Former Major League Baseball Most Valuable Player Jose Canseco was at the 350 Grill in Springfield to promote the fight between him and Pittsfield resident Todd Poulton at the Springfield Sheraton. Celebrity Boxing organized the fight.

After the preliminary introductions of seven fighters, one trainer and one promoter, Celebrity Boxing promoter Damon Feldman opened the floor for questions.

Canseco was not at all thrilled with the first question asked, which had something to do with his former steroids use. He was asked how he advises his son, Christian against using steroids.

According to Canseco, he simply tells his son not to do it. After leaving baseball, Canseco turned to boxing and mixed martial arts.

His recent MMA fights include a fight with a Japanese professional but he lost in less than two minutes, a lost fight with former Philadelphia Eagle Vai Sikahema and a draw with former child actor Danny Bonaduce.

He was quite disappointed that the questions focused more on his steroids use rather than his career as a boxer or his preparations for the fight.

Canseco wrote two books about steroids and did a documentary about his life on his steroids abuse.

From The Berkshire Eagle:

SPRINGFIELD — Jose Canseco swaggered in wearing designer jeans, a leather jacket, a tight, white shirt and sunglasses that didn’t leave his eyes for an entire press conference — or as he sipped a drink in a dimly lit bar afterwards.

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On April 6 Jose Canseco released some controversial statements implying that Manny Ramirez is using steroids. He was at Bovard Auditorium at the USC talking about his book Juiced where he revealed the names of baseball icons who were allegedly using steroids. No one had dared to believe him because they thought that he was just trying to make some noise now that his career is on a decline. But in February A-Rod came out and admitted that he was using steroids. He was one of those Canseco named to be on PEDs along with several others.

In Bovard, Canseco drops another line that he is 90% sure that Manny Ramirez is using steroids. He asked leading questions like why Ramirez did not get a long-term deal or why are the owners hesitant to hire him. That could raise some speculations in the media.

When Ramirez was asked to comment he just gave a shrug and did not comment.

From CBS LA Sports:

Manny Ramirez had a one-word answer when asked if he had anything to say about the accusation that he used performance-enhancing drugs in 2003:

“Nothing.”

Does he have anything he wants to say to his accuser, Jose Canseco?

“Nothing.”

It took a few days before anyone in the media got around to asking Ramirez about the shaky allegations from Canseco. Those allegations are largely supposition on Canseco’s part — his proof is that Manny’s contract negotiations dragged out this summer.

Apparently it had nothing to do with the economy or Manny’s behavior in Boston. Canseco even had to put a qualifier on it — he is “90% sure” Ramirez is on the list of positive tests from 2003.

It seems that this time the media is relieved that Ramirez didn’t say anything else to blow the situation out of proportions. With that one word he closed the issue. At the very least, now that the season has started everyone can focus on baseball and start putting steroids behind.

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Opening day of this season’s Major League Baseball last Sunday and Jose Canseco takes the stage at the Bovard Auditorium at the USC. The former batter wrote the controversial book, Juiced, where he revealed that a majority of MLB players are taking steroids. He himself admitted to using hormones that plummeted him to infamy, but not without taking several names down with him. He included the names Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Ivan Rodriguez, and Juan Gonzalez.

To his audience in Bovard, he says he continues to use testosterone. Except in 1998 when depression made him get off steroids for a while. He played for Toronto where he was able to hit 46 home runs. He could’ve quit then but the lure of steroids was just too difficult to resist.

From The LA Times:

In fact, 1998 has made him reconsider things. After long telling anyone who’d listen that he might not have made the big leagues without steroids, maybe the year in Canada shows he could have become a star without drugs. He holds tight to this new notion.

“I have regrets,” he says. “The way people look at my career was compromised by using. Then the whole thing fell apart. . . . I was cut off. Not being able to play at 36. That’s how old I was when baseball colluded to keep me out. They were sending a message to all the other players: ‘Stop using, or you will be like Jose.’ “

Canseco keeps talking, unburdening. He seems tinged with a paranoia that makes him easy to dismiss, except he has so often been right.

“I have nightmares, almost every night. I’m on some team, but they will not let me actually play. The bus leaves without me. . . . “

The audience were curious about Alex Rodriguez if he was going to suffer the same fate as Canseco did. But the latter said that A-Rod was not very honest about using steroids. Sure, he admitted to using them but there is still something that he is not telling. When his name was leaked to the press as one of those who tested positive, it made the people curious to know who were the rest. Manny Ramirez most likely occupies the top of the list for steroids use, according to Canseco. He disclaims that all these were just suspicions but he is pretty sure his theory is correct.

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Retired baseball slugger Mark McGwire, had rarely been seen in public or made any comment since he appeared at a Congressional hearing on steroids. Recently however he agrees to an interview with the New York Times as long as it doesn’t touch on the easy about the allegations that he had been using performance enhancing drugs.

Since his retirement in 2001 he retreated to a more private life. The more he did so when Jose Canseco’s book linked him to steroid use. When he was asked he neither denied nor confirmed it saying he was not going to talk about the past.

From ESPN.com:

The Times said McGwire agreed to the interview “with the understanding that it would focus on his work as a hitting tutor, and not on other issues.”

McGwire did briefly address criticism he has received for being linked to performance-enhancing drugs. “I’m such an easygoing guy,” he said, according to the Times. “I don’t need to sweep away any bitterness.”

McGwire took himself out of the public eye after he retired in 2001 with 583 career home runs. That withdrawal became nearly total in 2005, after McGwire — implicated in former teammate Jose Canseco’s book as a steroid user — infamously declined to answer questions from congressmen about whether he used steroids, repeatedly saying, “I’m not here to talk about the past.”

McGwire has expressed his interest in coaching in the Major Leagues. He almost had a chance to attend the spring training in 2008 in lieu of Tony La Russa, his former manager. But there had been a family situation that he had to attend to. He is currently the hitting instructor for Holliday and Crosby for the Oakland A’s and Schumaker and Duncan for the St. Louis Cardinals. He says he enjoys his time with the guys and talk to them about hitting which he seldom did while he was still playing.

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The Steroid Scandal in the Major League Baseball has reached new heights pushing 2 MLB Officials in front of the pack of who’s to blame despite their efforts to remain out of the spotlight. Baseball superstars like McGwire, Sosa and now A-Rod have taken the heat for MLB Commissioner Bud Selig and Donald Fehr Executive Director for MLB Players Association.

Rumors have spread in the 1980s that Major League players have been on steroids. A rookie on the 1988 Oakland A’s leaked that player Jose Canseco was on the drug which was later confirmed. Fehr and Selig had appeared before the congress stating they had no knowledge of PEDs being used in the MLB. But both had been with the MLB in the 80’s and the early 90s respectively and can no longer deny that they knew players have been pumping themselves with steroids to get ahead in the game. Had they been turning a deaf ear and a blind eye to an issue that had only escalated when Alex Rodriguez confessed to using them in 2001 through 2003?

From the Bleacher Report:

Selig went before Congress in 2005 and stated that he had no idea that there was a PED problem building in the industry in the 1990’s. Yet, in the wake of the Alex Rodriguez revelations, Selig himself said that he proposed a steroid testing program to the player’s union in 1995. Fehr has claimed no knowledge of the problem yet his underling, Gene Orza, was going around major league clubhouses in 2004 informing players that they had failed drug tests and then warning them that they would be tested in the next few weeks.

They knew. What other conclusion is there to be reached? They did and said nothing about it until called to the carpet in Congress at least, by Selig’s recent admission, ten years after the subject first came up. And both of them have lied about their knowledge of the situation to keep the heat on the users rather than themselves, the enablers.

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Just when Mark McGwire thought that keeping quiet would keep him out of the hot seat, his younger brother, Jay McGwire, starts going around to sell a book proposal to major publishing houses. Jay wrote a proposal for a book entitled, “The McGwire Family Secret”. In the proposal, he wrote that he was the one who introduced Mark to the world of anabolic steroids. Jay used his $150,000 insurance money to buy performance enhancing drugs. After winning a bodybuilding contest in May 1994, he introduced Mark to a steroid dealer who explained everything about the drug to the athlete.

From NY Daily News:

Jay McGwire’s book proposal describes an idyllic childhood as the youngest of four boys in an exceptionally athletic family (another brother, Dan McGwire, was an NFL quarterback). The youngest McGwire says he stopped using steroids when he started feeling ill effects from the drugs - depression, high cholesterol, high blood pressure - and embraced religion. The McGwire brothers have had a falling-out and no longer speak to each other. Mark McGwire avoids the spotlight - he has repeatedly turned down Tony LaRussa’s invitations to attend St. Louis Cardinal training camps as a hitting instructor - but his younger brother says his story needs to be told.

“My bringing the truth to the surface about Mark is out of love,” Jay McGwire wrote. “I want Mark to live in truth to see the light, to come to repentance so he can live in freedom - which is the only way to live.”

Apparently, Jay is not doing this to increase his popularity. The younger McGwire believes that his brother wouldn’t have to live his current socially isolated life if he would just admit and apologize just like other baseball players did. With the proposal content now public, what Jose Canseco previously claimed is affirmed. Canseco wrote in his book that he injected Mark with steroids in the bathrooms of where they played. This seems to be what really had happened.

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“Does greatness always come with a price? Can only someone with nothing to lose tell the whole truth? The play follows the turbulent careers of three very different teammates in baseball’s steroid era whose clubhouse secrets bring them under federal scrutiny.”

The above is the plot of the new play entitled “Back, Back, Back” by Itamar Moses. It will be shown at the Manhattan Theater Club at Stage 2 at NY City Center on Nov. 18.

The off-Broadway play tackles the controversial duo of American pro baseball circa 1990s – homerun kings and steroids. It specifically focuses on two former baseball bigwigs Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire, plus the lesser known Walt Weiss. All three were former teammates at the Oakland Athletics.

Here’s a review of the preview performance of the play by Steve Kettmann, former baseball beat writer and ghostwriter for Jose Canseco’s tell-all offering “Juiced”. Excerpts from the article published at Daily News.

The play is a fictionalized inquiry into the strange saga of former Oakland A’s teammates Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco. The daring and talented playwright tosses in a third teammate, the lesser known shortstop Walt Weiss, as a pretty good device to get some of his own points across.

…the play offers what about no one else has: A fully imagined moral response to the pressing question of how the steroid era in baseball happened and what it meant. That is what art is for. That is what it does. I’m still trying to figure out if the gents did not know that there was a real Jose Canseco who gave the world a real book called “Juiced,” that shot to No. 1 on The New York Times best-seller list and precipitated congressional hearings, all thanks mostly to Canseco’s naming of his former teammate, McGwire, as a steroid user and his vivid description in the book of jabbing McGwire in the ass with a steroid needle.

The notion of an imagined conversation between Canseco and McGwire about why one of them wrote the book that would kill the Hall of Fame chances of the other is, to any real sports fans or to anyone who has grappled with the baseball issues of recent years, deeply fascinating and irresistible. For sheer creative bravado and raw courage, I think we owe young Berkeley, Calif.-born playwright Itamar Moses an extended ovation. And I defy anyone to question the man’s ability to imagine his way to truth that others have missed.

McGwire never confessed to steroid use but admitted to have used steroid precursor-androstenedione when it was still an over-the-counter supplement.

His impressive performance in the field has been under scrutiny since he has been linked by Canseco to performance-enhancing compounds. Canseco has repeatedly said in his book and in his interviews that he had personally administered his former buddy with steroids.

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The above caption is taken from a San Francisco Chronicle article which said this fact has become apparent after 2003, the year when America’s favorite game began testing for anabolic steroids. Because synthetic steroids were on spotlight, players turned to hGH.

The following is the “dishonorable list” of players implicated in the use of hGH enumerated by the San Francisco Chronicle as gleaned from court records, published accounts, and the explosive Mitchell Report.

BALCO players: The Burlingame laboratory distributed undetectable steroids. But doping calendars seized at BALCO in a 2003 federal raid also reflected HGH use by home run king Barry Bonds; slugger Gary Sheffield; and former Giants Benito Santiago, Bobby Estalella and Armando Rios. Before a federal grand jury, Yankees star Jason Giambi, another BALCO customer, demonstrated how he injected himself with HGH, records show.

Jose Canseco’s teammates. “Juiced,” the former slugger’s steroid memoir, also described his use of HGH. Besides himself, Canseco identified A’s bash brother Mark McGwire and Ivan Rodrigues, Juan Gonzales and Rafael Palmeiro, his Texas teammates, as HGH users.

Kirk Radomski’s clients. The former Mets batboy and clubbie, an admitted steroid dealer, also told former Sen. Mitchell that he had sold Human Growth Hormone to 29 players. They included pitchers Kevin Brown, Denny Neagle, Jason Grimsley and Cy Young Award winner Eric Gagne, outfielders GlenAllen Hill and David Justice, and Mo Vaughn, MVP with the Red Sox in 1995.

Brian McNamee’s clients. The former Yankee trainer told Mitchell he provided HGH to Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte and Chuck Knoblauch.

Adam Piatt’s teammate. The former A’s outfielder told Mitchell he got HGH for Miguel Tejada.
On-line clinics. Customer lists from web clinics that were targeted by the district attorney in Albany, N.Y show 13 present and former players received growth hormone. They included St. Louis pitcher-turned outfielder Rick Ankiel, Angels outfielder Gary Matthews Jr; pitchers Paul Byrd and John Rocker; and former Giant Matt Williams, who ordered HGH while working in the Arizona Diamondbacks’ front office.

In 2003, MLB started unannounced steroid testing of players in 2003.

In the spring of 2004, the league implemented mandatory program testing. According to MLB’s press release on November 2003, it was the first time in the sport’s history that “players could be subject to fines and suspension for failing and repeating to fail random drug testing that reveals use of one of 28 federally banned anabolic androgenic steroids. The union and MLB labor negotiators adopted mandatory testing for steroid use in the Basic Agreement, which was signed in 2002.”

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The controversial former Major League Baseball player Jose Canseco is involved yet again in another legal trouble as he gets 12-month unsupervised probation for a recent drug case.

Canseco pleaded guilty to a federal misdemeanor charge of bringing mislabeled vials of a prohibited drug from Mexico to the United States. The drug was human chorionic gonadotropin, a fertility drug which is considered illegal without prescription and is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency for use in males.

Canseco told the magistrate, Judge Ruben Brooks, he was sorry that he did not declare to border agents that he had with him the HCG vials.

On October 9, Canseco’s vehicle was searched at the San Ysidro border crossing and immigration and customs agents found six vials of HCG in one of the vehicle’s armrest.

The former baseball star, who wrote two tell-all books on steroid use in MLB, admitted he was getting the HCG to restore his hormonal level up and working.

“I didn’t go down there looking for steroids,” Canseco said while seated on a bench outside the courtroom. “I needed something to help me get my own levels back to normal, just to get me to, you know, normal working conditions, I guess.”

Canseco confessed in 2005 in his first book that he had used steroids to enhance his athletic performance. He now blames his past steroid use as the culprit for his depressed hormonal level.

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Jose Canseco feels sorry for so many things these days.

He’s sorry he had used steroids. He’s sorry that he has now nonexistent testosterone in his system due to his steroid use. He’s sorry he tried to smuggle into California the fertility drug he bought from Mexico to normalize his hormone levels. And most of all he’s sorry he wrote Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big. And sorrier when he wrote a sequel to Juiced, which he titled Vindicated: Big Names, Big Liars, and the Battle to Save Baseball. Vindicated, many say didn’t tell that much, and that’s a great disappointment from a supposed to be tell-all book.

Canseco said he should have never written those books with kilometric titles, and that he missed the friendship he had with former teammates, particularly Mark McGwire.

“I never realized this was going to blow up as big and hurt so many people,” Canseco said in a new television special.

“The more I think about it the more I realize how wrong it was.”

Well, we’d like the front seat when Canseco says sorry to McGwire up close and personal. We’d like to know for sure if McGwire can still hit as fast and as hard as he did during his days with the Cardinals.

A scathing article from AP:

If the old Canseco made you queasy, the new one is simply sickening.

Tune in if you want to hear Canseco talk about being depressed and wanting to be left alone; watch his meeting with a doctor to try to return his testosterone levels to normal; see his beautiful girlfriend and listen to him say he has no sex drive at all.

Why stop at just an hour-long special? This is so slimy it could become a reality TV hit.
They did miss a few things, like Canseco being charged in federal court in San Diego with a misdemeanor offense of trying to bring a fertility drug across the border from Mexico. His attorney said Canseco was in Tijuana looking for Halloween decorations with a woman and her 7-year-old daughter.

And there’s no footage from his first-round knockout loss to former NFL player Vai Sikahema in a celebrity boxing match in July in Atlantic City that was briefly popular on YouTube.
But there’s enough other stuff to make you watch this train wreck.

I guess we’re supposed to feel sorry for him as he battles to regain his manhood and stay off the steroids he says he used for more than two decades. We’re supposed to empathize as he lies on a bed watching videos of his home runs and worrying about what the long-term effects of his steroids use will be.

It is a pitiful story, that’s for sure. But Canseco is hardly someone to be pitied, considering he has spent much of his adult life involved in one con job after another.

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