Jose Canseco's glory days with the A's have now been reduced to rubble. Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images
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So the living history of The Steroid Era continues to be written. As an author, as in just about every other conceivable capacity, Jose Canseco has the kind of credibility not even nanotechnology could find or measure. He needs the money and the attention, and he has no friends or future in baseball, all of which make him highly toxic as a reliable source. He is easily dismissed.

But wait. Something bigger is going on here than the dirty little gossiping of one of baseball's all-time frauds. Canseco is a voice of the times. He is a product -- perhaps even the preeminent pioneer -- of the second era in the history of baseball in which the legitimacy of performance will forever be suspect. Unlike the gambling woes of the early 20th century, this one is rooted in modern pharmacology. And you can be sure that more voices will be added to those of Ken Caminiti, Jason Giambi and Canseco.

Maybe someday we will have a book, an unintended homage to Lawrence Ritter's The Glory of Their Times: The Story of Baseball Told By the Men Who Played It. But these voices are capturing The Shame of Their Times.

As passing years chip away the clubhouse code of silence, and shame or the need for money or relevance grow greater in the obscurity of retirement, more players, drug suppliers, managers or others with connections to the game's inner circle will add more chapters of The Steroid Era history.

We're talking modern archeology. The bones are there, buried under the sandy layers of lies and coverups. It is only a matter of time and who reveals them to us.

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The first voice, now silent, belonged to the late Caminiti. He admitted to me his use of steroids in 2002. A few months later, not coincidentally, the players' association caved in on the idea of steroid testing. The union, with no interest in cleaning up the mess, privately lashed back at Caminiti. Dusty Baker, for one, called Caminiti a "snitch,'' a terrible insult, especially because it had absolutely no application here.

Caminiti took responsibility for his own actions. He named no other names. Baker, with most of baseball, was living a charade. Anyone with vision could see how steroids were changing the game, changing the record book, changing the strategy and how baseball is played, and yet no one in baseball wanted to acknowledge the elephant in the room.

And so they lied. Giambi lied, at least until he had to testify under oath. Canseco lied, at least until he figured out how to goose the advance money for a book. Tony La Russa lied, at least until it fit him to fire back at Canseco. Only now does La Russa say Canseco would talk openly about his steroid use with the A's while La Russa was manager. There was no condemnation then from La Russa, no effort that we know of to clean up Canseco and the oil spill that was about to spread over the game. Canseco could help him win championships. More important, it was "his'' guy, one of "his'' players, and the ancient code of the clubhouse has to be upheld: don't ask, don't tell. Especially don't tell. La Russa covered for his star. "Protecting your player'' is the euphemism of the clubhouse.