finished this and guess what I found out? Yeah, I guess I mentioned A-Rod too. Let's take this to the papers."

As I learned more about the allegation I realized that this wasn't some passed over blurb in a previous book, but a topic of a new book that he is writing, which makes even less sense than him not reading his own book. Why make a new book? Books can have as many pages as the author wants. He didn't need to stop at 290. He could have kept going if he had something more to say. How many more pages would he have needed to include A-Rod? Five? Ten? Why not make that first book an even 300? This isn't the Lord of the Rings. Actually, it would be better of it was, because then Canseco could feel free to add monsters, lasers and pirates. When will he complete the trilogy, since that seems to be where he's heading. When will we see "Mark Mcguire and the adventure of the used syringe"? I find it hard to believe that while Canseco was sitting in his log cabin typing "Juiced" on his typewriter he was thinking to himself "Well, I want to unearth all of baseball's secrets for my own gain, but the world isn't ready to hear the whole story. I'll systematically reveal things over four years."

I have alot of problems with the way Canseco and Baseball have handled things in general. We're in the day and age of movies and television and he decides to write a bok. Baseball should have revealed the accused steroid users in the way that "Lost" revealed the Oceanic 6. Every week one more steroid user would be revealed and then Bud Selig and Canseco would have a podcast confirming that the athlete was a steroid user and give hints about the next week's reveal. That's something that want to watch.

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