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

Canseco's new book expected by Opening Day '08

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3173585

Sunday, December 30, 2007
Reports: Canseco's new book expected by Opening Day '08

Jose Canseco has finalized a book deal for his sequel to "Juiced" and it is expected to hit bookstores by Opening Day of the 2008 season, two New York newspapers reported Sunday.

Robert Saunooke, Canseco's lawyer, told The New York Daily News and The New York Post that the book, which has a working title of "Vindicated" will be co-authored by former Sports Illustrated writer Don Yaeger.

The Daily News first reported the story Saturday on its Web site.

"Jose already has a lot of stuff put together," Yaeger told The Daily News.

Disappointed by the Mitchell report, Canseco hopes to publish "an unjaundiced view, without the rose-colored glasses" of steroid use in baseball, Saunooke told The Post.

"The book is basically going to be -- I don't want to say an attack -- but it will be a clarification of why certain names should have been mentioned [in the Mitchell report] that were not mentioned," Saunooke said of the new book. "We had hoped that the Mitchell report would have been more revealing. It basically ended up being nothing more than [Mitchell saying], 'I talked to a lot of people, some people wouldn't talk to me and it's up to the commissioner,'" Saunooke told The Daily News.

Saunooke told The Post that he and Canseco talked to Sen. Mitchell and provided him with "tons of information and background" on steroid use in baseball. But when the Mitchell report was released, he and Canseco were disappointed that names like Rafael Palmeiro and Ivan Rodriguez were not named.

Canseco's name appears 105 times in the Mitchell report, more than that of Barry Bonds (103) or Roger Clemens (82). In all, the 409-page report identified 86 names to differing degrees, but Clemens clearly was the symbol.

"I saw the list of players, and there are definitely a lot of players missing," Canseco told Fox Business Network this month. "I don't know what they accomplished or what they are trying to prove."

Prodded further about players not included, Canseco said this of Alex Rodriguez: "All I can say is the Mitchell report is incomplete. I could not believe that his name was not in the report."

One of the topics of Canseco's new book, Saunooke told The Post, will be how Mark McGwire asked for immunity before his appearance before Congress in 2005.

Another topic of Canseco's new book might be A-Rod.

In July, Canseco told WEEI Radio in Boston that he had "other stuff" on Rodriguez, who he called a "hypocrite" who "was not all he appeared to be."

"Jose has information about A-Rod and the Yankees that will be in the book. But, I am not sure if Jose is willing to disclose it at this point," Saunooke, told The New York Times in July.

In Baltimore for a Yankees' game against the Orioles that month, Rodriguez told reporters that he hadn't heard Canseco's comments about him. "And I have no comment."

In "Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big," Canseco called himself the "godfather of steroids in baseball," saying, "I single-handedly changed the game of baseball by introducing them into the game."

He wrote in that book that he personally injected McGwire with steroids and that he saw McGwire and Jason Giambi inject each other.

Canseco also claimed he introduced the performance enhancers to Palmeiro, Rodriguez, and Juan Gonzalez when he joined the Rangers in 1992.

Canseco hit 462 home runs in a major league career between 1985 and 2001. He played seven full seasons for the A's before being traded to Texas in '92. He also played for Boston, the Yankees, Toronto, Tampa Bay, Oakland again, and the White Sox.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.