Canseco might speak the truth, but he's still a jerk

Jose Canseco was a long way from the majors when he suited up for Long Beach of the Golden Baseball Leauge in 2006. Christian Petersen

The title of Jose Canseco's latest book is Vindicated.

Perhaps a more complete title would be Vindicated for Many Correct Steroid Picks in my First Book ... But Still Willing to Stoop to Almost Anything.

Canseco is that most uncomfortable of all contradictions: a horrible human whose facts mostly check out.

In what would amount to borderline blackmail, Canseco is said by two baseball people familiar with the phone calls to have first requested an investment for his movie project from Detroit Tigers outfielder Magglio Ordonez and then claimed in a subsequent call and an apparent second bid for investment dollars to have some "info" regarding steroids and Ordonez -- who has a spotless reputation and has never been mentioned anywhere in connection to steroids.

Yet everyone both for or against Canseco seems to agree that nothing illegal can or will be pinned on him regarding supposed improper contacts with Ordonez -- and that's even if Canseco did what he is said to have done.

Some people will view Canseco's new book with a more skeptical eye following these reported requests of Ordonez, which first appeared in the New York Times. However, a couple people in baseball are actually speculating that this may create another cottage industry for Canseco, wondering whether some tainted but as-yet unexposed players may actually volunteer to pay him to keep their name out of future books.

Technically speaking, if these players did come to him, Canseco wouldn't be doing anything illegal, just raking in more money. There apparently is no legal case for extortion or blackmail since even if true, Canseco only requested an investment, not a gift (maybe he isn't as dumb as they say).

But if this conspiracy theory regarding future voluntary contributions was Canseco's scheme all along, that would contradict everything thought true about him. One former associate of Canseco's insisted he's not that smart, saying of him, "He's a moron of the highest order. If he could have majored in moronics, he would have gone to college.''

On Thursday, Canseco's lawyer, Rob Saunooke, asserted that the impact of the new book's revelations would match those in Juiced, Canseco's original bestseller, which sold 300,000-plus copies, instigated a Congressional hearing that embarrassed Canseco's former Bash Brother Mark McGwire, eventually helped lead to much stricter penalties for steroid use in major league baseball and appears now to have batted close to 1.000 in accuracy.

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