What Jose Canseco wrote about Roger Clemens

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/subwaysquawkers/2008/02/what-jose-canseco-wrote-about.html

February 10, 2008
What Jose Canseco wrote about Roger Clemens
In an apparent response to Brian McNamee having saved DNA evidence against Roger Clemens, the pitchers’ attorneys have launched another salvo against the trainer.

They claim that they can prove that Clemens was not at a 1998 party Jose Canseco threw for the Toronto Blue Jays, the team they both were on at the time. McNamee told Mitchell Report investigators that Clemens asked him about steroids not long after talking with Jose at that party.

Rusty Hardin, one of Clemens’ attorneys, said that Roger was not at the party, and was in fact golfing. He also claims that there is a videotape of Blue Jays’ announcers discussing how Clemens was not at the party.

As this evidence has not yet been released to the public, I don’t yet know how damning this is. What I do know is what Canseco wrote about Clemens in his book, “Juiced.” And one wonders why Clemens’ attorneys would bring up Jose in the first place, given what the player wrote about Roger - and so-called “B12 shots” - in his book. To put it mildly, Jose (and “Juiced”) doesn’t exactly help their case.

Check this out - Canseco writes on page 211 of the hardcover edition of “Juiced” about how steroid use was so “open” in the locker room that:

“…the trainers would jokingly call the steroid injections ‘B12 shots,’ and soon the players had picked up on that little code name, too. You’d hear them saying it out loud in front of each other, ‘I need to go in and get a B12 shot,’ a player would say, and everybody would laugh.”

Canseco then described what was really in the so-called ‘B12 shot’: “a combination of steroids - in most cases Deca and some form of testosterone.”

But isn’t is possible that there could be some players who didn’t know what was really in this shot? Canseco acknowledges that, writing:

“The funny part is, there might have been a few players who didn’t even know what was in the shots they were getting. I never pulled any of them aside and asked, ‘Did you know he’s injecting you with steroids?’ I just assumed they all knew, but looking back, I’m not so sure. There may have been a few who were so out of it that they weren’t even aware of what was going on. You’d have to ask them about that yourself.”

So, couldn’t that be an out for Clemens - that he really thought it was B12, and it was his trainer’s fault? Well, no, given that Canseco mentions the Rocket by name in the very next paragraph, writing:

“It was the pitchers who really kept that ‘B12’ joke going. For example, I’ve never seen Roger Clemens do steroids, and he never told me that he did. But we’ve talked about what steroids could do for you, in which combinations, and I’ve heard him use the phrase ‘B12 shot’ in respect to others.”

Fascinating, given what Roger told Mike Wallace of “60 Minutes” about all those B12 shots he got. Too bad nobody at the time looked at Canseco’s book, and mentioned Jose writing about Roger talking about this very subject.

Canseco goes on to write on P. 212 of his book that Clemens said this about steroid use in baseball:

“‘You hitters are so darn strong from steroids,’ he’d say.

‘Yeah, but you pitchers are taking it too. You’re just taking different types,’ I’d respond.”

He noted that Clemens would often “vent his frustration” over “lesser players” getting hits off him, due to steroid usage, to which Canseco responds in the book: “What could I tell him? All’s fair in love and steroids.”

Jose also wrote this about Clemens:

” I can’t give chapter and verse on Roger’s training regimen. But I’ll tell you what I was thinking at the time.

One of the classic signs of steroid use is when a player’s basic performance actually improves later in his career.

Canseco goes on to talk about how the Rocket’s performance improved after Dan Duquette saying that Clemens was in the twilight of his career.

The other noteworthy thing Jose writes about Roger in his book is that, according to Canseco, “He’s one of the very few baseball players I know who never cheated on his wife.”

Anyhow, I don’t quite understand what Clemens’ attorneys are trying to do here with bringing up Canseco. It’s not just that what Jose wrote in his book about Clemens and steroids not only is completely consistent with what McNamee said. It’s not just that Canseco’s book, which came out three years ago, not only describes a ‘B12 shot’ as a euphemism for steroids, but also quotes Clemens as knowingly using that term.

It’s the fact that according to the AP story about this party, the Mitchell Report “…goes on to say that Canseco told Mitchell’s staff ‘he had numerous conversations with Clemens about the benefits of Deca-Durabolin and Winstrol and how to ‘cycle’ and ‘stack’ steroids.’” This, of course, is absolutely consistent with not only what Canseco wrote about how he and Clemens talked “about what steroids could do for you, in which combinations.”

So it seems to me that even if it can be proven that Roger wasn’t at Jose’s party, it doesn’t exactly get Clemens off the hook, given that Canseco’s own words over the years have essentially, and consistently confirmed one thing about Clemens - that Roger is a steroid user.

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Roger Clemens
By Lisa Swan on February 10, 2008