Jose Caseco is writing “Vindicated,” a new book about anabolic steroids in baseball. It is the sequel to the bestselling book “Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ’Roids, Smash Hits and How Baseball Got Big” that ignited the steroids in baseball scandal. It has sorta become a historical document in baseball for its role in baseball’s steroid scandal. Canseco claims he will include information about additional baseball players, such as Alex Rodriguez and likely Roger Clemens, not included in his original expose of steroid use. Canseco identified several professional baseball players as users of anabolic steroids in Juiced including Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi, Rafael Palmeiro, Iván Rodríguez, and Juan González.
The new steroid book, scheduled to be released on Opening Day of the Major League Baseball season, was originally to be co-authored by former Sports Illustrated reporter Don Yaeger. He was the ghostwriter for Canseco’s Juiced. After Yaeger took a look at Canseco’s materials, he quit the project telling the NY Daily News:
I’m passing… I had a chance to review the Jose Canseco (material) that he provided me. I don’t think there’s a book there. I don’t know what they’re going to do. I don’t think he’s got what he claims to have, certainly doesn’t have what he claims to have on A-Rod… There’s no meat on the bones.
Officially, the publisher has diplomatically cited “editorial delays” as the reason for not publishing the book.
By mutual agreement with José Canseco, we have decided not to publish his book ‘Vindicated…’ After much consideration, we have agreed to part ways due to editorial delays that made it impossible to maintain our original publishing schedule.
So, Jose Canseco has been forced to changed publishers and find a new ghostwriter selecting Pablo F. Fenjves, a former National Enquirer writer; Fenjves was the ghostwriter for O.J. Simpson’s book outlining how he would have killed Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.
Roger Clemens attorney should be fired. Obviously, attorney Rusty Hardin must have devised the strategy used by Roger Clemens in his interview with Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes tonight. Brian McNamee’s attorney, Richard Emery, was spot on when he identified the likely legal strategy:
I think that this is a lawyers’ game, which allows him to try and attempt to say that McNamee didn’t know what he was injecting or that at least Clemens didn’t know what he was injecting.
Conceivably, this is a crafty legal strategy to suggest that Clemens received so many injections of substances that were NOT anabolic steroids, testosterone, or growth hormone, that there is a chance that McNamee and/or Clemens simply didn’t know what was injected.
Roger took bunches of his shots over his career, much the way racehorses do, unfortunately.
But from a public relations standpoint, this strategy is stupid. It is stupid for the attorney to make an analogy to a racehorse; it is stupid to have Clemens’ publicly outline the hypocrisy of drug use in major league baseball…
Clemens’ admission to injecting several performance-enhancing substances that were to help joints and/or mask pain pointed out the hypocrisy of selectively demonizing some performance enhancers while condoning others. Drugs that allow a baseball player to “mask pain” are arguably more dangerous than growth hormone use and even steroid use. Yet Clemens is proud to use these drugs to mask pain allowing him to continue playing and performing while injured.
Clemens admitted to regularly using Toradol, which is considerably more liver toxic than most oral anabolic steroids. Yet the dangerous liver toxicity of oral androgens is unacceptable, but the even more dangerous liver toxicity of Toradol (not to mention its use to mask pain to allow players to perform while injured) is perfectly acceptable.
The regular denials by athletes accused of using anabolic steroids and growth hormone has become relatively commonplace and quite boring. So, I didn’t expect much from Mike Wallace’s 60 Minutes interview of baseball player Roger Clemens (who was accused by trainer Brian McNamee of using testosterone and growth hormone in the Mitchell Report). But I was pleasantly surprised when Clemens offered “proof” that he never used steroids or GH. If he did use the alleged performance enhancing drugs…
He would have grown a “third ear out of his head”;
He would have been able to “pull a tractor with his teeth”;
His tendons would have “turned to dust”;
His body would have experienced a “breakdown”; and
He would have lost “flexibility”
Since none of these things happened, that must be proof positive that he never used steroids or growth hormone!!
A Roger Clemens T-shirt with the question “Got Rocket Fuel?” was released about six months ago. But the phrase has taken on new meaning since the release of the Mitchell Report and the allegations of steroid use and growth hormone use were published a couple of weeks ago. The prices have been discounted on sport merchandise with names of athletes accused of steroid use:
On clearance racks of the team’s clubhouse stores and in the sale section of its Web site is a T-shirt that has taken on an unintended connotation since Roger Clemens, known as the Rocket, was linked to the use of steroids and human growth hormone. His name and No. 22 are printed on the back, and the front asks, “Got Rocket Fuel?”
Yet a search for this t-shirt on the internet indicate that it is largely sold out with the exception of a few stores.
